Worth Paying for one more rotation?

Good luck on a stagger-shod BMW.

 

....and let's not forget, turning involves a "stopping" vector...now the
question becomes, are Honda owners screwing themselves on THAT basis if
they make the car turn BETTER?

'Cuz, Honda designs serious understeer into their cars, on the basis
that it's better than having the car oversteer. I'm not saying that any
Honda will oversteer necessarily, but people are used to Hondas
scrubbing their front tires toward the guardrail as they take that
cloverleaf too fast. Better grip does change that behavior to some
extent...

(I presume the S2000 is the exception to this rule--I presume one can
kick the tail out pretty easily?)

 

it does indeed. i have a set of michelin pilots on one civic and
standard tires on another. the pilots definitely push that thing around
the bends better.

but i don't think "screwing" is the right way to look at it. all you
get si slightly less understeer, you don't eliminate it by any means.

that's something i'll never be able to try unfortunately - too tall and
simply cannot fit behind the wheel.

 

i don't think you're reacting enough. rotation is an anachronistic
dogma left over from the days of bias ply - just like 3k mile oil changes.

 

Beg to differ sir.

ABS is great but you still need driver skill and competence to control the
car in an emergency braking situation. During the winter, there is at least
one news story about drivers in emergency situations, loosing control and
finding ditches alongside the road.

"jim beam" wrote in message

b.s. bmw's break if you actually /do/ drive them hard. ask my buddy
with the m3 and three new subframes.

the factor common to all drivers, irrespective of "inexperience" or
"incompetence" is emergency braking. and with abs control, driver
competence is simply not a factor.

 

That's because no amount of control can change the physics of "you were
going way too fast for conditions".

That Jackass guy got burned to a toasty crisp because you can't make a
sudden 45 degree turn even in a Porsche when it's going 110mph, I don't
care what the ABS says.

Turning means stopping, and if stopping is limited, so is turning--and
if you're going WAY too fast on the slick stuff, you may be turning at
the limits of your adhesion to the road--but if the forward vector is
WAY longer than the sideways vector, you're going to end up in the ditch.

AWD, 4WD--no, morons, it doesn't mean you can stop/turn any better than
anyone else.

 

ass posting is a real pain in the top - please don't.


as elmo says, abs can't help you outperform available traction. but it
can help my grandmother effectively /stop/ standing on the brake long
after she's starting to slide and thus retain some chance of control.

why the government sees fit to save the incapable from themselves with
things like abs is something you need to take up with your
representatives [but if you actually want to be heard, be prepared to
hand over the same or more then the oilco lobbyists who encourage
anything that adds to a vehicles weight and/or fuel consumption].

 

Mr. Beam, my posts are on the top when I reply, don't know what the
newsgroup does after. Guess I don't post enough to be an expert like you
are. Oh well, we all can't be experts.


ass posting is a real pain in the top - please don't.


as elmo says, abs can't help you outperform available traction. but it
can help my grandmother effectively /stop/ standing on the brake long
after she's starting to slide and thus retain some chance of control.

why the government sees fit to save the incapable from themselves with
things like abs is something you need to take up with your
representatives [but if you actually want to be heard, be prepared to
hand over the same or more then the oilco lobbyists who encourage
anything that adds to a vehicles weight and/or fuel consumption].

 

The "group" does nothing to your post. Top- or bottom-posting is
established by the poster.

If you want to scold people on how to post, you should at least learn how
to separate quoted text from your reply. Without some sort of separation,
it's difficult to know where your reply ends and the quoted text begins.

And, as a Usenetter since about 1999, I can tell you that Usenet is
traditionally a bottom-posting milieu.

 

This thread raises some questions in my mind:

1. About how many miles might it take a 'rotated' tire wear off its
high spots and regain full contact? I imagine it would be about the
same as the miles it takes a brand new tire to achieve full contact?

2. If you paid $20. to have the tires rotated every 10,000 miles, you
would have invested $100. by 50,000 miles (about the price of a new
tire). Is is reasonable to expect rotations to extend the life of a set
of tires by 25%? I agree with beam's point about averaging the wear,
and even increasing it by having to wear off the high spots each time.
Of course many posters on this group do it themselves so only their time
is involved, but many others probably pay $40. or more for a rotation,
and many do 5,000 or 7,500 miles intervals.

3. How does front to back rotation vs cross rotation affect the
"contact" discussion?

4. I usually find that I don't like the feel of a car after rotation,
but I like to buy my tires 4 at a time rather than 2 at a time, which is
often what happens if you never rotate. What works for me is rotate
only once when the most worn tire appears to be at 50% and I do it front
to back (no cross).

 

it's more because it has to wear back to flat, then go past that to the
new profile.

if you really want to rotate, the "least negative" impact you can have
is to keep each rubber block comparatively flat, like a new tire. but
to keep that, you'll have to rotate every few hundred miles.

depends on the car. some vehicles are fundamentally awful, and no
amount of alignment or realignment seems to help them. in that case, i
doubt rotation has any serious negative effects. but for a good vehicle
with 4-wheel independent suspension, particularly those with multi-link
rears, the front/rear wear patterns are completely different, thus the
contact patches are completely different and rotation can have a
substantial negative effect.

we've been discussing the reason for that! it's worst when crossing
side to side.

i'm a fwd guy with same size front/rear, so i replace by axle - my
fronts always go first. when i replace them, the new ones always go on
the rear. then i'll brutalize the tires for a bit to make sure the
"new" fronts wear in as quickly as possible to restore maximum braking
again.

 

Ah--every oil change, then.

;-)

....thus preserving the understeer characteristics designed into the car.