Tire Rotation is not recommended for X5
 

I read in the repair manual that tire rotations is not recommend for X5. I couldn't find anything on this forum about this topic. It looks like this is not what most people expect as I saw some posts mentioning they had done rotations. What you guys think?

On many X5s the tires are different sizes front to rear which would not be rotatable in the first place.

New tire technology and a correct alignment should allow the tires to wear pretty evenly anyways so I'm not sure it is necessary in BMWs eyes

I worked for a Stealership in Minnesota a few years back and the consensus is that the technology that BMW uses to align tires, and the weight distrubution of the car itself, counteracts any and all uneven wear of the tires. Although, if you are doing burnouts with an m5, a favorite of mine, your rear tires are clearly going to wear out fast then your fronts, Duh.

So no, as long as your tires looked normal, your good to go.

Wow. BMW thinks a lot of themselves if they think all 4 tires wear evenly. I rotate mine every 5-6k (free, thanks discount tire!). The front shoulders wear faster than the rear, for obvious reasons. Other than that, I don't see much point in rotating, but, rotating does help a set of tires last longer. Note that I'm non-sport, and do not have staggered tires.

For the OP, your search button must need rotating. I just did a search on 'tire rotation' and got 98 threads.

In my case, I have never rotated tires on my BMWs, as per BMW recommendations. On my X5, I had 70,000 km on the original tires when I sold it, and they were perfectly even.

BMW believes that any gains you get by getting more life out of your tires are offset against the reduction in handling that you will experience by running tires in different positions. Tires take a set in a certain position on a vehicle, and when you move them they take some time to wear in.

If you have uneven wear, it is worth looking at the cause (often toe in, or incorrect pressure) before compromising your handling by rotating tires.

From what I understood, tire rotation does little help to any BMW with x-Drive since the torque distribution to each wheel varies constantly depending on the road and driving condition. Therefore tire wearing should be pretty even. I had stagger set up on my previous X3, and the tire were between left and right was very even.

But for my 2002 E53 4.6, which is non-X-drive, constant 40% front and 60% rear torque distribution, staggered, lowered about about 1" and fitted with spacers.... had extremely uneven tire wear for the rear (inside wears MUCH faster than outside), while pretty even for the front. I had to rotate between Left / Right, and managed to go for 4 more months before I replaced all 4 tires.

So for my case, it was useful to rotate the tires.

:iagree:

I think that X-drive or non X-drive has very little to do with tire wear. The torque split differences are only front rear, not side to side.

On the other hand, running wide tires, staggered tires, using spacers, and lowering will all accelerate tire wear. Fast wear on the rear with wide tires is very often related to toe not being adjusted correctly.

I think that is because you searched all the forums and not just the X5 (E53) forum. Anyway, thanks for your reply.

Thank you for asking and all your answers. I was reading though the manual yesterday and thought I just overlooked the rotation part. I was told my the place I take my 'other European' (don't want to sound like a d$%^) car to that because of near even weight distribution, you don't need to rotate tires. I did notice after about 20000+ miles, the fronts began to cup a little. JCL, you are on the money! it was an alignment issue. I rotated tires, aligned all four corners and will not need to to it again till I change tires.

so, can you still rotate your tires if you're running staggered stock 20's. I don't mean from front to back or back to front. Rather, left to right or right to left. I am new at this. So, please ignore my ignorance.

I just put some new Nitto nt850's on my 3.0 X5 and my tire guy recommended that I rotate them every 3000 miles.

damn... I learned something new today. I thought ALL cars needed some type of tire rotation (never really considered that to be a car specific thing.)

I have already had the tires rotated once at 8k miles, and now I am at about 15k miles point and wanted to go have it rotated (free, bought at discount tire)... even though looking at the tires, they don't really need to be rotated.

I am sure discount tire would LOVE to hear this recommendation and get out of their (freely provided) obligation to all BMW customers! :)

with the camber in the rear the tire will never wear evenly. the rears always wear the insides while the outside is almost brand new.

The tires stores provide free tire rotation to get you in the habit of regular visits, to give them a chance to get the vehicle up on the hoist and sell other necessary work (and sometimes unnecessary work), and so on. It is good business to do so. It is just like providing free brake inspections, or loss-leader oil changes (which even my BMW dealer does)

Many owners will disagree with you, as they achieve even tire wear even with the camber. The camber is often blamed, but you should look to the toe settings more than the camber. Harder to see from the rear, but more damaging to the inner edges of the tires.

Not if they are directional tires. You would have to take the tires off the rim and remount them. Even then you could only go side to side at best, like you said. Really, just keep your tires inflated to the recommended levels, make sure you stay in alignment and forget about it.

The camber is always clearly evident on the back of any 4.4, they just sit heavier, especially when you put wide Michelins on

We are agreeing. I pointed out that the camber is easier to see, ie it is clearly evident from behind the vehicle. You can't see the toe as easily. That said, it isn't the camber that causes the tire wear as much as the toe settings do.

In the 5 years I have owned My X I have never
rotated tires and the wear has been even.

My OEM Michelins were very evenly (and well) worn when they where finally replaced at 55,000km. No rotation as such although the spare got to see a little road time due to punctures.

Edit: Non-sport suspension +17s, the only way to travel in my neck of the woods.

Cheers to that, i trust the power of BMW, they've done a decent job taking care of me.

thats funny. ive had 2 x5's both with sports package and 1 with 19 and 1 with 20 and the rear on both wore the inside bald.

