We dont normally rotate the spare tire in tire rotations at my Firestone
shop for a few reasons.
-Most cars have the donut tire
-If it isn't the donut and the vehicle has alloy wheels, the spare
usually is not on a alloy wheel and would have to be demounted,
remounted, and balanced on an alloy, and that tire done the same back
onto the spare rim.
-Most trucks come with some sort of "styled steel" rim or an alloy and
few and far between does the spare rim match the other rims, just as in
the cars mentioned above.
If you have matching wheels, tell your Firestone manager that and
request a 5 tire rotation.
5 tire rotations were popular pre 80's because everything had steel
wheels, and not as many cars had the "space saver" spare tire option.
By the way, when radials 1st came out, it was not recommended to cross
rotate them and spin the tire in the reverse direction. This was in
part due to the difficulty of trying to get the rubber to stick to the
steel belts in the tire. Many tires were flying apart back then. Of
course, the first mass market steel belted radial, the Firestone 500,
had its problem, it was redesigned. The steel belts were brass/copper
plated and that solved the problem of rubber adhesion. All the other
manufacturers followed suit, but we got the rap of a junk tire because
ours was the first....
Today, the normal rotation pattern is to cross the tires not on the
drive axle as they move to the drive axle, and move straight up or back
the drive axle tires.
Patrick
Firestone, Baltimore MD
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:08:35 EDT