Tire wear question...

I am running Condor 5.00-5's on my -4. The outer portions of the tread are wearing faster than the inner sections. Is it acceptable practice to switch tires between left and right wheels or to rotate the tires on the wheels to wear them more evenly?

Is one option better than the other?

Thanks in advance for the input.

Regards,

Dean

Buy new tires!

We had the same problem on the -10 and switched them between wheels at the annual. It ended up biting us in the a** 4 months later while landing at an unfamiliar airport for gas at 11pm. Needless to say we'll never do it again.

Tire wear

In the long distant past when I was a professional glider tug pilot we had the same problems on our tugs.
The secret is to know when to turn your tires so that they end up being evenly worn and at end of the life of the tire and you only get that by experience on a particular aircraft. You might need to turn them whilst they appear to be OK.
Another solution is to fly off grass.
One club I towed at who flew of grass their tires perished before they wore out.
Occasionally we borrowed a tug from the grass site and immediately tire wear became apparent on Tarmac.
Both clubs used the same tug aircraft.
So if it was me I would turn your tires, but monitor the wear.
Happy flying

Cheers Rob

RV 3 bought flying
RV 8 very slow build in the shed.

Turn the tire

Dean,
It's common to have your type of wear.
Swapping wheels from Side to side will not help. The worn side remains to the outer side. Removing the tire from the wheel and then remounting it so that the worn side is to the inside will extend the tires life. You may even do this again before replacement.

Randy Hooper said:

Dean,
It's common to have your type of wear.
Swapping wheels from Side to side will not help. The worn side remains to the outer side. Removing the tire from the wheel and then remounting it so that the worn side is to the inside will extend the tires life. You may even do this again before replacement.

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I have done exactly this on my second set and now the tires look to have worn evenly.

If you subscribe to remounting the tires so that the "inside" is now "outside", do you keep the same tube or do you replace the tube with a new one?

noelf said:

If you subscribe to remounting the tires so that the "inside" is now "outside", do you keep the same tube or do you replace the tube with a new one?

Click to expand...

I have kept the same tube even when I changed tires to a new set. So far (430+), have not had any issues.

Flipping the tires on the rim is routine for me - get twice the life out of the tires (assuming that you don't let the wear go too far before the flip). I re-use the tubes for this as well.