The rear passenger tire in my '09 Prius was damaged beyond repair and had to be replaced. I have <4000 miles on the car and its remaining original tires. I'm wondering weather it is too late to switch the new tire to the driver side of the car?? The new tire has <50 miles on it. Expecting that the driver side will wear faster than the passenger I would like to take advantage of the extra miles on the new tire. Any advice? Thanks
I would not say that the LH side tires will necessarily wear faster than the RH side. However, the front tires will wear much faster than the rear tires. If you prefer to buy four tires at once, rather than replacing two at a time, then I suggest that you wait until you have 5K miles on the odometer, then rotate front to back and vice-versa. Then rotate at 10K mile intervals (not 5K mile intervals) if you want to save some money. I think that you will find there's not much treadwear on the rear driver's tire right now, if you have a treaddepth gauge available.
The tires may be "directional". That is, they should be mounted to rotate only one way. If they are, to change sides you would have to have the tire removed from the rim and turned. It's not worth the cost and bother for only 4000 mi. of wear. When directional tires are "rotated" they just go from front to rear and rear to front, same side.
I'd bet that you can barely see any wear difference between the two, in which case just leave them. On Soapbox: if you don't mind buying two tires at a time there's no need to rotate tires of most front wheel drive cars on a schedule. It's safer to have the two better tires at the rear. Because the front tires wear faster, when they wear out move the rear wheels with their tires to the front and put two new tires at the rear.
