Your car's tires are an important part of keeping you on the road, which is why you must regularly take care of them. One of the main ways you can do so is by rotating your tires as part of your routine maintenance.

Why Tire Rotation is Important

Rotating your car's tires is an easy way to extend their lives, cutting down on the amount you have to spend on replacing the tires as they wear. Depending on your vehicle's drive system, tires will wear at different rates. For instance, front-wheel drive will cause your vehicle's front tires to lose their tread much quicker than the tires at the rear of your vehicle. By regularly rotating your vehicle's tires, the similar rate of wear will allow you to replace all of the tires at the same time less frequently.

Tire Rotation Timeline

Having trouble figuring out when to rotate your vehicle's tires? There are two ways to determine your tire rotation timeline. The first is to simply inspect them for uneven wear. If the tread on the front tires looks more worn than the tread on your rear, or vice versa, it's time to rotate them. The second way to determine when to rotate your tires is to use your vehicle's owner's manual as a guide. Typically, you want to rotate your car's tires whenever your car is brought in for its routine oil change, though it should be more often if you drive more than 10,000 miles annually.

Tire Rotation Patterns

The pattern of rotation you use to rotate tires depends on the type of drive system that your vehicle has. For front-wheel-drive models, move the front tires to the rear on the same side, then take the rear tires and move them diagonally to the front. The opposite is true for rear-wheel drive. For these, move the rear tires to the front on the same side, moving the front tires diagonally to the back.

Schedule an appointment with the service department at Sierra Volkswagen so that you can be confident your tires are in good condition.