Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

OK, I know how the tires rotate when you're only rotating 4. But I want to include the spare in the rotation sequence, because it's brand new as well. How does a five tire rotation pattern work?

A wise choice Pinkfingers! Here's the pattern I got from my nissan maunal...

Here you go, follow the 2nd picture... From tirerack site

I've always done the rear-cross (delicat's and konadog's images) on all of my vehicles (they've all been awd/4x4's).

That is the best way to rotate in a 5th or 6th wheel.

Thanks everyone.

be warned, some tires are directional, if you have that type of tire simply exchange front and back, do NOT cross over from side to side!

Green1 wrote:be warned, some tires are directional, if you have that type of tire simply exchange front and back, do NOT cross over from side to side!

x2 good point and one almost forgotten !

FalcoColumbarius wrote:Just one thing, Pink....

Take a close look at the tread wear difference between your active tyres and your spare. I just rotated my wheels and was going to rotate my spare into the cycle when I realised that my active tyres had worn a great deal more tread and by making the spare one active the tyres would be imbalanced, which could put my driving out of balance or at least wear my spare down really fast. If your spare is comparable in tread height then by all means rotate them.

Falco.

I've done less than 8000km on them, so they should be OK. They were all brand new to begin with.

Green1, they are BFG A/Ts.

The Pinkfingers wrote:

FalcoColumbarius wrote:Just one thing, Pink....

Take a close look at the tread wear difference between your active tyres and your spare. I just rotated my wheels and was going to rotate my spare into the cycle when I realised that my active tyres had worn a great deal more tread and by making the spare one active the tyres would be imbalanced, which could put my driving out of balance or at least wear my spare down really fast. If your spare is comparable in tread height then by all means rotate them.

Falco.

I've done less than 8000km on them, so they should be OK. They were all brand new to begin with.

That's the ticket - Buy 'em in sets of 5 and rotate every 10,000 clicks or so and they will all wear down evenly. That way when you do get a flat, the spare is already in sync with the rest. You'll have better tread on all of them for longer and you are more apt to keep tabs on the air pressure and age / condition of a spare that you drive on every 10,000 km. Btw, I'm appauled auto makers fit out vehicles with those little weenie spares - not much more that a motorcycle tire!

I've been doing the 5-tire rotation on my last several vehicles. With the Delica, I added a 6th for the Inuvik trip, so now it is great fun to do the rotations. I simply have 2 spares -- okay Green1 has the "2nd" spare, but that's another story. Keeping track of the mileage for each one is a trick. At my last rotation, when I got back from Inuvik, the actual mileage on each tire varied from 6,800 to 24,000. Only 2 tires had the same mileage, and one of them came off to be a spare, so right now every single tire has different mileage!

Keeping track is the hardest part. On previous vehicles I painted a letter on the back side of the rim, so far on the Delica I've been using a Sharpie pen on the balancing weights.

After all that, I had only the four rotated. The spare is on a different rim, which would have looked odd. So I guess when it comes time for new tires I will buy three, use the one on the spare, and put one of the used ones on my spare. I guess that means I have to buy the same kind of tires again (bfg a/t), which wasn't my plan, but oh well...