[Tim S FL]

I only got 20000 miles on my Goodyear tires and the alignment was checked today and it is fine. I keep the tires at the 37psia. I did not rotated the tires at the 7000 mile point. Cause i got away with out doing so on the I35 Infinity and still got about 40,000 miles + (As I recall).
Have you found that other cars you have had did not need the tires rotated as much as the Volt?
I am going to guess that about 75 to 80% of the people on this site follow the rules about rotating tires when supposed to. I thought I could bend the rule. I guess I was wrong about this car and these tires.
I am a bit tough on the turns, but the wear was still pretty even.

 

[jbakerjonathan]

Many owners inflate their tires to 40 psi and more. I keep mine at 43 psi. I've got 41,500 miles on the OE tires and they are still good. I rotate about every 7,500 miles.

The driven tires are going to see more forces on them; couple that with being in front where steering forces add to the wear, and you will experience faster wear on those two tires.

Your style of driving will also contribute to wear. Drive like Mario Andretti and you will see yourself buying new tires frequently. Drive like a Grandpa, with over-inflated tires and periodic tire rotations, and you will see your tires lasting beyond 41,500 miles. 8^)

 

[edk-austin]

Volt g1 is about 500 lbs heavier than your I35, not sure about the I35's weight distribution. Many of us also run the Goodyears 42-45 PSI for the handling, reduced rolling resistance and tread life. I'm at 19K miles now, and lots of tread left. Yes, been rotating them.

 

[Ziv]

I have a 2013 Volt and my first set of tires wore out unevenly even though I had them rotated at 10k miles, so it was a bit faster wear than I am used to. I generally rotate at 10k even though a lot of sources say to do it every 5k, and for my previous cars, Ford, Toyota and Nissans, rotating every 10k worked well.
With my Volt, I rotated at 10k and there was a noticeable amount of toe in, so I had an alignment done when the tires were rotated. At nearly 20k miles one rear tire got shredded by a steel bar in the road. The shredded tire wasn't repairable and the new front wheels were suffering from pretty significant toe in wear, again, so I replaced all 4 at 20k. The rear wheels (at 20k miles) had been on the front for the first 10k miles and the surviving tire actually looked better than I thought it would, given how bad the front tires looked at 10k.
The Assurance tire doesn't seem to be a very long lived wheel.
I keep my tires at 42-43 psi during the warmer 9 months now, though I kept them at 38-39 psi year round for the first 10k miles. I am curious to see if this has any impact on the wear. I do lower my psi to 38 in the winter still. A bit better traction in slippery conditions.
I have found that my GoM sits around 44 miles at 42-43 psi rather than the 42 miles I see at 38 psi. And my real world miles seem to bracket the GoM pretty closely in the warmer 9 months.

 

[Tim S FL]

hello and Thanks for the Feedback. There was another thread where a bunch of people had no problem getting alot of miles. Maybe 40,000 easy. Just searched for it put did not find it. I did not realize that the 40-42 psi also helped tire life. I do recall it helps EV miles and will go back to the 40-42 psi as I did with the 2013 Volt I used to have. On the 2013 I did rotate as supposed to and still only got about 25,000-28000 miles.
I found out today the real camber was just off the spec by a very small percentage. the fellow said that the only way to adjust camber on the rear tires is with shims. I found that strange. The rear tires are fine and have a good deal of tread at 20K miles.

If my experience is typical the cost for not rotating tires is about 2 tires. If I get 25K miles on the front tires without rotating and the rear tires go to 50K before the rear tires wear then at 50K miles someone would have bought 6 tires. 4 tires at 50K and the two tires at 25K miles. In this case the rear tires would not have been rotated a 25K miles as the new tires are preffered on the front. Now a person that rotated tires every 10K or 7K may have only bought 4 tires by 50K miles. But he would have had to spent about 1 hour or more rotating the tires every 10K miles or 50/10= 5 times x 1HR Min=5 hours min to save the cost of those two tires. Which I just bought for about 220-230$. $230/5 hours = $46 dollars and hour saved by the the fellow who rotates tires as supposed to. Of course these numbers will vary quite a bit from person to person. Just trying to put a cost value on not rotating tires. And the experience with the 2013 Volt suggests that tire rotation is not a big of a factor as the dealer says. As they use not rotating tires to blow off your warranty.

