Stop Wasting Money | Rotate Your Tires More Often
I’ve had a habit over the years of replacing my tires when they get about half worn. To me, few things can make a car feel better than a fresh set of rubber. Unfortunately though, keeping up that habit has becoming increasingly expensive over the years. We’re living in a time where high quality tires in an appropriate size for many of our performance/hard-working vehicle don’t even break a sweat to get past $300 each. Fortunately, there’re a few simple things you can do to prolong the life of your current tread.
Brand new and open for business. These guys have great customer service skills.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been quite as studious as needed to keep everything wearing evenly with the Nitto Ridge Grapplers on my 2009 F-350. 4WD Ford Super Duty trucks are well known for eating front tires and ball joints. It’s just the nature of the heavy-duty Super Dana 60 solid front axle, and my front tires were starting to show a little uneven wear on the outside edge. That’s par for the course for big truck ownership, so I made a call to my local North Myrtle Beach branch of Discount Tire. Check out the vid of the experience:
This facility is brand new, having only opened a few months before my visit. The order of the day was a fresh balance and rotation, along with an air pressure adjustment. As soon as I pulled into the bay these guys were on it. They quickly had the truck in the air and all four tires flying off. One of the things I noticed they do that is often overlooked by other shops, is perform a thorough cleaning of the wheel and hub mating surfaces. This can be a huge deal, because in certain conditions corrosion can effectively chemically bond the wheel to the hub. No one wants to have to call a tow truck just to bring you a pry bar so you can remove a blown tire on the side of I-95 at night. Ask me how I know.
A clean backside is important.
The Duty runs a fairly large and heavy set of tires (295/65R-20), so it’s not surprising that the needed to be rebalance. The slightly unevenly worn fronts needed more weight adjustment than the rears, which is to be expected. Discount Tire uses a modern road-force balancer in order to get everything set to perfect, and after the rotation to opposite corners I have to call the entire operation a success. We even took the time to inspect the brakes and suspension components, finding everything still in spec. The truck rides and drives much better (proper balance makes a big difference), and after about 1,000 miles the former front tires (now the rears) are evenly worn. All is right in the world, and I’m going to make a point to visit the Discount Tire crew on a more regular basis. The results achieved and service received makes them stand head and shoulders above other national chains.
The Nitto Ridge Grappler is currently my favorite truck tire. The particular size I chose also has a ridiculous payload rating.
I could use a shop just a bit bigger than this one for all my antics.
It takes plenty of floor jacks to get this 4-ton beauty off the ground.
You can safely skip the gym for a day after lugging a set of wheels an tires like this around.
This Hunter road force balancer takes all the guesswork out of setting up the tires perfectly.
I expect several more years of service out of these tires, but when the time comes I'll be reaching out to DTD for more Nitto Ridge Grapplers.
