The rear tires (Dunlop all season runflats) on my 2002 MCS showed some severe scalloping on the inside tread. The tires wore evenly across the rest of the tread and both tires wore about the same. Its just that they both were very scalloped on the inside tread. I can't believe this is normal but that is what my SA is claiming. And according to by Bentley manual MINI does not recommend rotating the tires! Anyone else experience this. Is it bad rear struts? What do you suspension experts think? When I was quite a bit younger this would be a classic indication of bad shocks or out of balance tires. Thanks for any help.

 

I wonder what the reasoning would be on not rotating the tires.

I would think that rotating back to front, front to back every 7,500 miles or so would be a good thing.

 

u should rotate no matter what u read or what ur SA say's.

i had wear on the outsides and i was told its normal, so it goes 2show these SA know nothin' just what they read in that manual...........and more money for them if u have to buy tyres every 20k miles.
get rid of ur run-flats they r much to hard and will wear a lot sooner

 

I've been told that new tires are bias-plied or something like that, meaning that once they've rolled one direction in your car, they 'settle' in that direction [belts stretching, getting used to the forces generated]. If you then rotate to the other side, I've heard that you will get belt/structural failure due to the tires not accomodating an opposite set of forces. Sounds like that could cause the focal ballooning.

 

Thanks, now I need to clean coffee off my keyboard.

 

Rotate 'em. They'll last much longer and wear evenly. I have over 30,000 miles of spirited driving on my Euforias and they're just coming up for replacement. I rotate every 5,000 miles.

p.s. I rotate in the typical fwd backs forward and fronts across manner.

 

1st, it's amazing you still have useable tred on the original runflats on an '02 MCS, and haven't already needed to replace them.

2nd, even if there were something wrong, seeing as how it's 2005 and the '06s are right around the corner, I wouldn't expect your SA to do anything about tires you got in '02.

3rd, after how many miles do you have on the tires?

4th, this is typical wear IMO if you don't rotate, especially if you have lowered your MINI, because of the camber.

Personally, i would rotate front to back, every 5k. The fronts wear on the outer edges (especially if you autocross), while, as you're finding out, the rears wear on the inside edges. Thus you can extend out the life of the tires a bit if you start regular tire rotation early enough. At this point though, it sounds like you're due for a new set of tires.

 

In reply:
1st: Yeah, after reading about the treadlife some people are getting I am surprised how good most of the tire looks at 42,000 miles.

2nd: I certainly never mentioned asking the SA to replace my old tires, sorry if I implied that. However, if there were something wrong with the car and the car is still under warranty (which it is) then I would expect the SA to do something about that no matter what model year was around the corner.

3rd: See above.

4th: I can certainly see the advantages of rotating. So that leaves me wondering two things: Why is rotating the tires not recommended? Still don't quite understand why they tires would scallop? I could see them wearing unevenly because of the camber of the rears but why the scalloping?

So it seems that the concensus is to rotate the tires regardless of the recommendations in the Bentley manual. So rotate just front to back or some of the other schemes out there, despite the danger of "focal ballooning"?:smile:

Thanks

 

Hmm rotating at a "frequent" interval is best, but rotating once or twice within the lifetime of a tire will cause some problems most likely. IOW it is better to keep rotating to even out the wear, not at the point where one end is significantly worn vs. the other...

There are lots of opinions on where the best tread need to be - front for traction/braking; or rear to keep from lock-up in less-than-ideal road conditions. Blah blah blah. Either way, if one rotates often enough, the wear should be the same on both ends. If it were me, I'd rotate at the point when the tread depth is MEASUREABLY different front front to rear, not VISUALLY, as it might take longer to notice with the eye vs. a gauge...

So, if you've already got some problems on the rear, I wouldn't put those up front.

As for warranty - I think that'd be a judgement call and how good of terms you are with your SA...

.02

Derek

 

Funny thread... and sad.

Luckily, it really doesn't matter much what you do.

 

I have 33,000 miles on my 16" Dunlop runflats without any signs of scalloping on the inside of the tires. I rotate about every 5,000 miles. I check the uniformity of wear across the tread with a tread depth gauge and adjust the air pressure to try an even out the wear about every other week.

Currently I have the tread within 1/64" or .016" or .4mm across the whole tread. This even includes 4 auto-X days and one "test & tune" day that included over 20 runs.

I find that I have to run lower pressure in the rear to prevent the center of the tread from wearing too quickly.

With the amount of scalloping you discribe I wonder if you might need a four wheel alignment.

 

Bilbo- You're right, an alignment may very well be in order. I also had a broken strut mount on the right front, and assumed that is why that particular tire wore funny. Worn on the inside only, but no scalloping what-so-ever. I just didn't think that would affect the rear tires in that way.

I have a new set of tires and I will be rotating them every 5,000 miles or so. I didn't want to put them on the car until I get all the suspension stuff sorted out.

 

Starting out like we all do with 4 new runflats, my goal was to get maximum use from them before replacement (I KNOW some ppl like to burn thru them so they can get to non-runflats all the sooner):

Every 5,000 miles, front to rear and rear to front, no crissy-crossy.

I'll be putting the original fronts back on the front, in about 300 miles .

