The tires on my Jeep Wrangler have 35,000 miles on them and have little tread left. With winter approaching I need to do something.
My spare is a full size unused tire mounted on the rear of the vehicle . So, should I:
[ul]
[li]Buy four new tires and keep the spare where it is.[/li][li]Use the spare and buy three matching tires, putting the least worn tire on the back as a spare.[/li][li]Buy four new tires but use the spare and hang a new tire on the back.[/li][li]Some other idea.[/li][/ul]
I drive on local roads and highways. Any “off-road” driving is on gravel paths or grassy fields.
Buy four new tires. Get the tire dealer’s recommendation about the spare and weigh that recommendation against your on/off road driving habits. Just remember the money you save by not replacing the spare will do you a whole lotta good in your pocket when you’re on some gravel road in the boonies, a tire goes down and the spare lasts only a mile coming back.
How old is the spare? If it’s the original and been hanging off the back since it came from the factory, perhaps you should consider replacing it when you buy the 4 new tires. If it’s had that cover on it, protecting it from the sun, perhaps that extends its useful lifetime by a couple of years.
As for rotating the spare when you’re rotating your tires as part of regular maintenance… I’m not sure that’s entirely practical. While I doubt Jeep tires are directional like some high performance sports tires, it’s probably a bad idea to swap tires from right to left (as opposed to front to rear on the same side). So yeah, I would try to avoid putting it in that kind of rotation cycle.
Fahged aboudid! By 4 new tires and drive the treads off 'em before even thinking about replacing it. Just keep it full of air. Nothing more useless than a flat spare.
I haven’t driven a vehicle with a full-size spare in so long I don’t know what I’d do with one. In your shoes, I’d probably buy 4 new tires and leave the spare where it is (making sure it’s inflated). If it’s covered up, it should last a long time as a spare, at least six years or more, I’d think. My definition of a spare in this case is one you put on to get you to where you get the regular tire fixed or replaced, not to drive on the spare for thousands of miles. Tires do age even if not worn out, but the aging is minimized by not having weight on the tire and keeping it protected from the elements. Even if the spare gets “old” it still should work as a spare for many years in much the same way as space-saver spares do.
You can certainly do that, so long as the three new ones are highly similar in design, tread and other factors to your current spare that you want to use. The last couple of times I’ve bought tires, there have been rebates if you buy 4, so I don’t know how much cheaper it would have really been to only buy 3.
Actually it is, and used to be standard practice before space-saver spares became common.
It wasn’t a good idea decades ago with first-generation radial tires, but it’s not a problem with modern ones. It’s standard practice even with four-tire rotation to swap sides, as shown here.
Buy 4, swap in the spare as part of the initial install of the new ones (ie put one of the new ones in the spare location) and as part of your normal rotation. I did that for my Cherokee. Two advantages to start with are that you slightly increase the life on the set and since you’re regularly swapping the spare in it’s much more likely to be at or near proper pressure.
I think you’ll get the most value out of your tires by having five and rotating them all, so that the treadwear stays pretty much even on all five. As mentioned above, to go this route you should have five equivalent tires. It’s hardly any more work to rotate five, but it’s slightly more complicated to keep track of. This pattern came off a Wrangler forum.
I’ll be damned. :smack: Thought that wasn’t done anymore.
I guess I’ve not considered the possibility because my more recent cars were always equipped with performance directional tires. My MB can’t be rotated at all because directional and front and back are different sizes.
Old to the point of cracking is waaaay past the “use by” date.
I’ve heard 5 years from the date of manufacture, this website says 6 years. You can read the manufacturing date code on the sidewall.
18 months is not an issue, but those tires may have sat in a warehouse for a year or more. Meaning that you have about 2 or 3 years before the tires start aging out without ever putting a mile on them.
I vote buy 4 tires (tire places often have “discounts” designed to push people into buying 4 tires), and use one of the new tires as the spare. Use the spare and repeat the process.
A different kind of advice: I’ve found Kumho tires to be a real good value (the ones NOT made in China- I avoid them like The Clap). Cheaper than the “major” brands, last about as long, or longer. Decent construction.
I’m lucky and have a Tire Rack nearby and save bucket-loads on tires.
Has the spare been covered, or exposed to UV? If it’s been exposed, I would toss it, and buy 5 new tires of the same type and size. Then do a consistent 5 tire rotation, following the same pattern each time.
Advantages:
[ul]
[li]Always have a spare that you know is good, because it was being used less than 5K miles ago.[/li][li]Extend your overall tire life span by 20%, because you now basically have 5 tires, not 4.[/li][li]Keeps all tires worn to approximately the same amount of tread.[/li][/ul]
If your Wrangler a real Jeep? As in, it IS 4WD, right? If it is, then you ideally want all 5 tires about the same size, which means about the same amount of wear. If you have an unworn spare, and you get a flat when 80% of your tread is gone on your drive tires, now you are introducing one tire that is a different circumference than the others. 4WD systems don’t like this, and it causes some unnecessary wear in your driveline.
As in, it IS 4WD, right? If it is, then you ideally want all 5 tires about the same size, which means about the same amount of wear. If you have an unworn spare, and you get a flat when 80% of your tread is gone on your drive tires, now you are introducing one tire that is a different circumference than the others. 4WD systems don’t like this, and it causes some unnecessary wear in your driveline.
