harryjames

I recently bought a 2002 Mustang convertible with a V-6 automatic from a used car dealer. The car has 47,000 miles. The front tires showed very little wear, while the rears had noticably more wear. I just rotated the tires today, and then thought that maybe the previous owner had just rotated the tires shortly before trading in the car.

Since the car is pretty heavy, and just has a V-6 automatic, I don't think the prior owner made a practice of accelerating quickly with the car. The car was probably driven quite carefully. So my question is...which tires would normally get most of the wear with a car like mine? Most of the weight is on the front tires. Should they get more wear? Or would the rears be expected to get more wear, even with rather carefully driving?

I am wondering weather I rotated tires when I should have been glad that the job had just been done for me?

Hoping for a quick answer from anyone who is familiar with normal tire wear on this type of car.

Thanks.

ryan1994mustang

they should wear pretty evenly assuming that your alignment is good and the rear tires havent been spun alot. just because its a v6 auto doesnt mean that they didnt beat on the car a little bit.

03_GT_Reaper

correct me if I am wrong but arent the v6's rear wheel drive as well? So that will contribute to more wear on the rear tires especially if they hadnt been rotated for awhile. (which it sounds to me like they hadnt been.) Either that or they probably did spin the tires somewhat.

socalwrench

Bottom line- the drive wheels wear faster. A little amount of wheel spin will occur.

ryan1994mustang

the v-6 cars also dont have a solid rear, so they only spin one wheel, which would mean that 1 of the 4 tires would be worn more. but im sure there was some wheel spin going on either way.

03_GT_Reaper

I agree, unless the previous owner had a trac loc built for it which I would highly doubt.

harryjames

Thanks everyone for the quick replies. I am now confident that I did the right thing, rotating the tires. The rears are doing the work when the car accelerates, and the prior owner was probably heavier on the gas pedal than I wanted to believe.

When I think about it, I really can not imagine a driving style that would produce almost no wear on the rears and noticeable wear on the fronts in such a smooth and even manner, indicating no alignment problems. The rears needed to be moved up front.

The 2002 Mustang does have traction control, so I don't expect that it would have spun one tire only. Both rears on my car were evenly worn. The traction control can be turned off (to spin a tire down through a layer of snow or ice to get to bare road surface,the operator's manual says).

While I'm here I'll add a few more comments about tires. I used to own a 1991 Mustang with a 4 cylinder and 5 speed manual. That car was so well balanced that I once drove 40,000 miles without rotating the tires, and there wasn't a great deal of wear difference on any of the tires. I got about 105,000 miles out of that set of tires. I had about 255,000 miles on that car when I gave it to my nephew. I always started rolling as soon as the light turned green, but I never accelerated very quickly. I had to watch out for road rage from people behind me.

On the opposite end of the scale, my father had an early 1980's Chrysler K-car, an early front wheel drive car. It seemed like that car would have worn out the fronts in about 20,000 miles, if rotation wasn't done, but the backs would probably have gone for 200,000 miles. The car was heavy in front.

FlamingoGT

1) alignment.
2) aggressive driving.
3) air pressure.

All three of those contribute to tire wear. Along with alignment, you need to add suspension. Suspension components wear out and that will throw your alignment out. And alignment issues will eat your tires a lot more faster than an occasional spinout.