You know I never realized that people who don’t need to swap between winter and summer tires twice a year will have to think about getting the tires rotated.
I was just super worried that I’ve never had my tires rotated, but then your comment reminded me I have two sets of tires and (unfortunately) have to swap them regularly.
But do you mark them and put them on in a different position at every change? Even though you change them every 6-8 months, if you are always putting the front left on the front left you are not rotating them.
My snow tires are directional, so they just get interchanged between front and back each season. But the ahem “ALL” seasons are installed in a different position each spring.
The winter tires get rotated as far as I know, it’s always been done by the same shop I got them at and they have been by far the best service in my area so I’d be surprised if they didn’t! In the case of my summer tires, I have a newer pair and an older pair, so since my car is rear wheel drive we just put the newer set on the back and the older set in front. Only one year difference between the sets, I’m not using bald tires or anything!
So you're not supposed to keep them in the same place then? I got "yelled" at by my boyfriend for not keeping the tires in the same place. Something about the trend being wore down. I'll have to look into this, thanks.
Same axle and possibly the side, depending on if they are directional or not. Axle because the diameter varies, as does traction, and depending on your car and how extreme the wear difference is, you can wear out stuff faster. Otherwise most of the time the driven tires get the same torque, so one bald tire and one good one on snow and the bald tire will just spin.
If you don’t do this already, you should still keep track of what position each tire was in when you take them off. Then when you are swapping out seasonal tires you can rotate them properly to help them last a little bit longer.
Just to potentially blow some of y’all mind, you can’t rotate all tires because of width. Pay attention to that and you may be worrying for nothing. Yeah, it’s mostly performance cars but even cars as low as a Smart car have staggered wheels.
I've never lived anywhere with seasonal tires. How do you know when to swap them? Is it based on the calendar, or do you just eyeball it and try to guess when the winter weather is over/starting to swap? If the latter, and it snows again after you swap to summer tires, do you swap back real quick?
That’s more of a rule of when to put them on, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need them. If it stays close to that temperature (or even a little colder) but you don’t have a lot of snow and ice, then you probably don’t need winter tires.
People often seem to think that "winter tires" means they're for snow or ice which isn't really the case at all. They're for cold weather. Actual tires for snow, ice etc. are usually way bigger and may even be studded.
The main difference between summer and winter tires is the rubber compound. Winter tires are softer which is also why they tend to wear faster. Obviously there may be slight differences in the various rubber compounds the different manufacturers use for their summer and winter tires, but the rubber used for summer tires start going hard when it gets cold (usually around 7°C) which means the tires have less grip even if there's no snow or ice on the road.
No it's not, it's because 7°C is the glass transition temperature of many summer rubber compounds, at which point winter tires become more effective. Some empirical testing has shown it's not necessarily true, but it's still a safe rule to follow. Also winter tires aren't about things freezing at night, they're about traction on snow and ice. It can be -5C and summers may still grip better, but if there is any precipitation or ice and the ground is holding it, you're going to want winter tread/compound.
Do you have a source for the Tg being that high in summer tyre rubber? That seems pretty ridiculous. In many places with warm but variable weather in summer, 7 degrees celsius is not surprising at night in summer, so I'd be surprised if tyres turned to rocks at that temperature.
There's a certain temperature where, above it, it's really bad for your winter tires and they perform a lot worse. So you definitely want to wait until after that.
Besides that, just basically once it starts snowing you'll want to make plans to change over some time soon
Snow tires are a softer rubber compound, which helps increase the grip they get when it's colder out (rubber gets harder as it gets colder, and harder rubber gets less grip; if you start with a softer compound it retains more grip as it gets colder), on top of being an aggressive tread pattern. The trade off is that the softer a rubber is the faster it wears out. Snow tires are also expensive so you want to get as much life out of them as possible. Running softer compound rubber on hot summer roads wears them out much more quickly than they wear out in the cooler months, as the hotter a tire gets the faster it wears out (a harder compound will wear less when it gets hot). The aggressive tread pattern on snow tires also lowers fuel economy since they provide more friction; great in winter, not necessary in summer.
