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Ah that's why it makes sense to put them on the back in a RWD as well then.
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New tyres on the back end.
Always.
(unless they are diff size on the front and back)
understeer is easier to recover than oversteer.
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A forum search brings up some prtevious discussion on this. Bill Payer seems the man to ask.
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=55...8
The search also brings up a locked thread but which I would assume Pologirl and Pugugly can read.
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=55...6
Apparently, Avant and Pugugly are both wrong according to Michelin and Costco.
www.michelin.co.uk/uk/auto/auto_cons_bib_pqr_neuf....p
Whether you have front or rear wheel drive, we recommend that you use newer tyres for the rear set, for extra safety in unforeseen or difficult situations (emergency braking, tight bends etc) particularly on wet surfaces.
Edited by jbif on 25/11/2007 at 17:50
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I stand corrected if that's the expert advice. I would have thought that it depends on whether a car is more prone to understeer or oversteer - but I'm sure they know what they're talking about!
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Its getting like food and uv and most other things it changes like the seasons, depending on which lettered expert you are listening to.
Many years ago when i was a tyre boy we had to fit new tyres to the front.
My own point of view i always put new tyres where they do the most work, front for FWD, rear for RWD.
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New tyres on the front will give much better retardation than worn ones under emergency braking in the wet.
It seems that it has been determined that the average driver can't be trusted with any oversteer at all under any circumstances, and this new tyre dogma is in rather insulting furtherance of an unstated policy to give us understeer whether we like it or not.
I wasn't convinced at all by the VBH film. Indeed I think she unstuck the back end of the car on purpose with the handbrake. Patronising twaddle.
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The basic balance of all cars is understeer, even BMWs and those beetle coupe things with the engine in the back. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be enough breakdown trucks to recover the wreckage. Likewise just about any car can be made to spin if deliberately misused. It's when the underteer rapidly changes to oversteer that the trouble starts, and this is more likely to happen on a wet surface if the backs lose the battle to shift the water before the fronts.
Notwithstanding that I always used to put new tyres on the driving wheels, especially at this time of year, and never got myself into trouble, I suspect Nanny's advice is well founded in this case.
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Think I'll go with the evidence of the VBH video which was pretty convincing - at least you can feel when the grip is being lost when the worn ones are on the front thus being able to slow down - no chance if on the rear, I've always stuck the new ones on the rear and will continue to do so......
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New ones on the front.........
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Its getting like food and uv and most other things it changes like the seasons, depending on which lettered expert you are listening to.
Hello Gordonbennet.
That view is fine, particularly if you are relying on the tabloids for your "expert" sources.
However, her you have a tyre manufacturer stating their recommendations in the full knowledge that if they get it wrong, they are putting the reputation of the tyre and the company at risk. If Michelin got it wrong and someone lost their life as result, the Company would have much more to lose in a negligence and/or HSE prosecution.
Tyres and Brakes - two things you do not rely on anecdotal evidence to make your decisions.
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new tyres on the rear always. Reason being that unersteer is easier to control, and less dangerous than oversteer.
(tho it has to be said I dont care one or the other and change whatever axle set is worn out)
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< Ulla>
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I'd agree that understeer is easier to control. You sit there as a passenger until it goes away. With oversteer you have some chance to take control. But then I was brought up on rear wheel drive cars with poor, by modern standards, grip, and cold winters with snow, so inevitably you learnt what to do when the car got away from you at 5 mph one frosty morning and you applied the lesssons learnt on other occasions should they arise.
That said I can't remember ever losing either end of a techmobile thank goodness. Skid training - essential.
JH
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Exactly JH, Morris 1000s and frozen roads under overpasses, learnt my trade there....
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Exactly JH Morris 1000s and frozen roads under overpasses learnt my trade there....>>
Same here with a Morris 1000 (first car). In fact in the winter I used to deliberately provoke skids on a particular quiet stretch of road in winter for practice purposes, although the Morris was absurdly easy to quickly get under control.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Its likely `safety` of the car dynamics illiterate masses that has to come first in fear of law suits, regarding fitting new tyres on the rear of front wheel drive cars.
