New tyres back or fronts ?

The rearmost, of course - we're all doomed if they go anywhere else!

Duncan Wood ("Duncan Wood" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

To cornering.

I expect them to put the pair with the strongest traction, on wet and on dry land, at the rearmost and rotate them with the rest strictly according to schedule as per manufacturer's recommendation.

That's a bit of a worry if you've got the best tyres on the front. Because the first time it grabs you, you're very unlikely to be able to bring it under control.

Understeer control is fairly intuitive - just steer more in the diection you want to go and/or back off the throttle. But both of these responses can very quickly take oversteer past the point of no return.

And as Tim rightly says, an oversteer crash is more likely to hurt.

John

Erm, beg to differ. If you're understeering to the point that you've actually *lost* grip at the front you need to wind lock back off to pick it up again.

Yes, but that level of sophistication requires practice.

I'm all for advanced driver training, or "self-teaching" somewhere slippery but safe - exploring what happens at the limits of traction. I simply want to make the point that the natural reactions of an average driver are much more likely to successfully get understeer under control than oversteer.

John

Nope, left-foot braking works for me :-)

Chris

No, I asked for evidence to back up your argument and you haven't given any. In fact, you've provided almost zero evidence to back up any claims you've made in this thread - just vagueness like..when I drove an anonymous car in a bad way it understeered regardless! Very convincing.

Obviously you can't read (which explains rather a lot). Here..

"I know of no *recent mainstream* car to have this. What ones are you thinking of?" was asked of you, by me, on 15/4/2008 at 09:41 and wasn't answered even though I subsequently pointed out that you weren't answering these questions.

Yet again you are letting yourself down and publicly identifying yourself as an idiot. Feel free to carry on.

Zathras (Zathras ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Are you talking to yourself again?

Can you identify where the OP said he had a *recent mainstream* car? More to the point, can you identfy where you said that your pontification applied only to a *recent mainstream* car?

I am quite convinced that it doesn't apply to my car, it doesn't apply to Adrian's car and it doesn't apply to Ian's car. And any tyre manufacturer who says otherwise is talking out of his valve aperture.

Now, go move your goalposts again - to somwhere the sun don't shine, preferably.

Which manufacturer? The car or the tyre?

And I've never seen a tyre rotation schedule in the UK from any manufacturer.

Well, perhaps my 'great expectations' are too grand!

My RX-7 (1988) told you to rotate the tyres in the owner's handbook, I think both left to right and front to back at some interval or other. I didn't bother.

Some cars don't even need the castors as was shown on a Top Gear (the stretch limo one I think).

As has been covered they go on the back.

So few people bother to do tyre rotation. It helps to ensure that you don't wind up with old rock hard tyres on the back.

Spreads the cost of tyres as you only buy 2 at a time so you don't get hit with a big bill for 4 in one go. (Most tyre deals are on pairs and not sets of 4, a set of 4 is just 2 pairs)

As others have stated newer rubber with more tread gives better grip than the old part worn tyres.

A rear wheel skid is more difficult to control as the rear wheels are not steered so can't be aligned with direction of motion to restore grip. If the skid is due to tyres then there is no possibility of recovery. Liftoff oversteer or powerslide will be a full spin unless the rear tyres have enough grip. Front skid, you steer into the skid, this stops them sliding sideways and restores normal rotational grip.

All cars with different front/rear tyres are RWD and have a price tag that suggests the owner can afford a new set of 4 everytime.

Peter Hill (Peter Hill ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

No, they aren't.

They're not all expensive, 23550 gets you an Elise.

If you need to rotate the tyres, something is probably wrong with the tracking.

Bullshit.