Tire rotation

I notice the factory tires rotation is taking the front and cross them over to the back and the back tires come straight forward. I have after market wheels and Toyota Open Country M/T tires. My question is do I rotate as described above? Also how come the front tires cross over to the back instead of just transferring straight to the back?

If you transfer straight to back it doesn't change the tire rotation. You can rotate anyway you like as long as you repeat what you did

The cross over is to ensure that the tires wear evenly from side to side across the tread of the tire. Going front to back is for the same purpose. The front tires tend to wear on the outside of the tread while the rear tires tend to wear toward the center of the tread. The goal is to have them wear as flat as possible.

I use 4-wheel rotation every 5K on my Open Country MTR's.

Now if I could just find a decent alignment shop.

Madcowranch said:

I use 4-wheel rotation every 5K on my Open Country MTR's.

Now if I could just find a decent alignment shop.

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No kidding. I don't see how hard it could be to keep the wheel straight. Any place I go it's constantly off center.

Also if you have a spare tire, I think it would be better to keep it in the rotation too.

Huck said:

No kidding. I don't see how hard it could be to keep the wheel straight. Any place I go it's constantly off center.

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One thing to keep in mind about alignments. The alignment guys are often setting vehicles up a little off center on purpose to account for the slope of the road surface. Because most roads are paved with a slope or concave form for rain run off purposes, if the alignment is set up perfectly centered, the vehicle will follow the slope of the road surface and seem as if it is pulling to the right. So most alignment techs will align it slightly to the left so that the vehicle will track more true on an average road. You do still need to watch them and check behind them though, I have actually seen some alignment techs leave control arm bolts loose, etc causing all kinds of issues.

Mine tracks straight, flows the crown of the road a bit. Steering wheel is always off to the right.

truckarl said:

Also if you have a spare tire, I think it would be better to keep it in the rotation too.

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No TPMS in the spare so not a good choice. Not sure if the truck will allow a 5th sensor maybe some one can tell us.

As for rotation every 5k R to F and F cross to rear has worked great for me.

My alignment is also straight following the crown (I asked for this) but the steering wheel is to the right as well going back to my shop to remedy this.

truckarl said:

Also if you have a spare tire, I think it would be better to keep it in the rotation too.

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X2, I am going to that when its time for tire rotation.