How To Rotate Dually Tires? [Beginner’s Guide]

You probably already know that your car tires will wear out after a period of use. However, due to many different factors affecting the wheels, tire wear is no longer uniform, shortening the lifespan of tires and costs too much for repair. Therefore, to ensure that the tires have good traction and increase the performance of the vehicle, dually tire rotation is an extremely important step.

However, during use, drivers often pay little attention to car tire rotation and even do not know how to perform this operation, especially for some trucks with dual wheels that have different rims. To break down this issue with Car From Japan to find the answer to the question: How to rotate dually tires?

Tire Rotation: Is It Really Necessary?

Tire rotation is one of the maintenance techniques to recover the situation when the tires wear unevenly by regularly changing the positions between the front-rear, and left-right tires together. In other words, the dually tire rotation procedure is also transferring tires from one position to another in the same car.

dually tire rotation — Dually tire rotation is an extremely important step. It is also transferring tires from one position to another in the same car. (Photo: medium.com)

Why do we need to do this step? The cause of uneven wear on the tires is due to the completely different weight distribution of the vehicle. Accordingly, wheels fitted to the axles subjected to heavier loads will have to be prone to wear.

With front-wheel drive vehicles, the front axle is heavier than the rear axle, and the two wheels mounted on the front axle are both driving and navigating the vehicle, so they wear out faster than the rear two. According to many experts, the order of tire wear can be arranged from the front right tire, the front left tire, the right rubber tire, and finally the left rear tire.

The manufacturers recommend that we will rotate the tires periodically after every 5,000 – 10,000 miles depending on the tires or when you get the car’s oil changed. Remember, a set of evenly worn tires will last longer than a set of “unevenly” worn tires. If you think this action is unnecessary, the consequences can lead to excessive wear on one side of the tires and may cause an explosion when driving at high speed or cause loss of control in the car in slippery road conditions. Periodic tire rotation will give the following 6 specific benefits:

Increase tire lifespan
Avoid uneven wear on the tire surface.
Helps the car balance, and high stability, ensuring safety during driving.
Reduce fuel consumption.
Makes the steering wheel stable, making it easy to control the car.
Early detection of vehicle abnormalities through tire wear.

>> Related post: How Often Should You Rotate Tires? Find Here

Learn About Dually Rotation Pattern.

The basic way to rotate tires is to move the front wheel to the back and the rear wheel to the front and change positions. The right front wheel is swapped for the left rear wheel, the left front wheel is changed for the right rear wheel, and vice versa. However, this tire rotation model is only applicable to tires with identical treads and the same front and rear tire sizes. Models with different front and rear tires of different sizes, with heterogeneous treads, require special care from the vehicle manufacturer.

But as we know, rotating in a dually truck is a little more complicated than in a car with four wheels. Therefore, patterns for applying a dual tire are very different from those in 4-wheel vehicles. There are a few patterns to choose from when rotating the tire in a dually:

Circular rotation pattern

This pattern is a simple way to rotate tires with dual rear wheels. You just need to remember some tips: the front tire moves to the rear outside, the rear outside moves to the inner rear, and the rear inside moves to the front. Circle patterns will help you not to switch sides of the vehicle. This makes self-rotating easier as you only need to jack one side of your at a time.

Side to side rotation.

Side-to-side rotation is best for cases where there is a difference between the wheel or tire on the front and rear axles. These can be situations where you have tow tires in the back and drive tires in the front. Or there could be wheel or tire size differences that interfere with front-to-back rotation.

Dually directional tire rotation pattern.

While the directional tire on a regular 4-wheeler will never change sides, it can be on a 6-wheel truck. The third pattern is to simply move the left tire to the right and the right tire to the left. Then move the right dual tire to the left without changing the order. The inner tire becomes the outer tire and the outer tire becomes the inner tire.

So which pattern you should choose? When rotating a dually, it is recommended that you rotate the tires in a circular pattern. This is the ideal pattern to help achieve uniform treadwear. To achieve a circular rotation pattern without changing sides:

Take the front tires and put them on the outside of the rear axle.
Move the tire from the outside of the rear axle to the inside of the rear axle.
Finally, the tire that was on the inside of the rear axle should be placed on the front axle.

dually truck tires — Dually truck tires will help achieve uniform treadwear (Photo: pinterest.com)

How To Rotate Dually Tires?

For the 4-wheel vehicle, the process is really simple. All we need to do is just take the front wheels and put them on the back and rotate them back and forth to get that wear on that front steer axle and the back axle evened out. In dually truck tires, when you don’t know Where exactly the tires go when you rotate them. So how do you rotate tires on a dually?

Step 1:

Park your vehicle on a flat surface: ground or concrete…You can place a piece of wood behind the rear tire to keep the truck from rolling while jacking the truck’s front. Loosen all the lug nuts on the tires.

Step 2:

Take a heavy-duty jack that will adapt to the weight and place it under the front of your car, one on each side, and then lift the rear over two other racks. Jack up the vehicle leaving to make sure that it has enough space to take off the tires. Now go to the back of your car and do the same. Raise the rear axle until the rack can be placed inside the wheel and then lower the axle until it rests on the jack.

Step 3:

After finishing the above 2 steps, you can proceed to rotate the tires according to the manufacturer’s instructions. In this case, we can recommend for you some ways how to rotate tires on a truck you can refer to:

The best way to do it is to take that front tire and rotate and rotate it to the back on the outside. Take that outside back tire and rotate it to the inside and the inside tire on the back up to the front of the vehicle. Doing that is going to keep all the tires on the same side and it’s going to be the easiest for you to rotate because all you’re gonna have to do is remove one side of the vehicle. Jack up one side and flop all the tires around.

Note: Check brake rotors and pads, ball joints, tie rods, and all connections when you have the wheel off. Some tires may be direction-specific, especially on passenger cars. The tires might need to rotate in one direction only which means you can really only rotate them front to back unless you actually have them dismounted from the rims and move to a different tire location.

In most heavy-duty applications where the tires are rated at E or higher loads. If the tires don’t typically tend to be direction-specific so you can put the rims in whatever position they need to go because, in dual tires, the rims actually can be mounted in or out, they can go either direction.

Tip: With steel rims smear the grease in between the rear rims before mounting to keep them from sticking and make the next removal easier.

If you have a truck that’s set up with aluminum rims. The thing that we would recommend is probably taking that front wheel changing it on the back and then taking the inside wheels and flopping them side to side. It is going to basically have to take all the wheels off all at once so that you can do that which is gone be a bit of time but it will keep you from having to actually remove the wheels from the rims again. But this only works if your tires are direction non-specific. If they are direction-specific, you could take that front-wheel flip it over to the other side back and that is going to be able to keep the tires rotating in the same direction.

Step 4:

Lower the vehicle by jacking the rear first and removing the rack, then gently lower the truck. Go around and tighten each nut for the best fit.

Final Words

Rotating tires is known as one of the maintenance methods, prolonging the life of the car as well as ensuring safety when operating. Therefore, drivers should perform tire rotation for cars when the deadline is due. For vehicles with a front-mounted engine, the entire front tire will bear 60% of the vehicle’s load.

At the same time when braking, the front wheel also has to bear 80% of the gravity, causing the front wheel to wear faster than the rear wheel. Tire rotation is the swapping position of the tires. This helps the tires wear more evenly, ensures the same durability, and, more importantly, ensures the best vehicle performance. Hopefully, the topic “ How to rotate dually tires” will give you more information and a useful way to protect and improve your tires.