I am going to rotate my stock Dunlop SP SPORT 700 A/S tires and can't quite tell if they are directional or not? The tread pattern is not totally symmetric, however there is no obvious wording on the sides that indicate a particular direction of rotation.

Should I just swap them front to back, or is is ok to cross sides with these tires too?

 

na there not there normal tires front to back bro

 

Thanks, I thought with non-directional tires you swap front to back and also across sides on one end?

 

asymetrical so u can use it on any corner just as long as the tires are mounted with OUTSIDE on the outside side of the wheel.

 

you can do the cross if you want, but usually i do a front/rear rotation until i find a pair that has the most tread and use it in the rear to prevent spin outs and just replace them when the front pair are low.

 

Maybe I should just skip the rotation get new tires- I'm at the tread wear lines in the front, but have more tread on the backs as-is. I'm right at 50K miles too- which isn't so bad for a set of tires like these I guess.

Thanks for mentioning your thinking on rear tread to prevent spin-outs!

 

tirerack says these are asymmetric only so just inside/outside, so yes you can cross the tires.

However, don't overthink tire rotations. First, what's the purpose? just to squeeze out a bit more tire life.
Front to back will cover most of uneven wear. Side-to-side swapping on a properly aligned car won't stretch your tire life out that much longer; so it's splitting hairs.
Plenty of cars with corner-specific tires, and they aren't losing sleep over it.

I stopped crossing my tires even for symmetric tires, as they seemed to just roll a bit more true if you keep them going the same direction for their whole lifespan. (I also change them out a couple of mm before it actually hits the legal wear bar limit too)

 

That does it- I'm done trying to eek out more miles, I'm getting new ones!

Thanks everyone!

 

Sounds good.

Forgot to mention but sometimes you can encounter unwanted increase in road noise from tire rotation, especially the cross rotation.

 

Asymmetrical Tires are those that the tread pattern on one side is different than the other side. They will always have something on the sidewall that says "THIS SIDE OUT" - or words to that effect.

Both asymmetrical and symmetrical tires can be cross rotated - meaning basically there are no restrictions as to what rotation pattern you CAN use.

If doesn't say "THIS SIDE OUT", then it is not asymmetrical and it doesn't matter which side is out. Put another way - it is symmetrical.

But if one side of the tire is marked This Side Out, make sure you don't have to crawl under the car to read it. If you have to, you need to take it off and remount it. Will you feel the difference? I really doubt it unless you are into autocrossing or SCCA competition.

 

welcome to yesterday, post #4.

 

Look for directional arrows or text molded in the sidewalls - look carefully sometimes they are hard to see. If they are, only switch frt to back and vice versa on the sdame sdide.