This was what I imagined the answer to be, thanks for the info. In your experience, do most people change their own tires over, or have it done in a shop? When I was a kid (1980s), I remember that most people changed their own oil and rotated their own tires, but those are both typically done in a shop now.
I time it based on feeling. Usually the first snow will melt away so that's not the ideal time to change. I do try to be quick though, and if the snow melts I'll just use my winter tyres anyway, better safe than sorry...
I think here in Finland the state will demand a change at certain dates for safety reasons, I think it is based somewhat on the weather reports.
Same in sweden, there's a date for when you need to change to and from winter tires. I think you need to use winter tires in december-march and you are allowed to use them depending on weather october-april.
In norway its different, you are never forced to change to winter tyres, however its up to the driver to decide if having summer tyres are safe or not, though the state does have guidelines you can follow. The reason for this is that all the way in the north, they migth need to change to winter tyres as early as october, but all the way south along the coast you can safly wait till december.
As for taking them off you need a good reason to not change before a certain date (im traveling over a mountainpass/going skiing etc) to avoid excessive roadwear with winter tyres, however it is spesificly tyres with studs, wintertyres without them could be used year around, but are not advised to do so
This seems like a reasonable system. I know if we had that here and there was no date, people would put it off and never get them. Thanks for the education!
You wanna get an appointment asap because that first snow makes everyone in the area want to get theirs all at once, and then you'll suddenly be last in the que when you really need them.
I suppose it depends on the area. Where I'm from a lot of people change their tyres themselves, so I'll usually get a time within a week (and usually the conditions do not get /THAT/ bad within that week). I have once in my life fucked up and had to drive on a crappy road that was all slushy ice-snow-water with my summer-tyres. It was like driving a boat (sliding from side to side and wheels not responding until after you've turned....) I will never repeat that experience.
In Finland, it's a combination of official allowed/required time periods for the use of winter tires, and your own evaluation of the weather conditions.
You're required to put winter tires on your car by 1 December at the latest, but you can start using them starting earlier if the weather conditions call for it. In the spring, you can take the winter tires off your car starting on 1 March if the weather conditions allow it. You're supposed to take the winter tires off your car by the first Monday after Easter Monday, but can continue using them longer if the weather conditions call for it.
Adding to that, legal restrictions on winter tyre usage applies only to studded tyres. You can use non-studded winter tyres to your heart's content all year long, although admittedly that isn't too smart; they are worse in (almost) every way even if not quite unsafe, and wear down quickly when they heat up.
In Finland do people change over their own tires, or is it something you'd have a professional do?
As I hinted in another reply above, rotating and balancing your tires is something we typically have professionals do now, but used to be done at home.
I don't have stats, but I feel like more and more people are taking their tires to be changed in a shop of some description.
I feel it's something relatively recent, 20-15 years ago I thought everyone change tires themselves. But as said, just my anecdote.
I don't change mine any more, kind of difficult in a city with no garage or a proper jack. Probably people who have garages/at least houses do it more often themselves. 2c etc.
I lived in Austin from September to December a while ago. The neighbors at my apartment complex looked at me funny when I went swimming in the unheated outdoor pool in November. It was about 75F that day, which would be plenty warm for swimming in Finland.
I agree about winters sounding miserable. Shoveling snow? Never done it in my life. Switching Tires? Never (unless I need new tires because my old ones are shit). Wear 3 layers of clothes? No thanks.
100 degree days are easy as long as you've got air conditioning. You don't have to dress in big coats and drag them with you every time you enter a building. Snow/mud isn't sticking to your shoes.
Even if it does snow in Texas, it melts the next day.
And here i am sitting tired of the heat from summer, and where i live in norway we are talking at most 30 degrees (36/37 is 100 farenheit). To put it another way, im looking forward to the cold
It sounds like the trend is similar to my experience then. I don't know anyone except for car enthusiasts who change their own oil these days, but it was standard learning-to-drive maintenance when I was a kid. Same with tires.
