New Tires on Rear

Today I went to Firestone for an alignment and to have my "new" spare mounted, and while I was waiting I read a poster they have that said when you buy two new tires you should put them on the rear of the vehicle. I always thought the opposite...

[URL]https://www.tirerack.com/wheels/tech/techpage.jsp?techid=52[/URL]
[SIZE=4]
"[COLOR=#19170D][FONT=aleoregular]Intuition suggests that since the front tires wore out first and because there is still about half of the tread remaining on the rear tires, the new tires should be installed on the front axle. This will provide more wet and wintry traction; and by the time the front tires have worn out for the second time, the rear tires will be worn out, too. However, in this case, intuition isn't right...and following it can be downright dangerous." [/FONT][/COLOR][/SIZE]

While moving forward, if the front has better traction than the rear, the rear may try to pass the front.

You've experienced it. When going around a corner in the snow- FWD you pull the hand brake to make the rear lose traction, RWD you stab the throttle to make the rear lose traction. And the fun ensues.

Now imagine you've got the good tires on the front and bald tires in the back, it's snowing and you're driving a FWD car. You can accelerate great because those good front tires. But now you need to come to a quick stop. The road is straight, but it's got the usual camber in it to help water drain to the sides. You're hard on the brakes, back end locks up and steps out to the right due to the camber. Now you're no longer tracking straight and you hit the vehicle in front of you, and not with your crumple zone in front of you.

If the good tires are in the back, you can't accelerate or even brake very well in the snow- but at least you'll track straight into whatever you're going to hit.

It's best to have good tires at all 4 corners.

I think best tires go on front they also wear faster so the that could even out the wear

Just curious. You were at a tire shop. Why didn't you ask them?

Good questionn. I do not trust their opinions because I do not trust them in general. I bought the lifetime alignment for Firestone and they are the ones near me, but a while back my wife had tires from there and during a warranty service they scared the hell out of her with an estimate for almost $900.00 worth of tires, brakes, belts, hoses etc... on a vehicle with 37,000 miles. If you read their yelp reviews it's their practice, and just for example below are pics of paperwork I got from them about my "System Failure" problem with my serpentine belt and pics of the belt. The clown behind the counter was telling me how it was dangerously cracked and we should absolutely do it right now, not safe to drive on it. Same crap they pulled on my wife years ago, I don't buy anything there, they're dishonest.

I maintain my Jeep in the most anal fashion, and every spring I put on a new belt and put the current one as spare. The current belt has about 500 miles on it.

I think their motto is.
there is a sucker born every minute.
eventually someone will bite

[QUOTE=Paul;314355][/QUOTE]

I understand your pain and frustration. Guess I've been lucky over the last few years to find a shop that I trust and if they tell me it needs to be done I trust them. I just moved here to the Denver area and will be looking for a shop that I can trust in the Littleton area in the future.

But here a story about earning my trust. My 16 year old son took my Explorer out for some fun. Went through some pretty good mud. As he should he took it to the wash rack and cleaned it up. A few days later, he had it on the freeway and it picked up a pretty good front end vibration. Brought it home and I took it out and sure enough, felt like the front end was out of alignment. Figured he might have banged it pretty good on in the desert terrain. Being the Dad that I am (love to teach lessons) I sent him down to my local tire guy and told him he needed to get it fixed. Not that he would pay for it but it was his time waiting and such.

Well the guys at the shop took it out for a test drive and agreed that the front end was out of alignment or at least out of balance. So they took it into the shop and what did the find but mud dried hard on the inside of the rims of the front tires. I mean rock hard. Now a less than reputable shop could have screw him and me over buy cleaning it up, checking the balance and charging us.

But no, they brought him out to the bay, gave him a hammer and a screw driver and showed him what to do to clean it out. Then sent him back over to the wash rack to finish cleaning up with a power wash.

No Charge and a lesson learned.