 

[Prohidium]

If the alignment is fine, not rotating your tires simply means the front tires will wear out faster than the rears. The extra wear is due to turning, braking and being the wheels with power on them. The rears are simply trailing wheels that will not wear as fast. They can be subject to uneven wear, which may include cupping or feathering which is when the shoulders of the tires wear to the point that they have a type of flat spotting on them. When this happens, these tires will create a humming sound not unlike you hear from transport rear tires. Once that happens it cannot be corrected. This wear is created due to the fixed rears being dragged slightly diagonally from the vehicle turning.

FYI, in Europe, rotating tires is uncommon and tires are replaced in pairs with the new tires going to the back and the old tires to the from.

 

[caronjeff]

I have a spare matching wheel and tire. It takes a cheap floor jack, a jack stand, a 3/4" deep six point socket, and a breaker bar to rotate tires. I regularly rotate them front to back, keeping them on the same side, same direction of rotation. Every rotation I'm inspecting for wear. If I deem one getting thin then I throw on the spare. I buy spares one or two at a time from bestusedtires.com. I am running Michelin Primacy MXV4's in 94V now. Great tire, much quieter and smoother than Goodyears, longer tread life. My tire shop guy mounts and balances a tire for $20. Always have a nice spare ready to slap on the car. I've probably experienced 3 punctures in the 5 years of ownership. In fact 2 of the Michelins have been repaired no problem.

 

[Jefferios]

I run my tires at 38 PSI in the winter, I'll bump them up to 40 in the summer. I rather sacrifice traction for MPG when its snowing.

 

[Tim S FL]

Hello That is a interesting point about Europe not considering tire rotation as saving money. So the main reason for rotating tires is for a even ride with some undefined undefined increase in tire life. ??
Has the American tire industry sold us a fast one? I will bet 95% of the people here believe rotating tires saves money. As i always have. I believe its saves some money with increased life but do not know how much for sure.

 

[rmay635703]

If the alignment is fine, not rotating your tires simply means the front tires will wear out faster than the rears
FYI, in Europe, rotating tires is uncommon and tires are replaced in pairs with the new tires going to the back and the old tires to the from.

I used to rotate tires but with modern ones it's a waste, especially considering I don't have a spare to do it on the volt.

I've found it's much cheaper to rotate tires once the fronts need replacement I can also get the newest tech onto the car qwuicker doing it this way.

My volt has 39k on the OEMs and never rotated, they are wearing fine.

 

[eric_n_dfw]

When I turned my 2013 in at the end of a 2 year lease with about 30k miles, the tires were just barely above the minimum tread depth for Ally standards. I had rotated them about every 5k miles and kept them inflated to whatever the number on the door jamb said.

I doubt I would have been able to get much more than another 10k out of them, probably less.

 

[llninja]

Hello That is a interesting point about Europe not considering tire rotation as saving money. So the main reason for rotating tires is for a even ride with some undefined undefined increase in tire life. ??
Has the American tire industry sold us a fast one? I will bet 95% of the people here believe rotating tires saves money. As i always have. I believe its saves some money with increased life but do not know how much for sure.

I think it depends on which tires you got with your car. My car came from the factory with 4 Goodyear Assurances, but it wasn't until about 20K miles that I noticed one tire wearing far longer than the other 3. If you go to tirerack.com, search for the tire, you will find 3 different widths, one 6.x", one 7.x" and one 8.x". If you got the 7.x inch tires they wear faster than the 8.x inch ones purely because of less rubber meeting the road, so more wear on that rubber.

