Which Tires Wear Fastest-The Fronts or Backs?

^ That's a no-no.

Fronts would possibly have more overall wear, and rears might have somewhat eccentric wear, more on the inside edges (due to camber).

Rear tires in my experience always have more gravel trapped in the tread.

Is it just tires swapped, or wheels as well? Right side rims tend to have more curb rash.

 

AWD car probably the fronts because of additional steering forces on the tire
FWD car the fronts for sure since they handle steering and propulsion forces
RWD car probably the rears due to propulsion forces ( I know, no Prius)

Front and rear tires usually wear differently, a big reason why we rotate is to even out the wear patterns.

This all assumes the alignment is in spec of course..

KH

 

General recommendation is good tires on the rear. A back end breaking loose is more likely to lead to complete loss of control no matter how good the front tires are.

That said, your level of wear likely means it doesn't matter where you put the tires in this case.

 

kh111 has given you a complete answer and the reason why....

As for an AWD car; if it's FWD bias, the front will wear faster. Part-time AWD systems will only engage when it senses slip. Full-time AWD; also the front wheels since most of the weight, stopping power, traction, and acceleration is there.

 

Yes.

I would give that tire shop some "feedback".

 

Put them on the front where you need more traction

Get a wax pen and mark your own wheels, better than second guessing what the gorillas did or didn't do. I also recommend a tire pressure gauge and a torque wrench to re-check your lug nuts when you get home.

 

You are asking two different questions. It isn't obvious from your question in your first post that you thought the answer to the question would be too plain to answer.

Trollbait gave the safety recommendation. I've always rotated tires, the other way, with greater tread to the front because that seems implicit in a FWD car on which the front wheels will typically wear faster. I don't mind the rear being loose, but do mind being stuck or having steering compromised.

There isn't anything about the Prius configuration that distinguishes it from the tens of millions of other FWD economy cars people have had for the last 50 years and on which they base these general observations.

 

Expounding on that suggestion, it mainly is given when not replacing all four tires. In that case, there is a greater difference in tread depth.

Losing control of the rear effects steering by the way. Had worn rear brakes, and tried a hard brake and turn. The lack of momentum reduction on the rear inflicted severe understeer; car went mostly straight. Better front tire traction isn't going to help when the rear fishtails.

 

I get that this is the classic advice. In my imperfect memory, this was the view of Click and Clack. I wonder how much of that view was set before most cars were FWD. If one adheres to it, then a failure to replace all four tires means an end to rotation on a FWD car.

That sounds as if the problem was a plowing front end and a rear that stayed tight, but a loose rear effects steering by inducing oversteer, a condition commonly encountered before FWD. Long ago, counter steering through a turn was the way every boy abused the family station wagon while out with his friends. FWD moved youthful stupidity into handbrake turns.

I bizarre variation can involve a RWD car with a rearward weight bias. The front can begin to float and understeer through a turn and require a stab of brake to get the front to bite, with too much front bite swinging the whole thing backwards.

Oversteer can be dangerous and can bite pretty badly if poorly managed (see many examples of a rear engined Porsche or VW rotating too much through a turn), but it has much do with driver input. Understeer can be dangerous, but there's typically less for a driver to do to control it.


I wonder how much of this is lost on newer drivers as they never drive without computer intervention. Tires and brakes are so much better now that these lessons don't show up as much at lower speeds, the speeds the let one live through the lesson.

 

But you can hit the gas to straighten out the tail. Used that trick on multiple occasions; on wet or icy roads. Works well on FWD; not so much on RWD. I used to have to remember to do everything opposite when switching from my car and the company car.
Wet surface U-turns is where you can spin-out and end up facing oncoming traffic, if your rear wheels has considerably less thread than your front. Dropping a few hundred pounds of sand back there would help resolve that.

 

At the risk of thread drift (no pun and this isn't about tire in themselves), the puckering aspect of FWD involves going straight involuntarily into oncoming traffic, as one does when he is on the inside of a turn in slippery conditions. I kept my all season/no season tires all winter and had some post ice storm excitement as I turned the wheel but kept going toward a light pole or parked cars hoping to slow quickly enough. Any car can understeer, but in a RWD car you can have some say in which part of the car hits what it runs into.

 

One thing that confounds me,d regarding putting the tires with best tread on the back wheels, how are they ever going to balance wear with the frount??

 

I believe the rule Trollbait is really referencing involves replacement of two tires only.

Mismatched tires front to back was something I saw with reasonable frequency in the great lakes area decades ago. Picture a big RWD sedan with rear steel wheels and high profile very aggressive snow tires and the same all seasons on regular wheels on the front. And, yes, sandbags were also a thing.

If I had put my nearly bald tires on the back of one of the RWD little cars I had growing up, the rear would never hook up in snow. Not that I ever did that on purpose.