Tire Rotation
 

Who do you guys let rotate your tires? This can be done by anyone right?

Anyone over the age of 16. Back to front / Front to back that’s it.

The tires on the 8 are directional so you do not rotate them left to right. The backs also wear faster than the fronts so it’s important that you do this.

Do it yourself- get a floor jack and some jackstands, and it takes about 15 minutes tops.

I thought it was back left to front right and back right to front left. And the fronts to the rears straight up.

no sir... simple back to front and front to back rotation is all that you can do. only way around that is to flip the tires on their respective wheels and then change their sides.

the tires on your car are DIRECTIONAL tires. look at your tire and it will tell you in rather plain language what direction the tire is meant to rotate under normal forward driving conditions.

it usually looks like this <<<Rotoation<<< with the arrow(s) indicating the direction of forward rotation.

Ray

The tires are directional, so you have to stick with the same side (at least the bridgestones are, not sure about the dunlaps).

i did it the standard (expo's) way but i read the manual the other day and it said otherwise. maybe i'm wrong.

edit- makes sense g8rboy ^. yea i'm wrong. must have been the other car. :rolleyes:

Page 8-24 of the manual states Front / Back.

Yep. Did it myself. Used my jack and my wife's jack on the same side, put the back tire up front then the front tire on back, set it down and did the other side. Not much to it.
I did find that when I lowered the front back down that the front of the car seems to remain quite high. In fact, when reinstalling the front tire I actually had to raise the front of the car even higher to get the tire on. It seems the suspension up front "relaxes" some the longer it remains off the ground. Once the wheels made about a half turn on the ground, the car leveled up again.
Don't forget to block the wheel on the opposite side that you lift.

Out of mere neglect, I didn't rotate my tires until I'd already had 13,000 miles on it. Should I still rotate it after 5,000 miles at this point, or should I stretch it out to even out the wear?

GRT--To answer your question, I got Firestone to do mine because they had a sale on the service (I just noticed you're in GA--check your AJC Sunday paper! I found the Firestone coupon in the Cartoons section). Oddly, there were no weights on my tires after the balance/rotation, so I wondered if the guy even did any balancing, but it drives very smoothly, so I imagine he did, somehow. The mechanic was very honest, too. He couldn't find the security lug key, so he asked me to come into the garage and retrieve it, as he did not want to rummage through my car without my permission. How often does that happen?!

Another couple reasons to tackle this simple job yourself-

1) Tire places are careless and our rims have a fragile paint job that likes to chip and scratch.

2) Wrench monkeys working at tire places think air tools should be used for everything, and they will most certainly over torque the lugnuts when they re-mount your wheels. This is bad for the wheels, and really bad for you if you get stuck in an emergency, have to change a flat and can't get the damn nuts off with the tiny lugnut wrench in the trunk.

**Edit**
3) MARKD reminded me of reason #3, the wrench monkeys that use the security lug key with their air tools can tear up or break the lugnut.

Good point. Unfortunately, I'm sure many, like myself, live in apartment complexes and such that don't allow you to work on your car on the premises.

I understand- I was in college once. I did many repairs to my old '78 Celica against the rules in front of my apartment, or went to a friend's house that had actual tools. Tire rotation is one of those things you can do nice and fast...

I bought my winter Hankooks at Discount Tire, and they do free mounting and swapping tires in the winter and summer on the same rims, as well as free tire rotations. Last time they had four guys clamber all over my wheels and tires, and switching over summer to winter tires took 10 minutes flat. Great service...

There weren't any adhesive weights on the inside surface of the rim?

i saw something in the manual about a tire pressure monitoring system. i guess not all of the 8's have it? how do you know if you have it?

All US-spec RX-8's have it... I think it's an option in other markets.

Question....is there any trick to dealing with the TPMS connections when you rotate the tires?

Nope... they'll be fine... it's only an issue if you bring a new sensor into the mix.

However if you're going in for new tires (or mounting/dismounting snow tires), you need to warn the tire people you have the sensors so they'll be careful around the valve stems. There's a special procedure for when mounting/dismounting a tire from a RIM with TPMS module installed.

Or even make sure they'll do it first. I had three shops refuse to work with TPMS-equipped wheels.

I think its important not to wait so long between rotation. You will notice a louder road noise caused by the larger difference in wear. 5K is best.

How do you put jack stands under this car? If you're supposed to jack it up at those specific jack points, where do you put the stands if the jacks in those spots are holding the car up?

I felt around but didn't feel any. I'll inspect them again later today.

It's no different than any other car- the jack points are wide enough to jack it up and place the jack stand right next to it. Even if you have to jack it up a couple inches from the exact jack point to make room for a large jack stand the frame is very strong on the 8... I do this every time I change my oil as well.

Over tightening can also warp the brake rotors. Thanks for all the input!!!