Searched, and also never seen this talked about.

How do you rotate the tires??
With low annual mileage, do we need to?

What do you do?

IIRC Bill, it's every 5K miles (or 8K), & do same side front to back rotation for directional tread radials - not the "X" LF to RR & RF to LR & LR & RR forward - otherwise for non-directional treads you can do either. I think they show it in your owners manual too, or use the ones in the nailed threads on here.


Tom
///////

Every year or 10k miles

But 914 is not like other cars that will wear front tires like crazy

So on time rotations are not as critical but still will never the less prolong tire life .


Since the 914 is so agile and depends so much on pushing the tires to there limits of adhesion

I always keep a close eye on psi , dry rot , wear pattern , and sidewall health

And want to get a in car tire pressure monitor

I have a feeling that Bill is asking if it's worth doing for the couple thousand miles a year - if that, that our cars are driven. For most classic car owners, tires age out long before they wear out.
My stock '71 is so light, the tires look new after 4K.

Mine wear quickly (r comps, year round, ax use) so when I have wheels off to inspect other things, I sometimes move them front to rear or left to right, depending on wear.

For a limited use street car on street tires, as mentioned about, they often will "time" out vs wear out so rotating isn't always needed.

JD's Alignment in Huntington Beach recommended rotation every 3K miles, which is about a year for me; easy to remember cause thats my oil change milage too.
Fronts to backs only
Found it a good time to clean up the wheel well, calipers and do a quick brake bleed.

Nope... even if they are not directional radials should never be done in the X pattern.
Front to back, but they always stay same side.

Doing the x pattern is for bias ply tires only. The 914 owners manual was made when bias ply were the most common tires available.

Both questions answered. Front to back and yearly sounds right even with low mileage.

I've heard that about only rotating radials front to back and I've also heard it is a myth from when radials were new technology and the belts were not bonded to the rest of the tire as well as they are today.
I can not find any current information saying not to swap sides with radials. The closest I found was a tirerack faq that said not to rotate studded tires side to side but did not explain why.

All of the manuals for new cars I've bought (came with radials and were either rear wheel or 4WD) recommend the rearward cross rotation pattern.

Same with mine..

Most tire manufacturers recommend 6~8k miles. If the tire shop says 3k, I think they're just trying to rip people off

The issue about only rotating front-to-back with radials came about because of the crown and camber (or slope) on most roadways. Tires adapt and wear with the angle of the slope towards the shoulder.

Click to view attachment

https://ridermagazine.com/2018/04/30/how-cr...cycle-handling/


The radial belts inside the tires stretch and conform to the slope angle, and moving the tire(s) to the other side would reverse the stretching, causing tread separation from the sidewall. It's happened to me before, with tires that still had plenty of tread left.

Yup...

The only time I can think of where you don’t do a rotation every 5K miles is staggered directional tires.