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Tire rotation best practices?
- Thread starter Jadedcause
- Start date
Tesla ranger came out and rotated my tires. He also checked the air pressure and topped off wiper fluid. Took 45 minutes and the charge was $65. Great service! As an aside from tire wear on model s was greater than rear. Contrary to most any vehicle I have owned.
pnwadventures
@bpr1de on Instagram
Tire rotation history would likely be something you’d need to get from the prior owner, as that is not a Tesla-specific service item and most people won’t pay more/wait longer to have it done at a Tesla SC vs. anywhere that just deals with tires.
rpiotro
Active Member
There is no way to know if and when they were rotated. It doesn't matter. What is the tread thickness today? Let the tire wear be your guide. Nothing else. A depth gauge is cheap.
You didn't mention which variation you had. SR+, Long range AWD, performance? The AWD may not need rotation.
At 6K miles I measured mine. 7MM front, 6MM rear. No surprise. M3 SR+ uses the rear tires for all of the driving and most of the braking. I had the tires rotated. I have owned several cars where the tire wear was very even. No need to rotate at all. Don't rotate them just because.
Used Tesla's mobile service. $65. Not worth getting my hands dirty. And I have a floor jack, lifting pucks, air wrench and torque wrench. I may do it myself sometime but I just didn't want to at the time.
You didn't mention which variation you had. SR+, Long range AWD, performance? The AWD may not need rotation.
At 6K miles I measured mine. 7MM front, 6MM rear. No surprise. M3 SR+ uses the rear tires for all of the driving and most of the braking. I had the tires rotated. I have owned several cars where the tire wear was very even. No need to rotate at all. Don't rotate them just because.
Used Tesla's mobile service. $65. Not worth getting my hands dirty. And I have a floor jack, lifting pucks, air wrench and torque wrench. I may do it myself sometime but I just didn't want to at the time.
This isn't the best advice. Yes, always look at the tire wear and measure the tread depths. But regular rotations ensure even wears among all the tires. Tesla recommends front to back, back to front rotations, because it's easy to do but not the best way to rotate non directional tires. A cross pattern rotation is best. But then again Tesla also used to recommend rotations every 10,000 to 12,000. They did that to show how little routine maintenance their cars need, which was stupid. Tires wear no matter what vehicle they are on and all tires benefit from rotations every 6,000 to 7,000 miles. I've always done tire rotations myself because it's easy and takes no more than 30 minutes.
I will say this, I have had vehicles in which I never watched the wear or measured the tread depth and never rotated the tires. Of course they didn't last long, think I got maybe 30,000 miles before they all needed to be replaced. Obviously with an EV tires wear out faster because the cars are heavier. So if you don't rotate them you'll be buying tires sooner. If you do rotate them you either have to pay someone and give up some of your time or spend less time doing it yourself if you can. It's all a trade off.
rpiotro
Active Member
My M3 SR+ weighs 3616 lbs. My last car a Q50 hybrid was ~4100. Tires wore evenly. I never rotated them and got good life. Before that was a G8 GT. Just over 4000 lbs. I never rotated them on that car either because it would just chew them up no matter where they were. And no, it was not an alignment problem. There was even a service bulletin issued about that subject. I went through three sets by 55K miles. My '04 Accord coupe was pretty good on tires. About 30K good miles on performance all-seasons.
There is more to the story than just the weight.
You can get tires that will last a long time. Hard compounds that are so so in the dry, not so good in the wet and awful in the snow. What is the point of having a 50K+ mile tire life if you hate every minute?
MLXXXp
Member
Only that you have to be sure that the local service center has a jack/hoist that can properly lift the car at the jack points without damage, and that they know to torque the lug nuts to 129 lb. ft (175 Nm).
And that's why ever Tesla owner should know this information and tell whoever does the rotation. But many tire stores and Costco will do rotations for free, even if you didn't buy tires from them.
todd2fst4u
Member
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