I can remember just managing to struggle up hills in decades gone by in heavy snow.
That leads me from experience to want new treads on the driven wheels, front in most cases now.
Of course if the car with new treads on the rear can`t make it, up that hill,its drivers still `safe` unless in a really remote area.
I see new treads on the rear as catering for a dumbing down of driving skills.....
( I tend to fit all 4 new most of the time though if one end is more than half worn)
Regards ;)
Edited by oilrag on 25/11/2007 at 19:03
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Let's do a straw pole then:
I do it wrong
Number of times I've lost the rear end: Nil
Do I think this is a pointless discussion: Yes
Any other views?
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Its not pointless, its interesting exploring peoples views ( as on any other topic) ;)
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For the second time today I'll ask "I bet you're glad you asked ?"
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"I tend to fit all 4 new most of the time though if one end is more than half worn"
I mean`t the *other* end
Sorry for the slip up ;)
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I tend to fit new tyres to wherever seems appropriate at the time and depending on who's car it is. This is on a diy (family) basis and not a trader type basis.
Other than that on my own cars I rotate the tyres round so that they all wear evenly and get replaced as a set of four. And whilst we are on the subject I wear them down to the legal limit and get the maximum use out of them.
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Respect the mfrs advice and the VBH (wow!!) video but I very doubt it makes much difference to average user/average car. Cannot see the circs where either SWMBO or myself get the Berlingo in an oversteer situation yet the new extra few mil of tread on the rear tyre will save us. Suspect a policy driven by insurers after the actions of a few nuttersin high perf cars.
Having said that did get the recent new tyres fitted at the rear (and was charged extra for the privilege) but only because, like the BX, the Berlingo wears its rears so slowly tha they risk structural failure while still having legal tread remaining.
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New tyres on the rear for front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive - it's long been the advice of the tyre industry and road safety organisations, based on the need for most drivers to avoid terminal oversteer. Those with an ability approaching that of the late Ayrton Senna, shouldn't be driving like that on public roads.
All-wheel drive need all four replaced at the same time to avoid radius differences which wears centre differentials.
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First point of call is the owners manual. My A3 manual states new tyres should always go on the front. All this understeer oversteer is fine if you drive on the edge - something I am not prone to do.
With 2.5mm on the front my last A3 gave some "interesting" driving experiences on wet roundabouts. I changed them and the new Vredesteins fitted on the front cured this.
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what difference should it make whether you put the new ones on the front or back? as long as there all within the min tread limit they should be perfectly capable of keeping the car in a straight line , i imagine its driver error not tyre configurations that cause most accidents and loss of control!!
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That view is fine particularly if you are relying on the tabloids for your "expert" sources.
Which wont luckily apply to me i havent bought a paper for twenty years.
Its this one size fits all/ dumbing down to the lowest common denominator that niggles.
Dont know about the younger drivers but remember most of us learnt the ropes in vehicles with the handling of a tea trolley, and we can sense whether there is a lightening of the feel of either front or rear. Personally i'm much happier with a bit of oversteer at least its controllable.
Quite obviously you dont want new tyres fitted to the front of a RWD it would be pointless and possibly unstable, but its pretty much common sense which manufacturers patronisingly assume we no longer have...if that makes any sense.
Course with RWD youve got some decent control over the vehicle if oversteer occurs, not so easy with FWD.
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Course with RWD youve got some decent control over the vehicle if oversteer occurs, not so easy with FWD
ah yes, that's why I shouldn't have sold the BMW !
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ah yes that's why I shouldn't have sold the BMW !
>
You didnt have any trouble controlling a BM PU reaction time of two minutes to my little jibe.>
''Respec''
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>For the second time today I'll ask "I bet you're glad you asked ?"
Yep - and still none the wiser!
Think I'll just leave the Golf there, go for a coffee and let them do what they like to it!
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"Yep - and still none the wiser! "
What not even with my suggestion to RTFM!
