Take a look at the above tire in the picture. Is it on the wrong side? I put my aftermarket wheel/tire on the car myself but I could not find any arrow indicators or anything to show me the correct rotation of the tire. The tread originally was not a dead giveaway either.

But looking at the above, it appears that if it was to move forward, it would draw water inwards towards the cars and if it backed up, it would pull water from inside towards the outside of the car.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Am I paranoid? Maybe it doesn't make a different on late model tires.

 

It looks like its not inwards towards the car... but to the bigger channels near the middle.

If you are following the angled treads... you'll see that on one side it "starts" in the middle of the chunk of tread and ends in the bigger channel, but on the other side, it starts at the channel and ends in the middle of a chunk of tread, if you're following rotation. Flip it around and it looks exactly the same.

It's a bi-directional tire.

In any case, inwards towards the car or outwards doesn't matter... it's the tire itself that matters... so long as it channeling water to a bigger channel so it's easier to move around and isn't a backwards UNI-directional, you're fine.

 

Thank your very much for your post and info. It's been bothering me ever since I installed the wheels. I kept looking but wanted to be absolutely sure there wasn't a hidden arrow somewhere on the tires that I couldn't see.

 

From what I see they look to be non-assymetical. Even though the words are facing a certain direction you should be ok. I'm not sure what Goobers is referring to with the grooves being bigger on a specific side. From what I see the pattern and tread design is uniform (non-assyetical).

If you want look for the DOT numbers. Unless the tire has OWL option tires are typically mounted with the DOT date on the outside.

 

I agree that it looks like a bidirectional rotation/symmetric tread design.

In my rather limited experience, tires where the rotation direction matters are pretty clearly marked as such. If you can't find any markings that specify a rotation direction, it's almost certainly because it just doesn't matter. There's no reason for a tire manufacturer to put such important safety information in unreadably small writing or otherwise hide it (and every reason for them to want it to be clear).

 

yah wat drew said. if there's no "OUTSIDE" or "<= ROTATION" marking on the sidewall, it just an ordinary non-directional tire.