I know this is often talked about so I apologize for bringing it up again. For people with non-stagered tires do you believe on rotating. I always rotated my E46 (died in hurricane sandy). Now i'm trying to decide if I should do the same for my F10 535I non-staggered tries. Thanks, Josh
Depends on your tread pattern - if the tires are directional with an asymmetric tread pattern, rotating them (depending on how they're rotated) would have the tires wrong-side out &/or running backwards. If they're symmetric, they can be swapped side-to-side &/or front-to-rear (if all are the same size) without re-mounting, but usually it's the front-rear swap (without dismounting & remounting the tires on the rims) that evens-out tire wear because the front normally has 0° neg. camber vs. whatever neg. camber the rear has. Putting the fronts on the rears will wear the inside edge of the rears, and the rears going on the fronts will have the middle & outside edge wearing more. Swapping only rears side-to-side won't even out the wear on the inside edges unless you have them dismounted from the rims, flipped over, and then remounted, balanced, and re-installed on the same sides they came off of. That can be done if they're symmetric or symmetric & directional. If you do that with asymmetric-patterned tires, (which might commonly have "IN" & "OUT" marked on their sides), then you'd be running what's intended to be the outside edge on the inside. You'd even out wear, but, you might lose whatever the tire design was hoping to accomplish by its asymmetric pattern - you might get more tread on the ground for instance, but lose water dissipation & get an increased risk of hydroplaning, for example. Rotating the tires can certainly extend their life, as long as they can be rotated, and you don't mind footing the bill (although, you still have to foot the bill for new tires eventually, and rotating will delay the inevitable). Obviously, running a square setup with the same size all 4 corners and opting for symmetric &/or directional tires means you have more options for rotating to even out wear. Swapping directional tires front to rear but keeping on the same side works without having to dismount/remount, and symmetric tires can go on any corner without remounting. However, most high-performance tires seem to be directional, &/or sometimes asymmetric. Symmetric-patterned tires you usually see on some sort of all-season tire, although nowadays there appear to be any variety of high-performance all-season tires. Unfortunately, with many BMW's running smaller front tires, they also have smaller front rims, meaning to go to a square setup, you have to buy from BMW two expensive rims to match your rears (assuming the rears fit the front without issues, although that's easily checked by swapping one onto the front), or opt for a different set of rims altogether, although you can get 4 rims sometime from Tire Rack and other places for less than opting for 1 or 2 BMW factory rims (unless you luck into some BMW rims via Ebay, craigslist, etc). Don't expect much life, relatively speaking, from the stock tires that came with the car; look for 15-20k miles before the rears are shot; BMW seems to be sticking fairly soft, sticky rubber on their cars out the door. Makes for a hoot to drive & ups the performance ante for turning, braking, handling & responsiveness, but 140 treadwear-rated tires aren't destined to give you high mileage numbers.
Thanks for the though reply, I usually do most work myself so there is no cost to me rotating. Even with the base 535I I have different rim sizes? The tire sizes are all the same 245/45 18
My mistake - if your car came with the same size all around, then all the rims should be the same; obviously you can check that when you rotate. There are many BMW's that have a staggered setup as sold, that seems to be the case with almost all the 3 (& now, 4) -series cars in recent years.
Thank you, I figure I'm one of the rare few that has a minimum requirement of a Base 535I with a 6-speed It was hard to find and i figured M-sport with 19" rims do not handle the NY potholes well.
