Stock tires: which way is the thread supposed to face ??
 

So im in the process of changing my winter tires to stock summer tires right now and sort of messed up. I have stock 18 inch rims with stock potenza tires. I have one wheel/tire left to switch when i noticed my right side tread pattern doesnt match my left side tread patterns. Front and backs match for both sides but left and right face opposite directs which means i accidently move a tire supposed to be on the left side to the right side or vice versa.

I tried looking in the manual which side the tire patterns are supposed to go and i couldnt find anything.

Made a stupid mistakeeee !! Any help pleasee ?? :(

There should be a directional arrow on them that says something like "Rotation----->"

hmm R for rotation or arrow?

You guys think im that dumb lol. The stock tires are radial or unidirectional .. so that being said they cannot change sides but rather only move front to back or back to front. I marked where the tires should go and no im noticing this that the pattern arent opposite to each other on either sides. The way i have them right now .. the tread all face the same way. Take a look at the pic im posting. This is how i have it right now. The right and lefts face the same way ?? Is that how its supposed to be ????

ps theres no R or rotation with an arrow.


BTW those are the exact tires i have with same tread pattern. PLease help this is frustrating me lol.

these tires should all go on right side if both rims facing right side.
I hope this pic helps.
https://www.rx8club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1302288685

I think you guys are misinterpretating what im confused about lol. And its partially my fault cause im shit at explaining. Ill try to use digrams lol. So right noww here is how my tire treads are:



Front of car

/ /

/ /

rearr of car




What im asking is if thats normal cause thats the way i labeled them before winter. My question is if it should be like this:



front of car


/ \

/ \

rear of car.


Sorry for the shitty explaination. Im so confused lol.

^lol im confused too. Any one with stock tires go outside and check

go up and see my big ass pic.:lol:

I think i found the answer.

This is a pic of the bridgestone i found on the internet. And its actually an r3. Loooks like its the front left tire. So ill go based on this.


Now the freaking problem is that which tires were in the front and which tires were in the back :( FMLLL

Oh man Jason thank you so much dude !!! So basically i had one side wrong !!! FAWKK !!! Thanks. Do you guys thinks doing an X pattern tire rotation would be bad :( Cause i cant remember for shit which were at the front and which were at the back. All 4 tires seem to have even treads.

Wait nevermind !!! LOL. From jasons pic it looks like i had the tires right !!!! Cause if you look at the big ass pic. The left has the bars going like this \ and the right has the bars going like \ also which means i have them on right !! This confused the hell out of me when i saw it. I thought it would make more sense having them like this / \ but guess not.

cept the wider square blocks should be on the outside.

Well all four of my tires have the wider blocks outside. IM going by the treat pattern. Im so confused right now.

Im going by the longer diagonal lines.

That's actually the front right tire.

Yea sorry i just found that out. Now my question is will the front right have the lines facing the same way or opposite ???

According to jasons pics, they should face the same way ??

All 4 of my tires are facing the same way right now, but my lines are going in the opposite direction jasons rears.

you know if you turn the wheel the other way..:D:
honestly I dont think it really matters since they are unidirectional tires.

Your tires will either be uni-directional, or directional.

Uni-directional tires will have the words "Inside" and "Outside" written on the side of them. The tread will point in one direction on one side of the car, and in the other direction on the other side of the car.

Direction tires will have something that indicates the direction of rotation. Usually either words, or an arrow. These tires all point in the same direction when installed.

If your tires are the Bridgestone Potenza's, they will have the word Outside written on them.

The Dunlop SP Sport 2050 is an Omni-Directional tire, however, and can be installed any which way you want, because the tread is always the same in any direction, on either side of the car.

BC.

Alright i did some research and i had it right all along. I was 100 percent sure i labelled them correctly. What threw me off was the tread pattern. Radial tires are parallel. So the long bars should look like this:

front of car

/ /

/ /

rear of car

So yea when i saw that today i got confused cause i always thought the pattern should be like this:


/ \

/ \


Guess not. So i just want to thank everyone who helped me, especially Jason for the big ass pic LOL. What i also found is that the bars go in different directions on different cars. If you look at jasons car the bars go this way \ \ while the pic of the r3 i posted they go this way / /. Mine all go this way / /. So i dont think direction they point matters as long as they are parallel and they point outwards of the car.

Phew !!! What a confusion !! :squint:

YOu just confused the hell out of me AGAIN. Youre saying undirectional will point one way on one side and the other on the other side. I thought the same but thats wrong. First of all i put the tires back on exact how i labelled them which is:

\ \
\ \

And also refer to jasons pics.

The tread pattern or "the long bars" ive referring to both go this way \ \

Rotary - just look for whether the tires are marked inside/outside, or if they have a rotation direction arrow. Put them on the car according to those marks. If they don't have any such marks, it does not matter.

Jason's photo makes it clear that left/right sides do not have to be mirror images.

Ken

:lol:

Kenx8 - They have outside/inside labels on them :P. And yea i noticed the images dont mirror. Thanks

zumnrx8 - I know :(

Here's an image of the Bridgestone Potenza RE050A tire from tire rack's website:

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/BigPic...oModClar=Sport

Notice the word Outside written on the side of the tire.
That word needs to be able to be read when you look at the tire mounted on the car. If you see the word Inside when looking at any of the tires, they are mounted incorrectly.

That's what you need to concentrate on.
If that's not the tire you are installing on your car, let us know what model of tire you are installing.

BC.

The tires are mounted fine. They all say OUTSIDE ... when they face outwards. The problem was which tire goes where in terms of tread pattern. Its fine now i figured it out :P Thanks though.

I saw that pic too but that didnt help me one bit to determine whether it goes on the left side or right side. Whether front or back doesnt matter cause they should both have the same tread pattern facing the same way :P

Anyways thanks. close thread before i get even more confused and second doubt things lol.

it is very confusing too. I actually draw some diagonal lines on a wheel and turn it around 180 degrees and it was the same direction meaning it doesn't matter as long as you have label "OUTSIDE" facing outside.