Freelander 1 6 Tyres Instead of 5?

Keeping with my tyre themed threads today, what do people do to try and even out the wear on their tyres to reduce the chances of having to replace too many tyres if one wheel goes fud on something nasty.

Does anyone have 6 tyres they rotate on their hippo to try and even out wear and avoiding the problems using new spare when the road wheels have part worn?

Silly idea maybe? and me just being over paranoid after reading that a difference of just 5mm diameter can screw the VCU.

I was thinking along the lines of starting with 5 fresh new tyres (I need to, as my hippo was bought with right nasty cheap tyres on it), then doing the following.

Drive a few k miles.
Fronts come off the car.
Rears get moved to the front.
The untouched spare and tyre 6 get put on the rear.
One of the original fronts gets put onto the spare.
Drive a few more k miles, and repeat…

I’m assuming that the front wear quicker than the rear axel, but I appreciated from some of the threads is not the case though. It will be a case of keeping an eye of tread depths I suppose.

Any thoughts or ridicule? ;-)

Jim

if you had to put the spare on and there was only 1 or 2 mm of tread difference, would that actually do any damage?

Only ridicule.
Nah, s'up to you how you rotate your tires (round and round is good ).
I like to do them all at once before they hit the limit and keep the lot for spares, mates, tire swings, etc. Swap fronts and rears as one end starts to wear. Keep an old ****ter for spare.

I was waiting for someone to mention the wheels going "round and round"
Thinking about the 6 tyre route, it only delays the inevitable with me still ending up having to buy more tyres at least in pairs when the originals start loosing too much tread to make the 5mm diameter difference between axels. I can see benefit in changing the lot and keeping a number of part worns for spares and other things.

You'd have to keep a chart and all that, just doesn't seem worth the bother.

The OP brings up a good question - its fine for LR to recommend changing all 4 at the same time and of course having the same make on all 4 corners.

I had a similar issue - ****ty Hankooks fitted when i bought the car.
Fronts are pretty much worn but the rears are still good (no rotation)

Now i dont like the Hankooks because of the wet grip (lack of) so when changing the fronts i wanted to get another make of tyre.
However with the dire warnings about different types of tyre front and back i was reluctant to take the risk - ended up buying 4 General grabbers which will be fitted next week.

Now i need to decide if i rotate them on a regular basis or just wait for the fronts to wear again and fit new Generals to the rear when the time comes.
Personally i dont like rotating - for me each tyre wears to a certain profile based on the vehicle position, roads, geometry setup etc and i think that rotating them will result in accelerated wear as the tyre adjusts to its new position and wear profile.

If you're lucky (or rather maybe 'not unlucky'), then there may be a benefit to running 6 tyres - but if something goes wrong with your system, then you're worse off. If you get a puncture - you're then back to an odd number. If you do need to replace 2 for any reason and the same tyre isn't available any more, then you have to replace 6 not 4 - that may sound far fetched - but it happened to me - the Goodyear Wranglers I run were discontinued here.

The next time I come to replace tyres, I shall try to investigate which ones allow move movement in the tread - I don't know if that info is available. I'm sure that will help the transmission though - it appears the VCU is in hump mode (locked) at speed - so the only way wind up can be released is through the tyres.

Hi i have had my freelander for about 2 1/2 years it had general grabber ats on when i had it , done about 20,000 miles on them on and off road ,just replaced them with 4 new ones ,fronts were down to 4mm rears 7mm ,kept one rear for spare, other in garage in case , will prob get another new one when get paid , all in all good allround tyre .

just do a basic 5 wheel rotation every couple of thousand miles.


If you get a puncture that cant be repaired, buy a new tyre and keep it as the spare and then do a basic 4 wheel rotation.



If you get another dead tyre, you are screwed, but two screws up any rotation pattern anyway, so no point worrying about it.

dave21478 said:

just do a basic 5 wheel rotation every couple of thousand miles.

If you get a puncture that cant be repaired, buy a new tyre and keep it as the spare and then do a basic 4 wheel rotation.

If you get another dead tyre, you are screwed, but two screws up any rotation pattern anyway, so no point worrying about it.

Click to expand...

Nice diagrams and method, and maybe I am missing something here, but would that work with directional rotation tyres? I know zip about freelanders, Maybe the tyres are all either way?

dave21478 said:

just do a basic 5 wheel rotation every couple of thousand miles.

If you get a puncture that cant be repaired, buy a new tyre and keep it as the spare and then do a basic 4 wheel rotation.

If you get another dead tyre, you are screwed, but two screws up any rotation pattern anyway, so no point worrying about it.

Click to expand...

The 1st image seems a bit wrong to me. surely the front tyres wear more and quicker than the rear, so putting a spare (which would have NO wear) on the rear and then moving a front tyre to the rear, this could equate to quite a lot of difference in tread depth... and will probably cause some problems down the line.

You dont wait until they are half worn out before rotating, its preventative maintenance every couple of thousand miles, so there is no noticeable difference in depth between any of them. If you are wearing tyres to the point where there is significant depth differences between every 2k miles, you have serious problems.


And no, this doesnt work for directional tyres.

dave21478 said:

You dont wait until they are half worn out before rotating, its preventative maintenance every couple of thousand miles, so there is no noticeable difference in depth between any of them. If you are wearing tyres to the point where there is significant depth differences between every 2k miles, you have serious problems.


And no, this doesnt work for directional tyres.

Click to expand...

ah ok, so this could be something to do every week or 2

All this wheel rotating is far too much messing about and completely unnecessary. Just buy 5 good quality tyres of the type you want, all identical of course. Then drive on them until the fronts are worn out (I change tyres at 3mm for safety).
Then remove the dead front tyres and have 2 identical tyres fitted. Then remove the rear tyres and fit them to the front, fitting the new tyres to the rear. Keep repeating the process for each pair of new tyres. Most tyre places will swap the wheels about for you while you are having the new tyres done. Just remember that all the tyres must be identical and new always go on the back.

Until that model of tyre is replaced or otherwise unavailable and you have to throw out three good tyres.

dave21478 said:

Until that model of tyre is replaced or otherwise unavailable and you have to throw out three good tyres.

Click to expand...

That's the chance you take. At least the remainder of the tyres have some value. Replacing 5 worn tyres in 1 go is going to hurt the wallet hard. If premium tyres are chosen, they aren't likely to go out of production for many years.