The 5-tire PERFECT rotation schedule for MAX tread life and value.

[Easy-v]

I am not sure how to respond to this, in my 30'ish years of driving 4x4's the steering tires always wear faster unless you are doing burnouts or something. Front two carry more weight, get "scrubbed" against the ground in turning, weight transfers forward in braking so front tires do 70-80% of braking force which affects the tire life. Lastly, weight and heat are both higher in the front end.

I noticed in another thread you had posted this "right rear" comment and that front's should outlast the back but every comment after was agreeing with the dealerships/tire shops and general experience of drivers that the fronts always wear faster. In researching I also have no idea were you got this right rear wheel only thing. Broncos absolutely have a differential that sends power equally to the rear tires. I hate to just call someone wrong but maybe you could point to a source where you got this info? I certainly can't find anything to make me understand what you meant by that.

The weight of the engine rests on that front axle…

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[Hemisfear]

I've never had an issue just rotating tires.

When I would swap between different sets of tires though, I would usually need to do a relearn. Maybe different brands of TPMS or something, I dunno.

Me neither, pressure values are always quick to update as well!

 

[87-Z28]

Rotate every 1/2 mile and choose any random ass pattern you can come up with after a twelve pack. Tire wear will be guaranteed to be perfectly even and consistent. No fun on longer trips, except the 12 pack part.

 

[Fordified1]

Right rear is your main drive tire. If the fronts are somehow getting more wear than your rear I would think you have an alignment issue.

I use the rotation others have posted, where the spare goes to the right rear.

Right rear is not the main drive tire but is the tire that slips first without a locked or limited slip differential because the driveshaft is trying to lift the right rear during acceleration. Ask any drag racer.
The fronts wear first because they do the turning and geometry is a compromise and never perfect through the articulation cycles. And yes a poor alignment makes that even worse. I screwed up and didn’t rotate my mud tires often enough and the left front started cupping before I did the first rotation. Alignment was as perfect as one can be in a non perfect world.

 

[AZ_Liberty]

Right rear is not the main drive tire but is the tire that slips first without a locked or limited slip differential because the driveshaft is trying to lift the right rear during acceleration. Ask any drag racer.
The fronts wear first because they do the turning and geometry is a compromise and never perfect through the articulation cycles. And yes a poor alignment makes that even worse. I screwed up and didn’t rotate my mud tires often enough and the left front started cupping before I did the first rotation. Alignment was as perfect as one can be in a non perfect world.

Right rear wears because Bronco has an open rear. Which is pretty ridiculous if you think about it. My Mustang has better performance on a dirt road when the Bronco is in 2WD.

If you do a lot of high speed cornering you get wear on the outside corners of the fronts, but the primary wear is on the drive tires.

Drive a vehicle with staggered wheels/tires. (thus can't/don't rotate). You will replace the rears twice as often as the fronts.

 

[crenca]

On all of our Chevy/GMC 2500/3500 HD 2WD work trucks, the outside edge of the front right (passenger) tire always wore out way faster than anything else. We always guessed it had something to do with the rear right being the dominant drive wheel and the truck resisting right hand turns a bit more than left, but I dunno. This was a consistent thing across 20+ model years of trucks in our fleet.

Right rear is not the main drive tire but is the tire that slips first without a locked or limited slip differential because the driveshaft is trying to lift the right rear during acceleration. Ask any drag racer.

A few things are being conflated here. As the OP pointed out, the Bronco has open differentials (unless they are electro-mecahnically locked with the "hero" button), which mechanically distributes torque across both wheels on the axle evenly, even when the wheel speed differentiates (thus the reason they are called "differentials"), for example in a turn (i.e. the outside wheel has to turn faster - because the arc it is on is longer - vs. the inside wheel in the turn).

The right rear tire often spins first (i.e. looses traction and "smokes" during a burnout, whether intentional or not) not due to the properties of an open differential, but because that corner is unloaded - has less weight on the tire, and thus less traction. Why? Because of the rotational force of the engine, through the drivetrain, unloads the right rear side - assuming your engine spins in the traditional direction (clockwise viewed from front, counter-clockwise when viewed from the rear). In other words, the engine/driveline torque wants to "twist" the axle such that the driver rear is loaded more, which gives it more traction (traction is a function of friction - more weight means more friction), meaning the passenger rear will typically break loose first.

Back when the typical rear drive car had soft suspensions, and particularly when frames could be twisted just from engine torque alone several inches (particularly high HP "muscle cars" of the 1960's through 1990's), right rear wear was more of an issue. Most vehicles today are stiff enough, and the suspensions robust enough, that other factors are more of an issue. Pickups are the exception because they a lightly loaded in the rear when they are not carrying a load in the bed or on the hitch.

Our Bronco's with their turbo engines have significantly less low end torque then a V8 (gas or diesel) equipped pickup, but if you do get the rear end to 'burnout' it will still be the passenger if your in a straight line or turning left. If your turning right the weight shift of the vehicle lean will probably overwhelm the driveline twist effect and cause driver rear to break loose first.

