Law for replacing less than four tires

[Dave]

There is nothing to discuss, this is the law.

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Notice that it doesn’t mention fwd or rwd, that is because it doesn’t matter

Topic

[James O’Hara]

LOL so biased is this poster. I laughed when I read this crap in Pep Boys. If you have a front engine car the weight will help balder tires and the newer tires in the rear prevent fish tail. Yay everything is good. Now do the same to a rear engine car. You have no engine weight in the front with bald tires which means yay I can’t steer.

You have to think with this crap it isn’t one size fits all.

With that being said with All wheel drive all 4 must be replaced. With 4 wheel drive it does not as 4 wheel drive is not engaged unless you do so purposefully.

Then there is rotating most people rotate in an X pattern this does not work for directional tires. I personally do not do the X pattern on my family vehicles because of heat cycling and if you say well it will wear the one edge out then you need a proper alignment. At work I follow the X pattern because there are no directional tires for big rigs that I have seen. Also because this is what tire manufacturers say to do. I personally know it will wear out the tire faster but….

Would replacing all 4 fix this problem ya sure. Would rotating the tires when you do a state inspection or oil change do the same thing ya because they would wear evenly. Tires are always going to wear unevenly. Regardless of All Wheel Drive etc. Reason for this is because people make more turns in one direction then the other because we don’t like to cross across lanes of traffic. So you make more rights then lefts in the US. Plus if you are right handed you tend to make more right when needing to go around the block to turn around that added to once again not wanting to cross against traffic. No one really thinks about this kind of stuff other then tire manufacturers and even sometimes it escapes them because they don’t look at the human element. Wanna know why tires on the pass side fail more then drivers side its because the driver does not look at it every time he gets into his vehicle. I know a fair amount about this because in Big Rigs tires are big money.

As for a law to replace all 4 screw that if I get a blow out or rub a curb so i do not get hit I am not replacing 4 tires for 1 or 2.

[Daniel Beaird]

[quote=”MDK22″ post=136290]LOL so biased is this poster. I laughed when I read this crap in Pep Boys. If you have a front engine car the weight will help balder tires and the newer tires in the rear prevent fish tail. Yay everything is good. Now do the same to a rear engine car. You have no engine weight in the front with bald tires which means yay I can’t steer.[/quote]

You Sir are incorrect. If you loose grip on the front tires you will feel it before the turn thus slowing down and gaining control. On the other hand if your rear tires are bald you won’t feel that until it is too late and the rear of your car is sliding out. Watch the video, one car had bad front tires the other bad rear. Which one lost control? If what you say is true then why didn’t the car with the bad front tires drive straight off the track instead of making the turn? This isn’t the only video on You Tube showing this it’s just the only one I could find from an actual tire manufacturer. Discount Tire and Sears Auto center are the only other two I could find.

The other argument I have heard is “The new tires won’t do you any good on the rear if you can’t get moving to begin with.” This obviously is meant with front wheel drive in mind. Personally I would rather not be able to go than to kill a family of four but that’s just how I look at it.

The 4×4 myth. Sorry to burst your bubble but four wheel drive or all wheel drive vehicles act no different than front wheel or rear wheel drive vehicles on ice or while hydroplaning. It doesn’t matter how many wheels have power going to them they are going to slide. The issue is with momentum and centrifugal force that, while taking a curve, is constantly pushing the back of your car towards the outside of the direction you are turning.

[James O’Hara]

Did you skip over the whole front engine, rear engine part? I believe you may have. Both of those vehicles are front engine front wheel drive cars in that video as are a huge majority of the cars on the road. I was not saying front wheel drive, rear wheel drive I was saying front engine, rear engine. The weight distribution is completely different. It is also why you are required to have more tread on steer tires on a big rig.

Secondly when did I say hydro planing when talking about the 4 wheel drive vs all wheel drive. I was talking about tire wear.

Weight distribution plays a huge role in tire contact with the road. Think of it like a seesaw you put weight on one end the other goes up. Acceleration can make this worse in rear wheel drive rear engine cars as most rear engine cars are rear wheel drive. Bald or Balding tires push water away less effectively. The tires then can sit on top of the water which is what hydroplaning is. So you have an rear engine rear wheel drive, plus acceleration, plus bald tires = inability to steer. It is just plain common sense. Do 99%of cars out there meet those criteria no. But, that 1% are normally pretty well off people with pretty well off lawyers.

Also you are assuming that the person will slow down when they start to loose contact. Funny thing happens in a front wheel drive front engine car when you have the tires reversed from what you/poster said and you accelerate smoothly it pulls the back end straight back into line with the car. How do I know this because my dad has been getting them reverse of what the poster said all my life and I drove the family cars in PA for years with tons of black ice, rain, free standing water. Only time that doesn’t work is when all 4 loose contact and guess what if that happened the one way its going to the other. Other thing I find interesting about this is stopping distance but, it only helps stopping distance having balding the front and added traction in the back because of weight distribution like I mentioned before. If you have ever talked to a good Big rig driver if the trailer starts coming around you accelerate and it pulls it back straight. This is because of angler momentum. Want a safe way to test what I just said? Take a piece of string and a rectangular piece of cardboard put down some chalk or tape lines and have someone push the back end out like a car kicks out and then have the other person pull on the string. It reduce he swing of the back end and decreases the arc that will become the path of the out of control cardboard. The string is the engine pulling or accelerating. It is more pronounced and more accurate with Styrofoam and water. You can also counter steer slightly at the same time as accelerating smoothly, though this can actually promote hydro-planning on the front tires as it will force more water under them so it is a tight rope to walk with the counter steering.

As any mechanic knows there is more then one way to do something. Just because someone says something and they are a pro doesn’t mean that is the only way or that they are necessarily even right.. In a large majority of cases the rule works just not always. May also want to be mindful of overloaded trucks.

[Author]

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