Being a self-professed novice to all of this, but definitely wanting to get my hands dirty (and save myself some bucks towards bigger better things in the process), I thought I'd try rotating my own tires (along with an oil and plug/wire change). I did a search through the archives and came up with nothing. So my assumption is that this is such a basic thing that it's not even worth putting down on paper (or its digital equivalent). Any recommendations as to where I can find some basic info like this?

Another related thing: if you rotate do you have to align?

thanks and pardon my new member smell....

woodix

>Being a self-professed novice to all of this, but definitely
>wanting to get my hands dirty (and save myself some bucks
>towards bigger better things in the process), I thought I'd
>try rotating my own tires (along with an oil and plug/wire
>change). I did a search through the archives and came up
>with nothing. So my assumption is that this is such a basic
>thing that it's not even worth putting down on paper (or its
>digital equivalent). Any recommendations as to where I can
>find some basic info like this?

Well, I think the info is actually in ur manual. It depends what tires u have. There are tires that are unidirectional, and tires that are multidirectional. In layman's terms, multidirectional means that no matter which way the tire is rotating, it would be fine, compared to unidirectional, which can only be rotated in one direction, due to the thread pattern. Some thread patterns are designed to spin only one way, so as to maximize the thread effect, like displacing water. Also, unidirectional tires are marked with an arrow pointing which way it should be rotating, so u'd figure that out easily. Anyway, back to ur original question. Rotating tires is just that, exchanging the position of the front and rear tires. For multidirectional tires, do it in a cross pattern, ie front right replaces rear left and vice versa. If u have unidirectional tires, just move the front to the rear and vice versa. This is so u wear out ur tires evenly.
>
>Another related thing: if you rotate do you have to align?

Nope. Doing an alignment is only required when u lower ur car. This causes u to have bad camber and toe, resulting in easily worn out tires. Well, if ur really paranoid and u haven't had an alignment in awhile, it wouldn't hurt.
>
>thanks and pardon my new member smell....

No problem! Everyone's been through this, especially me!!! I'm what u'd call a real dumbass with cars. Welcome to the board, and if u have any more questions, don't be afraid to ask. And also check the "things we've seen before" forum to check for things also frequently asked. Good luck with modding ur car! :-)
>
>woodix

just take the front wheels and put em on the back and back in the front. No biggie it just to evenly distubute tire wear.

It's ok to get a wheel alignment once in a while. You don't only get it if you lowered. Sometimes you hit a bump too hard or maybe hit some curb or somethign you'll alignment will get off and you'll need to get it aligned. If you let go of the wheel while driving straight and it pull to the left or right automatically you alignment is off. Of if you wanna go straight and have to turn the wheel away from center the alignement is off.

a properly aligned DSM with a grandma driver could get 60k out of good new tires. alignment is very easy to knock out of whack. specially in sprorts cars with less room for error due to tighter gemometry. the most common form of wear is call toe wear. this has nothing to do with being lowered. it's the direction the wheels are point off center. e.g. if your looking at the right front wheel. and the left side was out and the right side was in it would be toed in. vise versa toed out. this wears tires out worse because the tires scrub the ground instead of rolling smoothly.

proper rotation procedure is drive wheels change axles but stay on same side. non drive flip sides and change axles. so on FWD the front go straight back, the rears get flipped and put on the front. now there's exceptions. if you have directional tires they have to stay on the same side of the car or else they will be rolling backwards. directional tires have arrows on the sidewalls. so make sure the arrows point forward if your tire is directional.

tires are supposed to be flipped to counter any camber wear you may have going on. in reality it doesn't make a huge difference but it's proper procedure.

hope my version was easy to read. dont worry about being a n00b. some of the best looking cars are owned by n00bs.