I don't hammer my car (much), though I have recently started experimenting with the RPM's required to chirp tires in various gears (oh no, I've got the bug ). As far as I can surmise I do not have any treadwear anomalies...

Tatt

 

hmmmm. not sure what to say here...

I rotated (reversed) my tires and now have a sqeeky shoe syndrome. It sqeeeks every rotation (belt seperated).

 

They won't be able to do an alignment unless you have the new tires on.

Have you checked all of the rear suspension parts to make sure they are up to spec? You mentioned a broken front strut mount. How did this happen? Could it have also caused damage to the rear suspension?

It wouldn't take much to cause scalloping of the tires.

 

Yes I know, that is why the alignment hasn't been done yet either. I had originally attributed the strut mount to a simple parts failure. It seems a lot of them have failed. There was none of the "mushrooming" used by the MINI dealers to indicate that it was due to impact. I know I didn't hit anything and no one else has driven the car since I got it.:smile: But here's the rub, I got it used with about 10,000 miles on it and don't know what happened to that point. So I can't honestly say to my SA I know its never had an impact. I have done a visual inspection and there was no obvious visual signs of damage, but as you pointed out it doesn't take much.

Again going back to the dark ages of motoring (mid 70s), radial tires were always rotated front to back without criss-crossing. That was because of belt creep on the radials of the time. My understanding is that with modern radials if you are going to rotate the tires, criss-crossing is considered optimal. I noticed the most respondants on this thread are doing the more established front to back without crossing. Any thoughts?

 

I gave the explanation that I have heard for this above. Andy apparently choked on his coffee. Oh no, I killed Andy ! Anyways, the reason, I heard, is that they settle into a given rotation/torque vector and cannot stand being turned to rotate the other way.

 

In my experience most drives do not rotate as often as they should to mantain the correct natural tire wear. When heal and toe wear begins, its easy to correct, but if you dont cat untill 7500-10000 miles you'll bed a wear pattern in that EXTREMELY noisy once rotated. Just a guess

Alex

 

I had the scalloping and extreme wear on the INSIDE edge of the rears. After 3 allignment checks at different shops, I took it to a shop that really knew what they were doing. They adjusted the alignment (to slightly out of spec). After a few thousand miles, the tires have worn evenly. No more scalloping!

 

........this i found to be the best solution!! (adjust out of spec) since its more of a tuning issue rather than what the manufacturer/US spec's think's is safer as far as camber & toe ect...

 

Since the MCSs are supplied with asymetrical tires the recommended rotation is the straight front/back. The only way to do a cross rotation with asymetric tires would be to de-mount and re-mount the tires on the rims to keep the recommended direction of rotation correct.

Most people find this more trouble than it is worth. With competition tires it becomes more practical as it is the outside shoulder really takes a beating.

 

Blue - you're describing what happened to my tires exactly! Do you (or Joker) know what settings they ended up using for the rears? I thought the only adjustment was for toe-in.

Bilbo - You're right, the tires are assymetrical treads but they don't seem to be unidirectional. So if you cross the tires, the tread pattern on the crossed tire is in the same orientation as the one you just removed. I am not saying you're wrong, just that I don't understand for certain.
The Tire Rack tech page on tire rotation says, if I am understanding it right, that we should be using the standard front wheel drive rotation, just as MGCMAN says he does. The page also says to follow what your manufacturer recommends , which as I said earlier is no recommendation at all according to the Bentley's manual.

 

Keep in mind that there is a difference between asymmetric tires and directional tires (some are both, but not all are). For example, the Falken Azenis RT-215 are asymmetric but not directional. You can run them in any direction as long as the outside shoulder is on the outside. So, you can swap any mounted wheel/tire from any corner to any corner.

"Alex",

What are your thoughts in cross-rotating tires on the MINI (as long as said tires are not directional)? Do you believe, as ingsoc asserted, that:

 

On the Azenis, yup. Same goes for my new Michelin Pilot Sport Cups, which are marked 'outside' and 'inside'.

Many guys at our autocrosses swap the Azenis on the rim to get more life out of them... meaning outside shoulder to inside. Doesn't seem to affect grip at all on dry pavement, and they get 1-2 more events out of them. People do it with V700's and Victoracers, too.

 

That's exactly what I was trying to say about the Dunlop (S5000 m+s) runflats that came with the car, asymmetrical but not directional (unidirectional). So even if you cross them the outside is still outside.

While we're waiting for Alex to reply, I'll blurt out because I like to talk. I think Ingsoc is right that the cords on todays "radial" tires are generally not exactly at 90 to the tire centerline but close. So they have a slight bias-ply, making them, and here is where Ingsoc and I have a difference in opinion:smile:, less prone to creep or slippage than a true radial. I am guessing that is probably at least part of the reason why they can now be cross-rotated. They are still called "radial" tires though, because the angle is so shallow and the construction and properties of the tires are nearly identical to the classic radial contruction rather than the old fasioned bia-ply construction than was common in the 50's and 60's.

I remember back in the late 70's and early 80's when the tire suppliers for Formula 1, back then only Goodyear and Michelen( the inventor of the radial tire), went through this evolution and abandoned all their "true radials" and went with slightly biased cords for the F1 tires. Obviously it was not for tire rotation reasons for the race tires but I believe this technology eventually made it to our everyday radials.