Rotate tires more often.
 

Fit now has about 19,000 miles. Given the treadwear rating of 400 on the original Firestone tires, I have to recommend rotating the tires more often than the maintenance minder says. My tires looked about 3/4 worn at 17,500 miles, and I've only done 2 rotations, at same time as oil change, at about 9500 miles, and 17,500. It takes 3 rotations before all tire-position configurations are completed. At the 4th rotation you are back to the original configuration. So there is position 1, 2, 3, and 4. I am now in position 3. Since I expect the tires to last only another 4000 miles, until about 23,000 miles, to give the last 2 configurations equal mileage, I'll have to rotate the tires at about 20,250 miles, giving config 3 and 4 only 2750 miles each - about 1/3 the miles driven in config 1, and 1/3 the miles driven in config 2. If I had thought things out before hand I would have ignored the maintenance minder and rotated the tires every 5000 to 6000 miles. That said, the treadwear on all 4 tires looks amazingly even. I've never seen tires wear this evenly. So I doubt switching to ideal rotation mileage would have increased tire mileage substantially, made more than 1000 miles difference.

In any case, I'd be happier with better tires. I've been thinking about Michelin Defenders (the only year-round model michelin makes for the LX's rims); I've always been happy with Michelins. Despite the 80,000 mile warranty, I'd only expect to keep them for 60,000 miles, given that the car is not garaged, and it will take me 8 years to go 80,000 miles at which point the rubber will be cracking.

I rotate every 5k miles, got about 40k miles out of the stock Firestone and had 3/32 left. YMMV with driving style, road composition, tire pressures etc.

i swap to snows every winter so i look at the treads and decide which tire should go to which corner every fall and spring. if they are pretty worn i usually put them on the front and place the better ones on the rear to prevent spin outs.

if they're in good condition with plenty of tread, i place the ones with more tread in the front.

as I posted in the OEM tread-life thread, just replaced my Firestones with Defenders. Now, normally I'm not the type to notice much car-related, except for two things here: One, the ride is much quieter than I'd expected; now I can tell exactly where the cabin noise is at freeway speed, and that it's cabin--not engine, and now, not tire-related. The other thing is, MPG has taken an immediate hit. It's only been a single tank, about 325 miles, but it's down by 1.5 or so.

Don't know what, if anything, to make of that.

That's a big drop in mileage, especially when it's not summertime. Did you check the inflation pressure?

I'll get a chance this weekend, thanks for the reminder.

33.5, nominal I assume

I had the Michelin Defenders on my GD3 when it got totaled. Love those tires, had the Hydroedge before that. Will probably get the Defenders once my OEM tires wear out.

Pirelli P4 Fourseason Plus
 

Looks like Michelin has stopped making the T speed-rating Defenders, and is only making the H speed-rating Defenders. Discount Tire wanted about $105 each (plus installation) for the H-rated Defenders. The T-rated Defenders I was planning to buy had been offered at about $90 each, but they couldn't get those any more, so I decided to go with some Pirelli P4 Four Season Plus tires at $75 each, instead of the Michelins. $120 less for a set of 4 tires. Consumers Reports rated the Pirellis nearly as good as the Michelins, with the Pirellis rated excellent for low rolling resistance and therefore low fuel consumption as opposed the Michelin's "very good," and the Michelins rated very good for handling as opposed to the Pirellis being "good." The Michelins were rated excellent for "noise level," a step better than the "very good" Pirellis. Right on the tires,Michelin says tread wear rated at 800, Pirelli 760. Both claim a 90,000 mile waranty. Since I do less than 10,000 miles per year, I am likely to have brittle, cracking tires before I run out of tread, with either tire. So I figured I'd go for the Pirellis. I usually buy Michelin. This is my first Pirelli purchase. So far they seem pretty good. I've only had them a day or 2 but so far they seem better than the original Firestones. The way they .respond to my steering wheel control feels better. Grip well on turns on wet roads; stop well on wet roads (it's been raining continually coninuously here since I drove out of the tire shop).

The first 2 times I had service at Discount tire they jacked up my car without damaging the pinch weld anywhere, but this last time they bent the right rear weld a bit. They jacked the car up just ahead of the reinforced area, instead of on it. Seems all the big lifts were occupied with other cars because they jacked mine up with 4 rolling jacks.