As long as I lived in SoCal, they had earned my business.

for a chuckle: I needed a muffler installed onto the jeep (welded) so I went to a local muffler shop. I drove the jeep in so they could see it and went to schedule the work. They had a repair time frame (I would be a waiting room customer) of 1.75 hours!?!? Why so long for an easy muffler only replace? Oh, we evaluate the vehicle for you - checking fluids, brake condition, belts, etc. I chuckled and said "It's a trail jeep - you'll have a mile-long list that I already know about - muffler ONLY please." Oh. OK, it'll be 20 minutes then.

It's all crap and designed to suck money out of you. Serp belts last 50-100k depending on material and environment. In Colorado with our dry climate you might switch that to 35-70k. Tires positioning? What they don't tell you about is the bump steer wear. That's how you wear the outer edges of your front tires before the inner edges. Some manufacturers like Audi have a adjustment just for this on the higher end models. When your in a panic stop and you steer to avoid someone the outer edge of your tire is what will give you the direction you need. Most modern vehicles have ABS, ESP and some type of ASR all of which combine to keep your tires turning during a panic stop and keep you in control. If you don't have tread in the front then you don't have control. Especially with ASR as it is designed to operate with your steering input.

New tires on rear is BS IMHO... I understand their logic though:

Old tires on front will wear out and then they can sell you 2 (or 4 matching) later

If my sister (bad driver) is turning on ice and spins out from bad tires on rear, she might sue the tire store. If she has to panic stop and the good tires are on the rear were they don't do the most good, she hits the car in front of her it's her fault for going too fast, not the tire store... I can slow down for a turn but can't always anticipate a panic stop.

I cut a tire on my Ranger, had to buy two new ones and they wanted to put them on back... I argued and finally they made me sign a waiver to put them on front. (Discount tire) They've almost worn down equal to the rears so I can start rotating them again.

interesting...

[video=youtube;oa9hzcjdi5Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa9hzcjdi5Q[/video]

[video=youtube;cLGFAZ7EFh4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGFAZ7EFh4[/video]

[QUOTE=Paul;314403]interesting...

[video=youtube;oa9hzcjdi5Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa9hzcjdi5Q[/video][/quote]

before I started playing in the dirt, I spent several years playing in parking lots and road courses driving FWD cars faster than most people dared. FWD cars are known to understeer more than RWD cars because you can't use the throttle to induce oversteer. So when setting a FWD car up for competitive driving, I would do things to the rear to cause it to understeer less and sometimes even oversteer. I'd do that by taking traction away from the rear. I'd set the rear alignment to zero toe or even a dash of toe out. Street cars have rear toe in to promote high speed straight line stability. And at an event, I'd air up the rear tires to reduce their contact patch giving them even less traction. The result was a very nervous car. If I could keep the slip angle to a minimum, I would be very fast. If I couldn't keep the rear under control, I'd spin out or spend too much time chasing the rear to put down a fast time.

[QUOTE=Paul;314403]
[video=youtube;cLGFAZ7EFh4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGFAZ7EFh4[/video][/QUOTE]

this guy even admits to having faulty test variables. In a straight line on a flat surface like this parking lot, new tires on the front all day long. But unless you live in Florida, streets have camber to them.

The only thing I agree with him on is 4 new tires are best.

The rain video is useless. How bald were the old tires? How fast did they go in both tests? She had to coach him to drive way faster than he felt comfortable driviing in the second test. Of course if you're going to drive on 2" of standing water and go way too fast maybe having the best tires on the rear is best. Do the same test in a panic stop on dry pavement, 5 feet of stopping distance can mean the difference between "aw shoot" and a crash.

I meant it's interesting that the first video comes to the conclusion that the rear is best, and the second video comes to the conclusion that the front is best. It seems that with new tires up front you can steer better and MAYBE avoid a braking situation. If you are in the braking situation, better on rear. If you live at the bottom of a hill, better on front. If you live in a blah blah... I'd say the only correct answer can come from Magic 8 Ball, since you'd have to know what situation you're going to be in to decide.