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Just been out to check the Manual in the Golf - Nothing mentioned about this other than a suggestion to rotate the tyres to promote even wear. So I would suggest that that is opposite of what the Rear Wheel Brigade suggest is best practice, the rear tyres will wear slower than the front so by default VW suggest that tyres with less tread than the rears will migrate to the rear and vice versa.
I lost the will to live before I got as far as the Skoda. Thank goodness the Landie doesn't seem to care what tyre goes on which wheel.
Still it was far simpler with the BMWs. The tyres wore out at the back quicker than the front so it was that easy.
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 25/11/2007 at 22:43
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Irrespective of whether front or rear wheel drive, the best tyres should go on the rear.
There are some (poor) arguments against this;
1) I want the best rubber on the driving axle. OK, if you are expecting traction problems over winter, you'd probably be best with winter tyres all round anyway. If you fear wet braking problems, this must mean that the tread is getting to 4mm or below, and these tyres are getting near to needing to be changed anyway - above 4mm, the dependence on tread depth and wet grip isn't as strong.
2) The front wheels do the most work with both driving and steering - I want the best rubber there. Well, if your driving is so bad that you routinely are accelerating and steering near the limits of adhesion *at the same time*, then this problem isn't going to be afflicting you for too long. Over acceleration skids in a front wheel drive car are also the easiest of skids to cure - just lift off the throttle a bit!
3) There's lots of nonsense written about understeer and oversteer. *All* modern cars fundamentally understeer (manatee gets this point absolutely right). It's only when being driven badly (c.f. Clarkson) that a RWD brakes traction, and "oversteers", or when someone chickens out mid corner in an FWD car, and they get lift off oversteer. Under normal, steady state conditions, all modern cars understeer. The reason why best tyres to the rear is recommended is in essence exactly the same as saying that if you mix cross-plies and radials, the cross plies must go to the front - the avoidance of fundamental, inherent oversteer is vital - this is entirely different to provoked, or limit oversteer, which is driven by gross slip rather than by tyres operating and developing slip angles within their normal working regime.
Bluntly put, the best rubber should always go on to the rear axle.
Number_Cruncher
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The default thing to do is to put the new tyres on the back. Costco, for example, absolutely will only fit the new tyres on the back - no discussion, if you don't like it, then they won't do the job.
However, replacing our Jazz grippy original tyres with less grippy "Eco" tyres, I still felt the half worn original tyres on the back would be likely to be grippiest tyres so when I got the car home I swapped them around to put the new Eco tyres on the front and the orginals back on rear.
I had a row with VAG Maintenance, as they also replaced grippy tyres on daughter's Ibiza with Eco tyres - I felt the original tyres should have been replaced like for like or all four should have been replaced. They would have non of it, and both they and National Tyres, their contractor, seemed baffled by the suggestion the new tyres should go on the back.
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You raise an interesting point Bill, where you are changing tyre types, from grippy to ECO, from Summer to Winter tyres, then I think that the fit to the rear axle dictum may need to be modified, but, the over-riding logic remains the same, the best, grippiest tyres should go to the rear.
Number_Cruncher
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I didn't read the whole thread (sorry) but will share my experience with company vehicles (all with FWD):
1. They replace on the same axle so will put new on the front/rear depending on which worn. None have ever swapped wheels around
2. Once had lease company telling tyre fitter to replace only the punctured tyre despite the front being directional tread (so other tyre could not become spare)... no budging at all until I asked something like "so if there is an accident and it is proven that the different tyres on the axle being different may be the cause.... that the lease company would accept all responsibility". Within minutes authorisation came through. I also asked "you can assure it is totally safe to have partly worn tyre on one side with a new tyre and totally different tread on the other".
Because of 2. above I stuck with space saver spare on the next car. Current car has full size I think... but probably wrong ;-)
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New tyres on the driven wheels everytime for me, regardless of what the so called experts suggest. As I've only ever owned front wheel drive cars, new ones always on the front. Even when it's the rear ones that have worn down and require changing. ie, the part worn fronts get donated to the back.
