4 or 5 wheel rotation?

[Dusty Dude]

The age of your tires come into play as well. The rubber compound will start to crack as time goes by, regardless of how much tread you have. Getting four new tires and then relying on an old dry rotted spare isn’t a good idea.

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[Ratbert]

Also lower your tire pressure to 32ish or you're leaving a lot of meat on the outside tread.

The "correct" pressure depends on the tire, the Jeep's weight, and altitude.

 

[SadRobot]

I just got mine rotated at 5k miles and decided to rotate in the spare in this pattern after reading up about it on the forums. The shop wanted to rotate them a different way but from what I read this is the best way for rear & 4wheel drive vehicles:

 

[jman]

Man, I wish I did 5 tire rotation. I have way too much wear to do that now. Lessons learned.

 

[greige]

I like a 5 tire rotation where one of the back tires goes onto the spare, and the spare goes to a front. Main reason I like this is the front tires are more likely to be cupped and I don't want an ugly cupped tire on the spare.

 

[azjl#3]

nah, 4 wheel, buy 4 instead of 5. spare is a spare, not a hiway cruiser, they last 5 plus years easy.

 

[Jeep Wick]

I find that switching sides and changing the direction helps with the cupping. This is basically what I do and I just eyeball which tire is the worst and swap it with the spare.

 

[jadewolf]

I typically rotate all 5, to keep the wear more even and extend the life of all of them.

That said, I recently had to replace one and all they had available at the time for my tire was E and the rest are C. Sooo... the E is now the spare and I'm dropping it from the rotation. But in general, barring weird circumstances like this, I'd always recommend rotating all 5.

 

[SOON]

Appreciate all the info. Thanks all!

 

[agpthng]

Hello. Need some advice. I have a ‘23 Willys 4XE. About 6300 miles. Gonna rotate the tires but not sure what I want to do. I have the factory MT’s and plan on upgrading to 35’s when these tires have run their course. So should I rotate all 5 tires? Or just the 4 and keep the spare brand new to trade in when the time comes? Don’t even know if trading or selling a single tire is a worthwhile thing?

We usually rotate in the spare with the exception of this time. Waiting on new Mickey Thompson's only ordered 4 since my spare is still in good shape (57,000 on the set that I have now, which I think is awesome that I'm getting this kind of mileage out of them.)

 

[Blue Bear]

+1 on a 5 tire rotation. I run 37" Nitto Trail Grappler MTs, and since I got 'em at Discount Tire, I rotate every 3,000 miles. It's free and easy, so why not?

 

[Discount Tire]

+1 on a 5 tire rotation. I run 37" Nitto Trail Grappler MTs, and since I got 'em at Discount Tire, I rotate every 3,000 miles. It's free and easy, so why not?

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[silverooby]

I had planned to do 5 tire rotation, but during the last 5K miles, my tires got beat up and chipped doing lava rock climbing. Although they still have plenty of tread, the spare looks pristine compared to the other 4. It would look kind of weird having one nice roller. I'll just keep the spare where it is and convert it to a roller when I buy new tires. Never driving lava rocks again BTW.

 

[6.2Blazer]

If you have a matching spare I always recommend doing the 5 tire rotation. Wranglers are one of the few vehicles out there that actually come with a matching spare. A lot of cars nowadays come with one of those tiny space saver spares. Even on trucks that come with a matching style and size tire, usually the wheel is a generic steel version that doesn't match the other 4 wheels.
- There is very little market for selling a single spare tire, especially a stock one.
- Even if/when you do sell it, it won't be worth much.
- Regardless of the miles, the tires have an age limit on them. Especially a spare sitting completely exposed on the tailgate with no cover on it.
- Even if you only want to buy 4 tires instead of all 5 the next time, you could still keep the best one of the original tires to use as a spare. Assuming you didn't run the tires down to the steel belts showing. As long as it had a little bit of tread left it would still work as an emergency spare to get you back home or to a shop.
- I wouldn't be too concerned about a moderate amount of different wear between tires, like if you waited a little too long to rotate in the spare. As mentioned above a LOT of vehicles come with the little space saver spares anyway. Wouldn't recommend running a brand new mud terrain at one position where the other 3 only had 25% tread left, but I wouldn't be too concerned about a small to moderate difference.

 

[bcupton]

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