I'm a new member to your group, although I have been reading the valuable info from your forum over the past few days.
Dropped into the dealership where we had bought our 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee to see the Crossfire that they advertised as having on display. The next day I was the proud owner of a black auto stick Xcross! Auto instead of stick because I would like my wife to be more enthusiastic about driving it, as opposed to my previous "toy". The trade-in was my 1990 Eagle Talon all wheel drive, standard shift all whistles with the vanityy plate "ZOOMIE" that my wife gave me as a suprise gift. What a great car. Only 60,000 miles when we parted company. So much for all that.
For all the experts that so freely share their expertise, I have a tire question that you will undoubtedly be able to help me with. What kind of tread wear will I be able to expect from the Continental all season tires that seem to be standard equipment on the xfires sold up here in Canada as opposed to the Michelins that are standard fare elsewhere?
Thanks for helping!

 

Don't quote me on this, but I am about 80% sure that the Continentals will last a good deal longer than the Michelins. The Michelins rubber is very soft, and many of us are going to have to replace them within a year and a half. The Continentals have harder rubber I believe, and will therefore last longer than the Michelins, and being in Canada, you will be glad you have the all-season tires.

 

I'm curious to see how the Mich.pilot tires will wear!I recently worked on a 300M that had Mich.pilot tires with the 200 wear rating.The tires were half worn at 18,000 miles!! It think it depends on the driver and tire care and rotation.You can rotate xfire tires right to left!

 

Have used pilot sports before and you pay for what you get, 20,000miles in first year and still looked like new!

 

I hate to question our most authoritative source here, but are you sure about that? I was under the impression that most high performance tires these days were unidirectional (ie you had to buy left and right versions, so that the tread would be rotating in the correct direction). I was also under the impression that the old left-to-right rotation patterns were for old bias ply tires, and that radials were only supposed to go front-to-back because when you reverse the direction of radials once they've been worn in for a while they have a tendency to shed their tread down to the belts. Which actually happened to me with two tires in a set back in college.

Of course, it's certainly possible that rubber formulation advancements in the last fifteen years have eliminated that problem. Can anyone confirm that the Pilots are not unidirectional, and that Michelin's recommendations don't exclude side-to-side rotating?

Cheers,

Greg

 

Page 148 of the owners manual shows the right to left rotation.Radial tires are usually rotated front to back but with the different wheel sizes there is no other option.The Pilot tire's have outside stamped into the side wall meaning you mount the tire on the rim facing outside.I didn't see any other directional markings.

 

The Pilots are not unidirectional tires, so crossfiretech is right.

Unidirectional tires have very clear markings on the tire itself with an arrow that points in the direction of rotation.

I've had several tires that are unidirectional and they all have those markings. The arrow will point to the direction of rotation when it is at the top.

I believe with some unidirectionals, you can rotate your tires, you just have to unmount them and remount them when switching positions. These don't have the word "Outside" marked but they have the arrows.

In those cases, they are usually symmetrical thread so inside or outside works the same as long as they are spinning in the same direction. So you pop them out of the rim, flip them, pop them back in and then move the tire to the other side.