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Well I'd have a real job on to put new front tyres on the back of my car, so I'll guess I'll put up with my car becoming a death trap when it needs new front tyres?
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>>so called experts
You mean like the people who make the tyres DD?
Number_Cruncher
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You mean like the people who make the tyres DD?
Pah! What do they know.
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This has been a really interesting thread. There is clearly a lot of diverse and strong opinion in both camps. Some of which seems to be backed up by an amount of science. However, as a personal preference, I remain convinced that on a FWD vehicle that I favour having the best traction and grip available at the front. Oversteer, IMHO, is much less scary than understeer. It can be controlled and "caught" quite easily whereas the latter can simply cause a car to plow on until it meets another solid object.
I suspect a lot of drivers, especially those who are still relatively inexperienced, would benefit greatly from time on a skid pan to learn how best to deal with such eventualities.
I am personally eternally grateful for two events in my early driving life which at least have got me home safer a few times and may have even saved my life on occasion.
The first was unofficial "training" and the second was a structured course.
The first was when very new to driving and a friend and I were ( quite wrongly really ) mucking about late at night on a deserted industrial estate after a snowfall. My car was a Mk 1 RWD Escort. I think we fondly imagined ourselves to be frustrated rally aces and were trying out all sorts of hooliganism involving the handbrake and trying to "drift ".. Well perhaps inevitably a Police traffic car came along and the officers invited us to "comment on the error of our ways". After we had had a ticking off from the seemingly stern older sergeant, he then said "OK lads...if you are going to do this then lets show you how to do it properly" Much to our astonishment and delight they then spent the next hour on this snowy night taking turns to both drive the escort or sit with us while we drove and passed on some really top tips about controlling skids etc. This was, I have to add, some 30 years ago !
The next time I had the chance to learn from an expert was a couple of years later. I had gone to work for an employer who was going to provide me and a couple of other young guys with company cars ( Mk1 Cavaliers RWD ). They actually said to us that before we would be given the cars we would (at their cost ) have to attend and pass a skidpan course at Snetterton. We duly turned up for the course which featured Chevette Ecosse ( RWD ) hatchbacks with "normal" tryres on the front and overinflated slicks on the back. The basic objective was to complete 5 laps of the skidpan in a given time to pass.
As I said, this was all a lifetime ago but a combination of the unconventional Police traffic sergeant and the forward thinking employer at least maybe made me a bit safer. I wouldn't now deliberately drive in such a way as to lose either end of the car but I guess if I did make such an error of judgement I'd much rather be trying to correct the waywardness of the back end than the front.
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I don't suppose there's a totally hard and fast rule. It must depend to an extent on how much tread is left on the rear tyres. One of PoloGirl's rear tyres was renewed in April.
--
L\'escargot.
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I can remember two occasions where heavy tread on the front driving wheels got me home in sudden unexpected snow. Got up a steep hill once on a lane, by reversing. Wouldnt go up forwards, but the extra weight transference to the front end allowed me to slowly get up the hill and home in reverse.
Newish tyres on the front made this possible.
The other occasion was a 7 hr crawl (normally 30 min) home in a sudden unexpected drop of snow here in Yorkshire around 13 yrs ago. A rear wheel drive Merc was crabbing along helplessly in the gutter unable to even gain the centre of the road as we got out into the sticks.
We got a tow up one hill with an old landrover, his four wheels spinning as well as our newish tread, front wheels. On other hills ( foothills of pennines) we just made it, grinding along slowly with spinning wheels and sometimes getting out to shift a glazed surface from the front of car with a spade.
Its one thing saying `if bad weathers expected put winter tyres on` (or similar) but these sudden drops of snow can be unexpected.
It would be interesting to see if there were more support for new tyres on the driving wheels if these conditions arose again this winter.
Having said that, surely its safer to replace the rear tyres on a front wheel drive car at half worn? given the slow rate of tread wear and the implications of spending many thousands of miles on tyres that are oh so slowly hanging around just above the legal limit?
