2012 X5: one year tire wear data, tire rotation

[miamipanther]

Our 12 X5 is at 12500 miles and turning to be one year old next week; I know BMW claimed that tires in BMW doesn't need rotation whatsoever, as well as 15k oil change interval and lifetime ATF etc.


Our X5 is equipped 18" Michelin Latitude Tour HP ZP RFT; In the past year, I checked the tire pressure every 4 months to maintain the manufacture recommended PSI: 33 front/41 rear under 100MPH on door jam.

Last week, for my own sake and curiosity, I measured the thread depth of all four tires; Attached is the data of thread depth, I am sure there is measurement error but each thread depth was measured three times to get average and shouldn't be off too much.


It turned out the manufacture recommended PSI for rear tire is way too high, which results in excessive wear at the center of the tread.


Secondly, the front tires tend to wear more than the rear ones, rotating front to rear should extend the life of tires.


The front right tire wear pretty even, but front left wear more outter than inner of the tire, which probably indicated it might beunder inflation for some time. I may need to check the tire pressure more often. One thing doesn't make sense to me is the rear right tire, there is one thread in middle has excessive wear, I couldn't find a theory to explain that.


Since X5 has directional tires and based on these data, I rotated the tires front to rear but not side to side at DiscountTire(It's free even for OEM tires, DiscountTire rocks and owns my future business), then deflated the rear tire to 35PSI from 41PSI.


It has been a week since the tire rotation, both my wife and I didn't feel the tire rotation changed the driving in any way. For the new tires in the future, I would definitely check PSI every two months and rotate FrontToRear every 5K to prevent premature wear of the tires. and most importantly, don't inflate rear tire to 41PSI.