for those who still have the stock tires rotate them yourself, what pattern do you use? simply swap the front and back, or do you do cross forward?
I was taught as a teenager when I got my first car, to move them front to back/back to front but keep the tires on the same side of the car. But I have to admit, I never did it. Hence, maybe thats why I always had to buy a set for the front every 15-20,000 miles but the rears lasted forever per say...
Toyota recommends Front to Back. http://www.toyota.com/t3Portal/document/om/OM52A87U/pdf/sec_4-3.pdf (page 25 of the PDF)
The Manual says straight front to back, so I've stuck with that. OTOH, when I checked tire manufacturer's recommendation for our OEM's (Michelin Pilot), their suggestion swapped sides. I think keeping tires on the same side was the norm decades back. But with the Hondas we had for maybe the last 20 years it was "straight back and cross to front". Be careful too if you have directional tires, they've obviously got to stay on one side.
The OEM Toyo Proxis were bidirectional and I did rotate them in an X pattern one out of the 3 times I rotated them. Didn't seem to make any difference and they wore evenly anyway. I now have Michelin Primacy MXM4 also bidirectional but I have them rotated by Costco because it's free, they want to leave them on the same side. A while back I checked with a large local tire store and with TireRack and they both recommended an X pattern every other time for bidirectional tires. I think as long as they are wearing OK it doesn't matter.
With FWD they say to bring the rears straight up to the front (same side), while moving the fronts to the rear and swapping sides. Obviously this assumes non-directional tires. But ANY kind of rotation every 5k miles or so is better than never doing it. Toyota does it for free on our Prius
Front-to-rear is indeed the specified and generally recommended way to rotate tires. Unfortunately, the only way to lift two wheels at once using the available Prius jack points is to lift either the two front wheels or the two rear. A single side jack point would be extremely useful.
thanks everyone, multiple sites said forward cross is the way to do it for FWD cars, even though toyota says swap front and back. i just did forward cross, i figure it can't hurt.