Regards
Edited by oilrag on 26/11/2007 at 07:44
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It's a weird area this. I can see the logic in saying put the newer tyres on the back but my preference is on the front to prevent terminal understeer and/or locking front wheels in an emergency. As my cornering style is light throttle down I don't experience oversteer, but indecisive people in front of me/braindead pedestrians/kamikaze cyclists have caused me on occasion to perform an emergency stop, sometimes with cadence braking for good measure.
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Oh hear we go, the winter tyre brigade is out. First nippy night out they all come, "you need winter tyres me lad, you will crash and burn without"
Last winter there was a 3 day period where it was -7 one night, then +11c. then -2. I would have had me winter tyre on and off and on in thtree days
pah
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< Ulla>
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Recently had two new tyres on the Prelude, done by a national French chain. I made my usual request - put them on the front and swap fronts to rear - and no-one argued or advised differently.
Every year at this time over here there's a big advertising campaign by tyre fitting companies aimed at getting people to fit winter tyres, and warning of dire results if you don't, which doesn't seem to make much difference as far as I can see. Obviously, in mountain areas - where they have laybys with signs saying 'stop here to fit your snow chains' - this may be different.
From my observation it appears 'winter' tyres only have more sipes (?) for clearing water off the tread. As far as I recall, most tyres used to have these anyway. Does this mean today's tyres are really designed for higher speeds in only dry weather?
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Whilst I agree that the grippiest tyres should be on the rear axle, nobody seems to have taken into consideration that "new" tyres take anywhere between 200 to 500 miles to bed in and become grippy. So in my mind it is best to put new tyres on the front until they have bedded in and then swap them over to the back, which is what I normally do.
In my youth I wrote my 2nd car off after just having had 2 new tyres on the back and before they had bedded in I lost it on a sharp S-bend, the rear coming round. It was not that I was going too fast for the bend either, as I had frequently negotiated this same bend at the same speed previously and they were the same make/type of tyre (Michelin X) .
-----------------------------------------------
2005 Ford Mondeo Zetec 2.0 TDCi 130ps
Edited by kith on 26/11/2007 at 11:54
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Which ever end of the car has has had new tyres. I find that they are almost never set to the correct pressure by the fitters. I always take the earliest opportunity to check and adjust accordingly. Slightly "off-topic" but I also recall taking delivery of a brand new car which I then had to immediately drive from Norfolk to Scotland. The handling was interesting to say the least and when I checked the tyre pressures at my destination they were 25% too high ! So much for PDI !
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Henry k's links are first class.
Check the driver's manual - perhaps something to do with computer controlled electronic stability control ESP?
Putting the new tyres on the REAR will improve the safety of the car whilst cornering (increased resistance to sudden oversteer).
Putting them on the FRONT will give better straight line braking, resistance to aquaplaning, and traction (front-wheel drive only).
The biggest danger facing the average driver on a typical drive would be loss of control whilst cornering or turning. This means the best place to put new tyres for the average motorist is on the REAR.
However, if your typical journey involves little cornering but lots of heavy braking (commuting on motorways and urban dual carriageways) then perhaps you are better off putting your new tyres on the front.
And while you are looking at your tyres make sure all of them are changed before 3mm (the department of Transport is considering increasing the minimum legal tread depth to 3mm). Check this video:
www.etyres.co.uk/flashmovies/3mm-tread-safer-etyre...m
Auto Express test the difference between 3mm and 1.6mm in this video
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehnAgW42YpQ
Watch this great video from tirerack.com (America's largest independent tyre tester).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA6MUlVNkLM
Metric conversion 4/32ths = 3mm, 2/32ths = 1.6mm
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Billy Whizz comments make a balanced view of tyre placing imo.
IMO, If you need to ask where you should put tyres, then at the rear for safety may be good advice. If you are able to tell where you want/need them then you know why and for the right reasons.
Personally I put them front on fwd and rear on rwd.
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