3 tires were manufactured early in 2018, one was manufactured week 32 of 2017 (just short of one year ago).

The Pirellis looked new – I could see the mold marks on the tread – but they had only 8.5 mm of tread depth! Most tires start out with 10 to 12. Could Pirelli have really improved the rubber composition so much that a tire with an 8.5 mm deep tread will last as long as a tire with 10mm?

Unusual-looking tire. Pictures of the tire (with a dislaimer about how well they represent an actual tire) show 2 circumferential grooves. Most tires have 4. The (fairly narrow) 185/60-15 Pirellis for my Fit, had only 1. It was a rather wide groove.

After neglecting the original tires I will rotate my new ones every 5000-6000 miles. I rotated on the driveway the other day using the stock jack and the donut as a spacer and it was a piece-of-cake job. No reason to neglect it.

Every car I owned to date had two sets of wheels that I alternated between seasons.
This way thread life for both summer -and winter tires doubled.
And rotation happened twice a year.
I personally find keeping an eye on the correct tire pressure to be an often overlooked but extremely useful habit. I check monthly.
That and obviously a proper alignment.

It took me 3 1/2 hours doing it this way. 4 hours with a helper. The hardest part for me is torqueing the nuts. That is nearly the last thing to do, so I'm already tired from doing the others. By the time I torque 2 nuts on the first wheel, I have to take a seat, and have a rest. I don't have any sort of heart or lung condition, I'm only 70 years old. I wasn't able to do it an awful lot faster when I was younger. It is torque 2 nuts, rest 15 minutes - you get the idea. Time seems to add up. I have a 120 volt AC electric impact wrench but it doesn't have a torque adjustment, so I can only use it for taking the nuts off but I usually just use a 1/2-drive bar and a socket to take the nuts off. It takes only a second to break each nut free, and not a lot of strength, then once the car is in the air, it takes only a few seconds of twirling around to get each nut off. The impact wrench wouldn't save much time. What would save me time is an impact wrench with a torque adjustment for putting the nuts back on, but I just use a simple, accurate, bendy-bar torque wrench.

I bought a rolling jack and 4 jackstands but it only takes 1/2 hour off of the job. And because the front jack point is so low to the ground, and so far back, about even with the rear of the brake disks, I have to drive the car up on 1.5 inch (40 mm) pieces of wood first, before I can get the jack pad to the jack point, and then I can move the jacking lever up and down only a little bit at first, before it bumps into the car's bumper. I don't think that there is any rolling hydraulic jack being made, that will actually fit under the front of the 3rd generation fit, without first driving the car up onto low height ramps of some sort.

If it took me that long to do a tire rotation, I'd just take it somewhere.

Got my tires on the 4runner at Firestone, so they do rotating for free. My wife drives it so that's her responsibility.

The Fit I do myself. Drive it partially on ramps. Loosen nuts with impact wrench. Jack up front to put on Jack stands. Jack up rear to put on jack stands. Rotate the tires and put the nuts back on. Lower the car and user a torque wrench set to 80 ft/lb to tighten the nuts in a cruise pattern. Takes about 30 minutes

Yea I would just pay the $15-$25 to have it done somewhere if it took that long.

They make low profile hydraulic jacks. I have a HF one and it works great!!

2-7/8" inch minimum!!

https://www.harborfreight.com/3-ton-...ump-61253.html

Another benefit of having a real spare. Makes rotating tires a lot easier when it's included in the rotation.

I haven't rotated my tires that often- the only goal is that they all wear out at the same time. So rotating them half-way through their life is good enough for me.

2 7/8 inch
 

The saddle pad on that jack goes down to 2 7/8 inch, but the distance from the center of saddle pad to the shaft around which the lifting arm rotates looks longer than the distance from the front bumper to the front center lift point of the car, so it looks to me like it won't work (my Harbor Freight low-height saddle pad jack does not work either). It looks to me that the end of the lift arm where it rotates around the shaft is maybe about 6 inches above the ground, so before the saddle pad can go far enough under the car to reach the car's lift point, it looks to me like lift arm will start bumping into the car's bumper, and you won't be able to get the jack in far enough under the car for the lift pad to align with the car's lift point. That is sort of the problem that I have with my harbor freight 1.5 ton aluminum racing jack (which I bought because it is light enough for me to lift into the car's "trunk" and take with me to somewhere where I can work on the car). The saddle pad goes down to 3.5 inches and that is low enough because the lift point under the car is about 5 inches above the ground but the plastic shrouding in front of the car's lift point, and the fact that the lifting arm gets higher off the ground as you proceed toward the rear of the jack, prevents the jack from rolling far enough inward under the car, for its saddle pad to align with the car's lift point.