My first set of tires lasted about 33k miles while I did all the rotations myself. I had stopped doing rotation on all of my cars when my BMW 535i manual specifically stated to not do tire rotations. They claimed that rotations helped hide alignment problems, the tires spend their life rotating one direction and are settling into a certain caster and camber, then rotating, causes you to mess all that up. but for some reason with the Volt I though I should rotate the tires. then when I needed new tires I switched to a new set of 18" wheels, added Yokohama Avid Ascend tires with a much deeper tread that is supposed to last 80k miles and give much more traction, and returned to my ways of not rotating my tires. My plan is to run this way until the front tires wear out, move the rears to the front, and put new tires on the rears. It sounds counter-intuitive, but Tirerack has a video showing how the rear tires are more important than the front to mainstain stability, even with fwd. I'm now at 70k miles with little sign of wear. The front edges are a barely showing some wear where the rear edges look pristine.

 

[Steverino]

I rotate every 7500 miles, keep the tires at 40-42 psi and I have more than half my tread depth left after about 48k miles (net after snow tire miles).

 

[Tim S FL]

Hello After checking Google one site says tire rotation can (not will) extend tire life by about 30%. This would be somewhat consistant with the calc I did in the earlier post about buying 6 tires instead of 4 over a period of 50,000 miles. 6-4=2, 2/6=33%. On the 2013 Volt I had for 45,000 miles I think i went thru two sets of tires (6 tires) in 45,000 miles. So this is where the 6 tires came from in the calc. And I had to put 4 cheap ones on just before handing the car in.
I would think that driving style is probally the most predominate factor. Maybe the 40-42 psi air pressure being the next largest factor. Just a estimated guess as I did not readilly find a official report. This assume good tire alignment, which would be the most predominate factor if it was out.
Some of this may go back to before radials when poly tires sometimes where rated for only 15-25K. And cars did not used to hold thier alignment as good as the new cars. And brakes wear alot more evenly and last longer also.
BMW is part of the European attitude that says do not rotate.
Thanks for the feedback

 

[Joe67]

Not really. What is so different about a Volt that would require more frequent rotations?

2012 Premium - Red

 

[Dutch]

Sample of one here....
My OEM Goodyear assurance tires wore hard at the shoulders, and were more prone to punctures than anything else I've ever owned. At 27k they were completely toast and all had patches from punctures.

The new Continentals I've got on it are great and showing just about no wear at roughly 8k miles.

I really think it's the tires, not the car.

 

[caronjeff]

This is a much discussed subject, here's the bottom line. The Volt is a heavy car. The OEM Goodyears are a narrow tread width tire, a bit less than 7". Those of us who live with super fun curvy roads, let's face it the Volt handles like a dream, we wear out the fronts fast. Those of us who live in more urban areas with flat roads and much stop and go may get twice the tread life. If you can't or don't want to save $ by doing rotations yourself, then don't and go with the buy 2 tires at a time method. Have the tire store put the new pair on the back, move the old backs to the front, trash the old fronts. Plan on buying 2 about every 20-25 thousand miles.

 

[hiperco]

I used to rotate tires but with modern ones it's a waste, especially considering I don't have a spare to do it on the volt.

I've found it's much cheaper to rotate tires once the fronts need replacement I can also get the newest tech onto the car qwuicker doing it this way.

My volt has 39k on the OEMs and never rotated, they are wearing fine.

Having tires with mismatched tread depth can make handling unpredictable, especially in winter conditions. Thus another benefit to tire rotation.

 

[rmay635703]

Having tires with mismatched tread depth can make handling unpredictable, especially in winter conditions. Thus another benefit to tire rotation.

Not at all, less tread on the front worn even is very predictable, if I had less tread on the rear I personally know how to deal with the rear ended flying out but I doubt the average driver could.

Worn tread on the front only is more safe from a handling perspective than having it worn all the way around, I prefer my rear to stay planted and not slide out.

 

[Joe67]

Sample of one here....
My OEM Goodyear assurance tires wore hard at the shoulders, and were more prone to punctures than anything else I've ever owned. At 27k they were completely toast and all had patches from punctures.

The new Continentals I've got on it are great and showing just about no wear at roughly 8k miles.

I really think it's the tires, not the car.

Over 20K on Assurance tires here and never a puncture and very good wear after one year while keeping them rotated pretty close to 'on schedule'. It's more about how one drives and what is on the roads they drive on really.