Questions about wife's Protege5
 

I'm at work right now and figured I would ask you guys :)

Can you rotate the tires left to right? I rotated the tires front to back and back to front, but noticeing inside tire wear on the driver's front tire. Car only has 12K miles.

yes you can-with any non directional, symmetric tire(which Dunlop SP5000 are).
Have alignment checked as well
Alex

I am not disputing, but I was positive the owners manual said not to do that.

But heck what do I know.
:)

Stocker.

from everything that I have been told over the years you should NOT rotate radial tires from left to right on cars. The reason given is that the radial bands in the tires will shift in their poistining over time due to the rotation of the tire. Once they are "set" they should not be moved to the other side of the car as this will change the rotation direction (unless they are remounted).

This used to be "common knowledge" with radial tires. Over the past few years I have noticed that tire rotation has once again gone back to full rotation, and when I asked about it I was told that "new tires aren't affected by the bands changing position as much" so it is of no concern. This also seems to be supported by most of the tire manufacturer's web sites. They show radial tires and front drive cars rotated as 1. back tires to the front on the same side, 2. front tires diagonally to the back of the car.

Dunlop's page:
http://www.dunloptire.com/tiretech_1...tion/index.htm

shows this and the font to back only strategy for a front drive car. On all pages I have looked at they still say that the tires should be rotated according to the car's specifications... and on the Proteges they specify front to back only (I am pretty sure).


So, I do not rotate left to right... only front to back. And when I get my tires rotated at the shop (free with oil change) I make sure that they do not swap them (I mark the tires before it goes in).

Just my $0.02.

PS. also if you have unidirectional tires (high perfomance and snow tires usually) then you can not move them left to right.

You are right, the manual says only front to back. That is what I did when I did them myself... but... I had a rotation done by an excellent local tire shop recently and noticed that they did a full rotate all around. Since then, I have had a bit of "thrumming" at certain speeds. wonder if that's it?

no matter what you do...if you are getting inside tire wear now...and you either go front to back OR left to right you are still going to have the same inside of the tire wearing...UNLESS you pull the tires OFF THE RIMS and move them straight across so that what WAS the inside of the tire now becomes the OUTSIDE....just pulling the rim/tire off and rolling it to the other side won't do it...all that will do is change the direction that the tire was rotating....


BTW.....THIS belongs in the tire/wheels section.....so its moved.

Mazda asked us to bring it in. I know my wife she avoids potholes and manhole covers as bad as I :)

It maybe covered under warrenty they said. Very very nice people - especially with all the crap I've been dealing with with Honda. Just want to go in there and start smacking heads.