My procedure is almost exactly the same as 2Rismo2's procedure. Except for a "ramp" I use 2 pieces of 2 x 12 lumber with one end of each piece cut at an angle, and I don't use an impact wrench to loosen the nuts. I don't use an impact wrench because 1. I usually work some place where I don't have access to electric power and I don't have a battery operated impact wrench. 2. Breaking a nut loose with a bar handle and a socket and then spinning the nut off by spinning the bar, takes only a few seconds longer for each nut, than breaking the nut loose with an impact wrench and spinning it off with the impact wrench. I figure I'd save maybe 30 seconds for each nut, about 8 minutes total, by using an impact wrench to loosen the nuts instead of a socket wrench and bar handle. Now tightening the nuts – that would go a lot faster with an impact wrench that has a torque adjustment. I looked and looked and couldn't find a battery operated one with a torque adjustment. The only kind with torque adjustment seems to be one that relies on a compressor. Torqueing the nuts is the hardest part of the job for me.

Too often, when I take the car to a "professional" to do something that requires lifting the car - like buying new tires - the "professional" misses the reinforced area on the pinch weld with her lifting device, and bends the pinchweld. I hate having my pinchweld bent.

Even if I didn't have to rest between torquing nuts, I don't see how it could be done in 30 minutes. 10 seconds to break each nut free. Times 16 nuts that's about 3 minutes. 5 minutes to align the ramps with the front wheels and drive up on them. 25 minutes to carefully align the saddle pad with the car's front lift point and jack up the car, pull the ramps out of the way, carefully place 2 jackstands under the 2 front lift points behind each wheel with a piece of plywood under each stand, lowering the car and making sure the car's lift points land squarely in the center of each jack stand, then after the car is all the way down double-checking to make sure the car is well-supported, walking from side to side to check each jack stand and shaking the car to make sure it's secure. Doing the same at the rear is a little faster. No ramps, the car is lighter, aligning the lift pad with the rear lift point is a lot easier: 15 minutes. 5 minutes to unscrew each nut and take off each wheel. That's 20 minutes total for 4 wheels. Checking and measuring the front brake pads: 5 minutes. Rolling the tires to their new positions, making sure the inside of each wheel is free of sand particles and doing the same for the front hubs and the rear drums, wipe off sand particles with a rag and lifting the tires up onto the hubs and the drums, making sure the nut seating surfaces on the wheel and at the inside of the nut are free of sand, starting the nuts, and turning them hand tight: about 30 minutes. Lowering the rear: 2 minutes. Lowering the front onto the ramps 5 minutes. That's almost 2 hours already, and I haven't started tightening and then torqueing the nuts yet. I haven't rolled the car off of the ramps yet. I haven't put the hubcaps back on yet.

tread depth error correction
 

I make mistake. Discount Tires listed the tread depth of the Pirelli P4 Four Seasons Plus as "10" so I assumed that meant 10 mm. How foolish of me. The tread depth acc to tire rack is 10 - thirty seconds of an inch. I measured 8.5 mm with a precision engraved ruler (I was too lazy to bring out my vernier caliper) but 10/32 inch comes to 8 mm. So my measurement was pretty close to the spec. And my mistake: most tires start with 10 to 12 - thirty seconds of an inch not 10 to 12 mm. So the tire was similar to most tires as far as tread depth goes. Also, the P4 Four Seasons were listed as having 12/32 inch, not 12 mm. So the P4 Four Seasons Plus did have less tread depth and the P4 Four Seasons, 10/32 inch instead of 12/32. Since both tires were rated as having the same treadwear rating, 760, Pirelli must indeed have improved the rubber composition of the shallower-treaded P4 Plus, as compared to the P4, in regard to its ability to last long, in order to make it last as long despite having less tread.

So far I've noticed that the pirellis handle better than the oem Firestones. Around curves, car sticks to the road noticeably better. Steering feel is better, car responds better to turning the steering wheel. I haven't measured wet braking distance but it seems to brake well in wet weather. It is comfortable and not noisy - better than the Firestones in that regard.