Jacking a vehicle and messing up the allignment?

Radials...?

I thought they were making them well enough that you can swap side to side...

And, the owners manuals of most new cars says two swap forward, then back from front and swap side to side.

I have tried both on my last two trucks, and have had not serious problems.

Keep in mind, I have 60,000 on these tires, and have swapped them every 5000 miles. And I am just NOW getting problems.

 

I'v never even heard of anyone having problems doin the side to side swap.? glad to see you found your problem scooper.

 

I have swapped side to side also without problems.

 

Back in the 70s, my dad swapped some radials from side to side, and within a couple hundred miles (on fairly new tires) the tread came off and tore two of his fenders off. We were on a fairly long trip, maybe 300 miles, right after he rotated, and within maybe 25 miles of each other, two of them just tossed the tread and as they rotated, they pounded the fenders right up into the wheel well.

Since then, I have asked all the tire shops, the dealers, even Click and Clack The Tappet Brothers (Car Talk) and all say the new radials are tough enough to swap.

On the other hand, now that I am running two different sizes front and back, I definitely will NOT swap the tires. I believe (OPINION!) that if I swap the rears side to side, the radial belts will shift on heavy use, like launches, and make my tires "porcupine".

 

Late reply but. The term is called radial pull. A belt in the tire has shifted. Some times very slight(slight pull) or a big shift(vibrates pulls etc) I only rotate tires from frt to rear but there is no real reason you can't swap them side to side. Old Man Myth. True back in the day, but times change BTW best way to check ball joints/suspension on your truck is with the Suspension loaded. I generally take a prybar under the wheel and pry up. Finds worn lower ball joints every time. Then shake the wheels side to side hands at 9 and 3 o clock and Up and down hands at 12 and 6 o clock. The best way to find bad linkage parts is wheels on the ground have a helper slightly wiggle the steering wheel back and forth slightly, while you take your thumb and index finger and touch all the linkage parts(tie rods,pitman arm, idler arm), on the dust covers sqeezing a bit to feel the inside. You will be surprised what parts you find worn out that other wise would have went undetected. It's tough being an ASE master tech know it all but somebody has to be.:evilsmile At least I'm approachable

 

Well, I took the truck in to have one of my home-made plugs yanked out and a professional take-it-off-the-rim patch put in, but they said they wouldn't do it with the 4/32" tread left. So I took it to a "less reputable guy" working out of a barn, and he said he would do it, but "it won't last long, and won't be safe". Where the plug was in, the area around it had raised and worn down to where there was no tread left, maybe an area as big around as a silver dollar. The rest of the tire had 4/32" tread left.

I told the guy thanks, but no thanks, and gave him a $20 just because he was honest about it.

Then drove to Discount Tire and paid off $450 of the $800 layaway that I had been paying on for a couple months.

New tires in on Tuesday, installed on Friday.

I still got just over 60,000 miles on the stock tires, rotating and crossing. The only reason I had to swap now, and not get another 5 or 10k is because of that one screw that went in at an angle, and couldn't be patched correctly without damaging the tire.

Oh, yeah, never been rebalanced, either. I need to do that more often...at least every 10 or 15K. I just hate the wait at the shop for balancing.