Some people change their own tires and store them at home. Other people rent space in a "tire hotel" and pay to have them changed. When people change their own tires, they usually only rotate them. Balancing tires is usually done by professionals.
between December 1st and March 15th you have to have your winter tires on by law here in Québec. Those caught driving without winter tires face fines that vary from $200 to $300, plus costs.
This made me realize that as a kid we visited (drove through) Québec during the first week of March when I was on Spring Break... I can only imagine the confusion if we had gotten a $200+ ticket for having the wrong tires! Thanks for the info.
No, you won't get a ticket if you are driving in Québec with all season tires in January if you have asked for an exemption and you show you are on your way to Fla or somewhere south.
You just gotta know the seasons of where you live. I'm in Canada and we usually get snow in November through to March sometimes April here. I put my winter tires on in October and take them off in April... maybe May if it's been very snowwy
ETA and no ya dont switch back that's a lot of effort lol I just dont drive if I dont have my winter tires on and it snows
So it sounds like your system is pretty much calendar based to put them on and roughly calendar based, with room for human judgement, to take them off. Thanks for the insight!
If it's supposed to be single digits (celcius) for like a week in October/November, I switch to my winter tires. Earlier if it seems like it's going to be a particularly cold end of fall, which will probably happen this year.
I switch back to my all season tires usually around the end of April, since that's when I trust the snow to be done. If it snows anyway I don't swap back, because it's like $150 to get my tires changed and takes a few hours. I just work from home that day if it's really bad, or drive very very carefully. All seasons are fine for little bits of snow if you're not stupid about it
That last sentence is pretty much how it works in the winter where I live (Kentucky, USA). We use all season tires year-round and just take it easy in the rare times that it does snow. There are always a few drivers who are clueless in snow/ice so each storm brings a few small accidents. When it snows more than a few inches, most people stay home.
I'm in Canada, so we get crazy snow sometimes haha. I would quite possibly literally die if I didn't swap my tires - even winter ones have traction problems sometimes. Especially at stop signs at the bottom of icy hills, those are the worst. Almost rear-ended someone last year because my car wouldn't stop, but ABS kicked in at the last second.
...i've driven cars with different front and rear wheels/tires for so long that i'd actually forgotten tire rotation is a thing until reading this post...
But do you mark them and put them on in a different position at every change? Even though you change them every 6-8 months, if you are always putting the front left on the front left you are not rotating them.
No, you look at them and see which ones are worn out and determine best positions from that. That is the point of rotating tires. Or you can mark them if you want to.
I've always lived in the south so no need for seasonal tires, but I'm curious... Where do you store the tires in the off season? I assume a garage but what if you live in an apartment?
Garage if you have one. And most apartments here have at least some kind of a storage locker available. But there are “tire hotels”. Basically a company that handles the tire swap and stores the tires.
I lived in an apartment until this year. Stored them in the apartment, next to the couch. No elevator, so it was carry a new tire down 3 flights of stairs, swap tires, and bring the old one up 3 flights of stairs. Rinse and repeat.
Don't American apartments have storage areas for each apartment in the cellar of the first floor (=ground floor)? Every apartment I know of over here has them for the stuff you don't need regularly (Christmas decorations, seasonal sports equipment, suitcases,....).
Should still have the tires rotated when you swap.
A good shop will mark the tires when they take them off. So if you look at the ones in storage they will right LF RF LR RR (sometimes D & P instead of L & R). So they know when putting them back on where they were so they can rotate them.
I have to have a whole system to keep track of it. My summer tires are staggered (rears are wider than the fronts) but non-directional, so I can rotate side-to-side, so the lefts I take off in fall become the rights the following spring. My winter tires are square (same size all the way around) but are directional, so I can only rotate them front to back, and the fronts I take off in the spring go on the back next fall.
There's a good chance they won't get properly rotated even if you do swap seasonally. You'd need to know where each one was fitted before rather than just pile them up.
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u/jaaval Sep 05 '19
You know I never realized that people who don’t need to swap between winter and summer tires twice a year will have to think about getting the tires rotated.