Tire rotation and front vs rear wear

[TregoMark]

Hi all! I'm new to the forum and have a question. I bought a '97 j30t about a year ago and I have a question about tire wear. The front tires on my j30 are more worn than the rear tires. I was wondering if in general the rear tires experience more wear (rear wheel drive) or the front ones? I don't know if the previous owner recently rotated the tires or not, so I need to know if I should rotate the fronts to the rear or leave them as is.Thanks!

[RustspecS13]

They have likely been rotated recently. Most cars will wear the fronts faster just because the weight of the engine and driver, AFAIK the j30 is no exception.

If you havn't done anything in a year, Id take it to a tire shop and get them rebalanced and have a professional check them out for cupping due to a lack of rotation.

They may or may not try to sell you tires, but keep in mind they are legally bald when they hit even with the wear bars, and loose alot of winter and wet weather traction when they are double the wear bar depth.

I dont own a j30 btw, I just work at a tire shop, I have worked on a few j30 but sadly there aren't many in the areas Ive worked at.

~Alex

[driverdriver]

Inspect your front struts to see if they're okay.

When the front struts start to give on the J(common age related problem), your front tires will start to wear faster and unevenly than your rears.

[TregoMark]

Thanks for the info. I'll check the struts for leakage. What would uneven wear caused by bad struts look like? Would there be more wear on the inside or outside edge of the tire?

Oh, I changed the front and rear brake pads yesterday using the DIY write up.

[J30inthe sun]

My last set of tires I put on at @ 84,000 miles (Dunlop SP Sport A2 Plus 215/60/15 - known to wear out sooner that the 50,000 miles they are rated for) I rotated them 3 or 4 times in the first 15,000 miles & didn't rotate them after. I got about 23,000 miles out of them. I put on 4 new tires last September. The front tires were worn on the inside down to the cords while the outside of the front tires were almost down to the wear bar indicators whereas the back tires were even across the entire tire to the wear bar indicators.

My rear struts & all associated rubber pieces were replaced at @ 90,000 miles & I replaced the entire front suspension between 108,000 - 113,000 miles (tension rod bushings, struts, upper strut mounts, springs, rack & pinion unit, outer tie rod ends, lower control arms with ball joints & stabilizer bar links ). The front struts went in around 2 weeks after the new tires.

I would attribute the uneven front tire wear to worn out front struts. I bought the car with 39,000 miles on it & would veture to say they had the original struts in them.
Modified by J30inthe sun at 5:00 PM 3/1/2009

[TregoMark]

Thanks for that description. My front tires have even wear on the inside and outside. I'll still check the struts though.

And just to confirm, If the fronts are worn more than the rears, I should rotate the fronts to the back because the fronts wear faster on the j30. Right?

[J30inthe sun]

I would guess that if my front suspension was not worn so badly that the wear would have been more even. Of course rotating the tires at every oil change at 3,000 miles should even out the wear better.

Oh & remember the stock spoke type rims are directional, right & left sided so rotation would be left front to left rear, right front to right rear.