Out of sight - out of mind. Unfortunately this is the approach many people have to regular maintenance on their car. They forget to do the little things that will protect their automotive investment - and their lives and the lives of their passengers and others - until something breaks. One of the easiest and least expensive regular maintenance items that should be on you "Tick List" is the regular inspection and rotation of your tires.
Rotation means you are changing where the individual tires are mounted on the vehicle. Let's assume you have a front-drive car with all four tires the same size. Each tire will carry a different load and be faced with different situations. The front tires will carry over 60 percent of the car's weight. They are also responsible for putting the power of the engine to the road, and for all the steering. Finally, they are responsible for about 80 percent of the braking. A typical schedule would be to rotate your tires every 5,000 miles.
Even if a car is perfectly aligned you will still have uneven tire wear due to "scuffing" on turns. It will be more pronounced on the front tires but happens on the rears too and doesn't happen evenly on all tires. Rotating the tires gives us longer tire life by distributing this wear over all the tires in turn.
Most cars are much heavier in the front than the rear so the front tires operate under more stress from both the weight and the resulting braking load. Rotating distributes this load across all tires too.
Finally what I consider the most important reason to rotate tire is that it gives you a chance to look at the brakes and suspension. If we just waited until the tires wore out it could be 50,000 miles between times we looked at our brakes. That can lead to some expensive and dangerous problems.
John J Miller Jr. - ASE Certified - Founder of Freedom Automotive Services
Host of The Car Councelor Radio Show - http://www.thecarcounselor.com - http://www.freedomauto.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_J_Miller_Jr
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