jlkline

I have 19" turbo wheels with Michelin Super Sports on my 997.1 and have curb rashed my right rear wheel several times. Its been fixed twice, but I'm at the limit for another wheel repair since it would involve additional machining. I want to share the pain (well hopefully not!) by swapping the rear wheels/tires left to right. The tires are about 1/4 worn.

Can I just swap them over, or should I just swap the wheels and leave the tires where they are? (requires dismounting / remounting the tires on the wheels.) FYI... Its my understanding that the tires are non-directional and asymmetrical.

997_Toronto

The inside & outside tread on the tires is different, you sld swap the tires as well.

And maybe avoid parking so close to the curb? :P

semicycler

Non-directional tires mean you can rotate wheels left & right without dismounting the tires. They are designed to do this. But check your wear patterns on the left versus right first. If they are similar than go for it.

jlkline

Toronto,

I don't recall anything in my post about parking problems

jlkline

The wear is pretty even across both tires, so I think I'm good for the full swap. I wanted to avoid the wheel machine if I could, and it sounds like I can.

Thanks for the quick reply.

997_Toronto

I thought all tires were directional because of the tread pattern to push the water back & out...guess not. I know the tires I run have a different tread on the outer edge than on the inner edge.

OKB

tpms will swap

ADias

I would not swap the tires. Doing so the belts will be pushed in the opposite direction away from their settling point. Wrong move.

Wayne Smith

This. Once loads are placed primarily in one direction it is best to not push them in the other direction. While technically you can flip them per tread pattern, it is generally ill advised (IMHO).

jlkline

Well, I had read this in a few posts about left right swaps, but didn't see anything about issues from folks like Tire Rack who would be motivated by any opportunity to sell you new tires. In fact they show an illustration of L/R swap for high performance tires as OK.

Can anyone point to a technical article on this topic?

jhbrennan

Correct...and the outer edge remains the outer edge if you swap wheels side to side.

Wayne Smith

I was taught in the late 60s when radials first became available that swaps were front to back on the same side only for the same reason ADias stated. Bias plys always X rotated, so this was new. This belief was maintained during my stint in the tire industry in the late 70s. I will admit that this was more than a couple of months ago. If things have changed, I am not aware of it, but maybe you can do the side to side swap these days.

I took my wheels in for new PSS tires at the beginning of the year. When I brought them home I realized there was no rotation arrow and that regardless of how I mounted them the tread would rotate the same. So to that end, maybe the side to side works.

But it goes against everything I was taught and know.

ADias

Michelin PSS are not initially directional but they are asymmetric and as such they have an 'Outside' marking. However, steel belts settle with rotation. When the rotation is reversed they get... unsettled.

What you learned is still true today with modern radials. You and I care about these things but I am convinced most people do not care either way as far as performance or safety.

stronbl

It will cost you a bit of money (not terribly much though as compared to new wheels or new tires), but you could remove tires from the wheels, and then swap wheels. replace the tires so they remain on their original side and rebalance the sets. If you have 3/4 tread remaining on each tire, this should work to give you a good remaining tread life and meet your objective of "sharing the pain" among your wheels.

jlkline

Yes, that was my question from the original post...

Anyway, based on what I've read in mutiple articles, it is not a problem to swap L-R for non directional performance tires, so that is what I did. If I encounter any problems, I will post, but I don't anticipate any.