Is there a recommended tire rotation pattern for the Defender?
I am not able to find any mention of tire rotation in the owner's manual, iGuide or the workshop manual.
This Goodyear page suggests using the cross pattern, but I've seen other places that suggest a different pattern for four wheel and all wheel drive vehicles.

 

I don't know about an official rotation but I would rotate clockwise around the car including the rear mounted tire. That's what was recommended to me years ago with my old Discos.

 

Does anyone know recommend miles?

 

So has anyone found the official answer from JLR on recommended rotation pattern?

I'm asking because I actually made the lazy decision to have my dealer perform an oil change and rotation next week. They sent me a document detailing what they plan on doing and it specifically notes Front-to-Back/Back-to-Front which leaves me puzzled.

I plan on asking them to perform a 5 tire rotation since that seems to make much more sense to me, but it would be nice to know what JLR specifically recommends.

Anyone?!?

 

I have always had good luck with front-to-back and back-to-front rotations. Anytime I have tried changing tires from one side to another I ended up with vibration issues.

As for the Defender, I haven't even bothered to rotate the OEM Goodyears. After running winter tires I plan to discard the POS Goodyears and get a set of Falken Wildpeak tires in spring.

 

Appreciate the input.

On past vehicles (when I wasn't running a separate set of winter tires, as I've sorta stopped doing that as winters here have really not required them in a while) I have been notoriously lazy with tire rotations. And I paid the price on my Jeep when my tires started getting noisy.

So my thought was that I'd like to at least get decent life out of these Pirellis before we move onto something new, and I would think it would be beneficial to keep the spare in rotation. But I hear what you're saying too.

 

I never saw anything from LR on what pattern to use. This is the pattern I went with.



I rotated at 5600 miles. The ride wasn't as smooth for the the first 1000 miles or so after rotation, but after that it's the same as before.
I didn't go with the 5 tire rotation primarily because I'm not sure I want to prolong the life and keep these tires, but I also don't like the fact that when you do that you have tires with varying numbers of miles on them until you've rotated enough times that every tire has been in every spot.

 

Rear tires move forward. Passenger front crosses to driver rear. Driver front becomes spare. Spare moves next door to passenger rear. Has never failed me over the years. FWIW, my Defender 'off-road' tires were wearing nice and evenly at 7500 miles when I rotated them.

 

CombatNinja's approach sounds as though it is the 5 tire rotation version of the 4 tire approach listed by johnz330. Nice to have two similar options.

 

With a full-size spare on a matching alloy, you are insane to not work it in to your rotation. That's 25% more tire to spread the miles over. Should allow me to go my entire Defender lease without replacing tires (fingers crossed).