Change tyres in pairs or not?

Pulsedriver

Pulsedriver

Pulsedriver

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Joined
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Hey folks, over the years I have always changed tyres in pairs, so often one tyre on the front may be worn, but I change both front tyres to keep the tyres 'new' together as such.

Anyhow, as time goes on I have questioned it a bit, in fact, recently my car had a service, its a 320D (e90) running Bridgestone RE050A Run Flats, now, in the past, and on previous BMW's I have replaced the RFT's for standard, but I don't fancy forking out £450 at this moment in time to do them all, and genuinely find the Bridgestones OK.

Anyhow, the OSF tyre is worn on both edges and needs replacing, but the NSF tyre has 4.6 4.4 and 4.6 tyre depth remaining, would it be ok to just stick a new tyre on the OSF (same brand/model of course) ? Or is it best to go ahead and do both fronts to keep them the same tread depths?
 
See if you can do a bit of tyre rotation to even it up a bit more.

But yeh, I wouldn't worry.
 
The rears are 4.2 3.8 3.6
&
3.6 3.6 3.4

According to BMW 'need changing soon' although not sure on that given the limit is 1.6 and at the moment I am not doing massive mileage, so am hoping to get another year or so out of them.

Maybe I could put the rears on the front?
 
Why not try it and see if it works out? Might find it will pull especially under braking but it might be fine. I would question why the tyres are wearing unevenly though, have you been on top of the pressures and wheel alignment?
 
Pulsedriver said:
The rears are 4.2 3.8 3.6
&
3.6 3.6 3.4

According to BMW 'need changing soon' although not sure on that given the limit is 1.6 and at the moment I am not doing massive mileage, so am hoping to get another year or so out of them.

Maybe I could put the rears on the front?
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The limit may be but under 3mm they start to lose performance in the wet.

Personally I'd change the front that needs doing and the rear in the three's and put the new pair on the rear axle.
 
Clarkey said:
I would question why the tyres are wearing unevenly though, have you been on top of the pressures and wheel alignment?
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This.

In all my years of driving I've never seen tyres wear at different rates on the same axel. Check tyre pressures as well.

The only time I've mixed tyres on the front resulted in different grip between them when accelerating. Thankfully I never had to test them under emergency braking.
 
Put the best matching pair on the front and buy two new rears?

When the fronts are low put the rears on the front and buy new rears again.

Stick to a well known tyre so you always replace with same tyres, lets you mix and match a bit eaiser in the future?
 
Yeah, it's not been aligned in my ownership, so would suspect some tracking issues, although the front one that needs doing pretty much ASAP is due to under inflating (wear on inner & outer edge)

I will get 2 brand new ones for the rear, use the 2 out of the 3 remaining best for the front and get a full alignment done!

Yeah agree on brands, I've never skimped on tyres and never intend to, so will stick to the Bridgestone's, they seem decent enough.
 
Pulsedriver said:
Yeah, it's not been aligned in my ownership, so would suspect some tracking issues, although the front one that needs doing pretty much ASAP is due to under inflating (wear on inner & outer edge)

I will get 2 brand new ones for the rear, use the 2 out of the 3 remaining best for the front and get a full alignment done!

Yeah agree on brands, I've never skimped on tyres and never intend to, so will stick to the Bridgestone's, they seem decent enough.
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Don't forget that being a RWD BMW, you most likely have wider tyres on the rear so you won't be able to swap back to front like you would a normal car.
 
Finglonga said:
Not replaced them in pairs in over 30 years of driving and replace at 2mm-1.6mm, not had any problems.
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That's ok on good high performance tyres, they will grip consistently all the way down.

But on cheap/budget tyres I wouldn't go lower than 3mm because the grip often drops off massively on them (they are called ditch finders for a reason).
 
chaparral said:
Found one

In wet conditions, it took a Ford Focus 91m to stop with 3mm of tread. In the same car with the legal limit of 1.6mm of tread it took 135m to stop - 50% further.
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I'm actually amazed if that's representative across other tyre brands that the legal limit hasn't been bumped up to 3mm. I guess the one major factor comes down to speed, i suspect (having not watched the video), that these tests were at high speed. At lower speeds say 30mph, the difference will probably be much less.

However, seeing as we'd have no way of stopping people driving on 60/70mph roads without checking they have at least 3mm of tyre tread, i wouldn't mind that limit being raised to 3mm.
 
The difference is not the same across all tyres, they probably used cheap ones for that test.

But unfortunately, a lot of people think all tyres are the same because they are all black and round. So stick the cheapest crap they can find on their cars.
 
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