If you have it, just put your driveline in AWD (i.e. "4A") all the time and this particular rear wear pattern goes away.

 

[majorhavok]

If you have it, just put your driveline in AWD (i.e. "4A") all the time and this particular rear wear pattern goes away.

Chris, great comment and explanation. After seeing Liberty's comment a couple times here I was googling trying to learn something and the google AI agreed with him. Source cited was: "some bronco6g users reported faster wear on the rear tires. " The commenter in both links was Liberty AZ.

hahahaha.. I shit you not.

I DID find others with similar experiences as Liberty on tire wear so a lot depends on driving style, preferred driving mode, towing etc. Also, I didn't initially think about people with different trim levels. I just assumed that everyone had the Wildtrak locking everything capabilities and all the modes/features but should have known better. Cheers

 

[Fordified1]

Chris, great comment and explanation. After seeing Liberty's comment a couple times here I was googling trying to learn something and the google AI agreed with him. Source cited was: "some bronco6g users reported faster wear on the rear tires. " The commenter in both links was Liberty AZ.

hahahaha.. I shit you not.

I DID find others with similar experiences as Liberty on tire wear so a lot depends on driving style, preferred driving mode, towing etc. Also, I didn't initially think about people with different trim levels. I just assumed that everyone had the Wildtrak locking everything capabilities and all the modes/features but should have known better. Cheers

When I was 16-20-something, I definitely wore the rear tires out much faster than the front. And the right rear on my parents Buick with an open diff. As a fully matured adult who doesn’t like buying tires or gas, my front tires wear faster. So yes driving style has a lot to do with it.

 

[Notmattwong]

I did this today and found out my jack lifts the front just barely high enough to get the wheels off. I also learned it’s a workout to lug around these 85ish pound wheels and tires.

 

[RockyMtn]

Hello All,

I had planned to upgrade to some 37''s on my 2023 Wildtrak but the economics pushed me to keep the stock 35's. $1200 out the door installed for 4 new Goodyears vs $2500+ for 5 new NITTOS or whatever.. meh I'll wait for 100K miles for the 37's. 3 of my current 4 with wear are still pretty respectable at 41,000 miles but one (Front Right) is worn out, mostly on the outside portion. It clearly has a toe or camber issue that I will resolve with an alignment after 4 news are installed. Hopefully not a tie rod or anything serious but my Bronco does gets abused off-road pretty hard sometimes so we'll see.

One of my reasons to stick with the Goodyear Wranglers was only needing 4 tires and could keep the spare. Also, no speedo adjustment or rubbing concerns and the HOSS Fox suspension was tuned for these tires. Anyway..

This time however I want to do a 5-tire rotation every 5k miles. I came up with this pattern and it makes the most sense to me because tires wear faster on the front, slower on the rear and not at all for the spare. I spent some time with ChatGPT to evaluate it mathematically so that no tire spent 2 cycles in the front (faster wear positions) and each tire was in each position per cycle. Using factory or tire recommended schedules always somehow leaves me in a position where two tires are more worn and they don't want to put them in the back because "for safety your better tires always have to go in the back" defeating the whole purpose of rotation. I suspect there is a hint of truth there, but they will say anything to sell you big $$ new tires that day.

NOTE: this only works with non-directional tires. If your tires have a rotation arrow on them, you can't rotate like this. As far as I can tell, NO ONE recommends this currently.. but no one else is buying my tires so they can all shut up.

"This is much better. Your pattern is immediately understandable. Each tire will experience 20% less wear which means the vehicle can go 25% farther before needing new tires."

Following one tire:
LF
↓
RR
↓
Spare
↓
RF
↓
LR
↓
LF (repeated)
Every tire experiences:

• Front Left
• Rear Right
• Spare
• Front Right
• Rear Left
• Repeat

So each tire:

• spends exactly one interval in each wheel position,
• never stays on the steering axle twice in a row,
• alternates between left and right sides over time,
• gets a "rest" as spare.

"I actually like it better than the commonly published patterns. One final engineering observation: your pattern is a Hamiltonian cycle through the five tire positions. Every node (LF, RF, RR, LR, Spare) is visited exactly once before returning to the start. That's why it feels so "clean." It's mathematically elegant as well as practical, which makes it a great candidate for a permanent glovebox reference. "

Additionally, I am going to get a paint pen or rugged stickers to label each wheel with 1-5 so I can track the rotation and make sure when I have them rotated that they actually followed the 5-tire pattern.

-Mike in AZ

i used a black sharpie on the side wall in the same spot on all 5 tires (next to the date of manufacture is a good spot). just a small mark, about 1/4" high. no one will see it because they don't know its there. not event the ford dealer who didnt do the 5 tire rotation when they told me they did
that was the start of me doing all service..

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