You don't have the sport package, do you? I can't remember. If you don't, chances are you probably havn't had the inner tire wear some sport package owners have. The wider tires seem to magnify the issue. I do have the wider sport package tires, but my car is properly aligned and so far with over 40k miles on my Toyo S/T's, there is slightly more wear on the insides, but nothing major.

My X5 is with the sports package the rear tires were worn on the inside.

I've had my '01 3.0 Sport for 9 years now and rotate them every 6K miles without a problem. But if you have the staggered sizes I can see where you wouldn't be really able to.

No I don't and you're right if I had a different tire/suspension
setup it might have require different attention.

Speaking of tire maintenance, how often is an alignment recommended?

When you have tire wear indicating a problem, or after an incident (collision, large pothole, suspension work, etc) that may have changed the alignment.

I haven't had an alignment in the last 25 years, but I also inspect my tires regularly.

According to the Bentley manual, the front tires will wear the outside shoulder fastest and the rear tires will wear the middle/inside shoulder fastest. In the same section they repeat the BMW position of no need to rotate tires.

That said, I wish I had rotated mine. My front tires are down to the wear bars on the outer edge with a fair bit more tread along the inner edge. The rear tires look great- like they have another 15,000 miles left on them! Ugh.

I'm guessing that the excessive front wear is due in part to a summer of towing our boat around.

Now to decide- replace all 4 tires at once? The Tech at the local delaership said it was not a problem to replace the fronts only but I wonder about the long-term effect of running different diameter tires front-to-rear. Yes, they are currently running that way due to wear. :-)

well i also have a 1991 Eclipse GSX track car. if you put different size tires (more then 2/32's different) you can potentially heat up your differential and transaxle enough where the compenents will break. I've got Nitto's in the front and Kumho's in the rear, and that is supposidely a bad idea

although I am more worried about replacing the motor then any differential.

My 2006 X5 M54 6spMT...bought it in 2014 with 112K miles.
It is now 139K miles...

Tires are the same size front and rear.
Tread wear is 50% (about 6/32" depth).

As ppl said above...
- FRONT Tires have more wear on the Outer shoulder.
- REAR Tires a bit more wear on the Inner shoulder.

I understand this thread is from 11 yrs ago (2010), but just want to hear the "latest consensus" vs "latest debate"...

Front - outer wear due to cornering and steering.
Rear - BMW engineered less than 2 degrees angle wears out the inside.
Solution - rotate tires.

Mine had some wear after 10k miles the previous owner put on new tires. Fronts had outer wear. The torque arms were in bad shaped. Replaced the ball joints too. The rear were relatively flat and slight inner wear. The rear had more tread wear. The Xdrive gear was toast. I assume the fronts were not pulling. After gear replacement and maintenance, and rotation, tires look good. All of them will be replaced within the next 5k miles.

Here in Finland we use about 6 months summer tires and 6 months winter tires. So tires are removed anyways. Now 5 years and 50k km with same Michelin summer tires and I can't see any difference between front/rear inner/outer wear. I have marked the tires but basically just put the ones with more thread on the rear (side always the same).

After a total ownership of 80,000kms on my X5, I don't see any difference in wear front to back. I put four new tyres on about 30,000kms ago - no visible difference in wear so far and no rotation. All four tyres have dead-even wear across entire tread.

255/55-18 FWIW...

Same here, I have always used a piece of masking tape to mark which corner I took each tire off of, and when I reinstall them 6 months later I just make sure to put the tires with the most tread on the corners that get the least wear.

For my family cars (all FWD, which I have been using studless winter tires on for ten years now) the fronts always wear more than the backs, and the driver's side front is the worst. I used to keep logs of my tire wear until I realized that they always wear in the exact same manner.

On all of the RWD cars I have owned, the rears wear much faster than the fronts. When I used to do a lot of autocross, the ability to use square tires and rotate was immeasurably valuable as I would sometimes see 3x the tire wear on the rear tires. I would have had to replace the rears every season but keep the fronts for 4-5 years.
For my X5, I am surprised at how even the tires wear. I have over 21k miles on my "summer" set of tires and I can't see a difference by eye. I will need to measure the wear with a caliper in a few weeks when I put the snows back on. (I have only had winter tires for 1 year on this car unfortunately, so I have a lack of data). It's surprising to me that it is so consistent, much more than other cars I've owned.

I am on stock 17" wheels with 237/65/17 tires FWIW.

Rotating tires has always been to even out tread wear. It was not to compensate for inside or outside wear due to whatever reason. If done correctly, after the tires were rotated the alignment was checked and corrected if necessary as was balancing. Rotation was diagonal front to rear. Left front to right rear as an example, an X pattern. This was for tires that are all the same size and non directional.

All that can be done on BMWs that have a staggered setup and/or directional tires is move them from right side to left side. If you change the tires to the rim on the other side it does nothing. The same side of the tire will be on the inside because they are directional. If there is uneven wear then it it time to check alignment, suspension wear and balancing.

I have owned my 4.6 since new. I drive hard and it is quite modded. Tires are staggered and directional so tires it serves no purposed to change them side to side. I have it aligned for best handling. I have consistently gone through 2 sets of rears to 1 set of fronts. They have never worn evenly though the fronts don't wear the inside of the tire as fast as the rears. If you have it aligned to minimize inside tire wear the handling is compromised but you can do that.

Mine is lowered and the suspension is modified. It has not changed tire wear.