I have a question about tire rotation. Keep in mind that I live in Pittsburgh, where the up and down hills make tire and brake life rough. Anyway, that being said, I was out with my friend who has a 2 year old BMW X5 SUV that he bot new. It now has just shy of 30,000 miles on it and the only maintenance he has ever done is that he changed the oil once..he'll change it again at 30K. Apparently BMW has an extended oil life thing. I noticed that the front tires are about bald but the rears are much much better.
Anyway, I am not suggesting that we don't change oil on our Explorers for
15, 000 miles. But, I am wondering about tire rotation. Somewhere I read something interesting. The guy stated that he NEVER rotates tires. What he does is let the two front tires wear out first. He then buys 1 tire to match the spare and installs those two on the front, using one of the worn tires as a spare. Bottom line is that he gets almost 50,000 miles only buying one tire. This makes sense to me. I rotated tires at 5000 mile intervals for years and, in the end, don't seem to get much extension of tire life because of it.I am just wondering if rotating tires isn't, perhaps, overmaintenance, especially in Pittsburgh, where tires get beaten no matter WHAT you do.
Daryll40