I change mine once a year, roughly 15-19K miles.

 

Do you all do tire rotations with oil changes, or keep that more of a 5000 mile thing?

 

it's more of a 7,500 mile thing. 10K is too long between rotations. 5K is fine.

 

Do you send in oil samples to be tested? Does the engine tend to sound much different after oil is changed?

What kind of oil do you use? Amsoil? Brad Penn?

 

Is there any proof or even evidence that rotating your tires more than one or three rotations over their life is more beneficial than just 1-3 rotations in total?


Or is the only advantage at all in rotating just that the front and rear wear out roughly at the same time?

 

Tire tread wearing out more evenly means more slowly, and it is a safety factor in my mind.

 

How would that matter to the tires on the other axle? The tires don't know if they're on the front or the back- I don't see how having even wear at any point in time means the tires would wear more slowly.

 

Not slowly, exactly, just that when you rotate them they take longer to wear down to an unsafe level. Each tire position wears down a little differenly, but I'm sure that's obvious.

 

Front tires wear more quickly than rears, even on rear wheel drive vehicles (except those prone to doing burnouts). This is caused by imperfect alignment, plus the added work steering the car. Some tire companies market rotation free tires by simply making "front" tires with more tread.

It's hard to predict the tread life on tires. I never guessed Dunlops to only be good for 30K. Rotating them at 10K miles (with oil changes) meant the tires that started on the front lived there for 2/3s of their life, while the rear tires lived on the back for 2/3s. When I got rid of them the front tires were worse than worn out, and the rears still had useable tread.

You could argue that the time spent isn't worth rotating them, just replace them in pairs when the front tires wear out earlier. This bothers me more esthetically than it does from an engineering standpoint. But I'm so glad I got rid of all 4 of the Dunlops. They really were not good tires. I guess if I hadn't rotated them at all I would have replaced them earlier!

 

The question is, for any individual tire- will it wear more slowly if it goes front-rear-front-rear-front-rear-front-rear versus just half the time on the front then half the time on the rear?


(ignoring the obvious- that you don't know when it's half-time if you plan to do a rotation only once)


I've simply rotated when they seemed unevenly worn (and it was not too hot nor cold outside) and I've managed to get my tires to wear out close enough to simultaneously to replace all four at once.

 

If they seem unevenly worn, they may be compromised in other ways, wearing more on the inside than out, etc.

I'd do whatever works best, I thought it would be 10K rotations on the Fit but that was a mistake with the OE tires.

Not knowing how long the Michelins I have now will last, I opted for a more conventional 7,500 interval. They may have been fine going 10 or even 15K to 20K. At 35K they look new and will probably last 60K without pushing it. But I'm also doing the rotations. Takes about 30 minutes in my garage. It also allows me to inspect brakes, suspension at regular intervals rather than relying on the yahoos at the express service bay. If I didn't have the tools and workspace, spending hours at NTB or Costco getting them rotated would make me revert to longer intervals.

Woody once said rationalizing is better than sex. Ever try to go more than a day without a good rationalization?*

* according to google it was Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill. But I bet he was channeling Woody.

 

I rotate the tires when the MM goes off, which is every 8,000-10,000 miles. The stock Dunlops served me real well. I had 42,000 miles on them, when I replaced all 4 with another set of Dunlops.

The only reason I replaced them at 42,000 miles, I hit a huge pot hole and blew out the driver's front tire. My tire guy said it was a shame because, I had 10,000-12,000 miles left on the original set.

My dealer just completed a courtesy alignment check and it was dead on. I wonder if some of the abnormal wear on the stock tires has to do with an out of alignment condition? I'm not claiming the stockers are the greatest, but in my case they've been fine.

 

Alignment could have been an issue. At about 5K I asked the dealer to check alignment. Instead of putting it on the rack they drove it and said it was ok. I shrugged and left but I should have paid to have it checked and taken them the bill at that point.

But there are a lot of reports of 30K being average life for the OE Dunlops. Yours is one of the few exceptions. I'd hope that the factory alignment would be pretty accurate.

 

They actually gave me a print out of the alignment check. I agree Steve, going by forum feedback my results aren't typical for the stock Dunlops and there are better choices out there. We'll see how many miles I can get out of the second set. I saw pics of your Michelins and they still look new. Pretty impressive.

 

I change my oil when the maintenance minder tells me and here's why. I dont know if most of you know this but Honda like most premium automakers us Synthetic oil. Yes, the 0w-20 oil Honda/Acura uses is synthetic. There is really no need to change the oils so soon with 0w-20. My Acura TL b4 this would give me the change oil light for almost 11k miles. That for me per the distance where my Flight School that I run is 3mi from where i live. People in cases like mine should change oil at 10k miles or once a year. Stop wasting money changing oil that hasn't come close to sludging up yet and save it.

BTW if you also didn't know Hondas newest auto transmission fluid (DW-1) is also synthetic. It helps keep tranny temps down.

 

But you don't understand- he knows more about the car than the people who designed and built it!

It's one thing to change (and recommend that customers change) fluids on a more conservative schedule than the factory's... if you understand and admit that's what you're doing. That's okay. Not even reading, or reading and discounting as stupidity the factory's recommendations- well, that's something else entirely.

 

Tire rotation is not exactly a safety issue.
It's a financial issue just to save money for the frugal consumer.

From a performance perspective, keeping the tires where they started will wear them in in their natural rotation, so the are actually the "safest" where they started (until you reach the tread limits).

Here's a thought experiment, High performance sports cars have corner specific tires, there is no rotation for them.

For the fit, Front tires tend to wear the edges/shoulders more; rear tires the center.
front tires wear about twice as fast as the rear.

If anything as far as safety, when you rotate your tires, they actually have less of a contact patch so and take time to rewear down the high edge of that tire to be a fuller contact patch.
The longer you wait, when you finally do the rotation, there is the most difference in the tires from true-round , so there is a biggest difference to rewear down to fit the natural alignment of the new corner.

But it's not really a true vital service or if you do not rotate tires, it is just you may reach the min tread at a section of your tire faster. There are other checkpoints of a tire like if it's starting to get hardened old and cracked, the PSI and treaddesign and treaddepth which are far more important to overall safety.

As for what I do; for my first set of OEM tires, I just rotated once, when the fronts were about 50% (backs were about 75%).
Then when the new fronts were about 25% the backs were also about 25%; i said time to switch to continental dws, these tires are getting hard and crusty.

For my current pair of dws, these are treadmarked with DWS. I plan to wear the fronts until the S goes away. Then switch the lesser worn rears (which still should have S showing) to the front for the next winter season until those S's go away.
Then finally time to replace when i only have Ws left at the start of the subsequent winter.

 

6500-7000 miles for a oil change

 

I do mine every 50% of the MM, which is roughly every 5500 miles. I used the Toyota 0W20 synthetic since it's first oil change. The stuff is cheap and convienient since I work at a Toyota dealer.

 

Per MSDS the DW1 is not synthetic, it's merely a blend just like Toyotas WS fluid.