Possibly a stupid tyre question

[Nuclear Chicken]

quite right, a typo. 694s it is.

Fifth gear did a recent test and demonstrated that on pretty much any car the best way to change tyres was to always put the best tyre on the rear, front or rear wheel drive. And they demonstrated this rather convincingly on a wet track etc etc. the theory is that when braking, as weight is substantially on the front of the car, ABS and traction control system tend to take over and, as most of the bias is to the front, it tends to take the lead in what's going on. If good tyres are on the front, with a decent amount of grip, the traction control will allow accordingly. However, by this time the rears could be braking free and starting to oversteer. Having the least grippy tyres on the front gives the reverse effect in that the traction control will allow for the crap tyres up front and hopefully the rears will still be well within grip tolerance. Sounds abit but haviing seen it demonstrated in a French heap, a Clio I think, it was very obvious how true it is. Having said that, most people will stick the new ones on the front on a front wheel drive car. Not sure what the effect would be in a non-ABS car though?

 

[Rob]

I would just like to add one more point about tyre wear front vs rear. I put my older more worn tyres on the back and the newer ones on the front when I went to Mongolia (BFG AT). In Mongolia the rear tyres were wearing much faster than the front tyres and they were really badly cut up and the fronts were like new after 1000km on gravel roads Rotated them and the newer ones on the back now started to wear in the same way... Back home my fronts were clearly wearing faster than the rears...

 

[Gary Stockton]

That's that weight factor coming in - you possibly had the rear axle weight at maximum - and the tyre load rating at max as well

 

[Rob]

Might be, but the axle is rated at over 1900kg and the tyres are rated at 1500kg each.

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Might be worth checking your rear axle control arm bush's and rear wheel bearings Rob in case the rear axle is not tracking correctly now.

 

[Rob]

Of course, at speed when I lift off the rear end sort of shifts over to one side and the other way if I apply power, was going to replace all the bushes on the rear as they look pretty worn. I did not think that the 2 could be related.

Rear bearings as well... might be time to finally have a look at them, maybe in a year or two...