Which tyres wear faster?

[ivanhoe]

Originally Posted by Adrian E

There are always exceptions to any rule but generally new tyres replaced in pairs should go on the back. From a work perspective the reasons are mainly:

If you get a tyre failure it's more likely to be on an aged tyre so if that's on the front you will get under steer rather than oversteer in the event of a blowout, so less likely to be catastrophic in terms of accident risk ( doesn't help if you get a nail in a rear tyre obviously!)

Rear tyres generally do less work so a brand new tyre can bed in gently which will increase its total lifespan

Tyres moved off the rear will probably have more tread but also be older - moving them to the front then allows them to be worked harder on steering duties and with greater load on them. You can usually feel the difference when rotating tyres as the sidewall will feel firmer initially

Quattro does mean you're ideally looking at rotating tyres (ideally diagonally) once and then replacing all 4 - I've done my last set in pairs as 1 pair were worn out on the shoulders and the others still had 4mm+ so I ran them for 7 months ( only about 2k miles) and have now rotated the ones I fitted in September to the front. Tread depth should be fine assuming you're running matched pairs of tyres or if there's no appreciable difference in rolling radius (you'd be surprised how different it can be on nominally same size tyres!) - the owners handbook says the difference between rolling radius on used vs new tyres will not damage the drivetrain

Audi d3 owners manual states that tyres with deepest tread should be on the front . ???

[Adrian E]

Originally Posted by ivanhoe

Audi d3 owners manual states that tyres with deepest tread should be on the front . ???

I did say:

Originally Posted by Adrian E View Post
There are always exceptions to any rule but generally new tyres replaced in pairs should go on the back.

Not uncommon for the manual to say that even if there’s no technical reason. Just reduces the risk of understeer/aquaplaning in certain circumstances.

[Versace]

I fitted brand new set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4 255/45/18 DOT 2020 on my 4.2 40V A8 D3, in March, had the allignment done...
I´ve broken the 20.000km mark yesterday and there is something strange. I noticed at 10.000km that the rears wear out faster, so I made another allignment in another tyre shop that has a brand new Hoffmann 3D Allignment system. Everything fine with the allignment so far.
Now to my question:
Front ones are worn about 1,5/2mm, the rear ones have about an 1,5mm left to the thread wear indicator so it means that they will be due for replacement very soon. We changed them front/back yesterday so I can probably make another 20.000km with those tyres. Is it normal that the quattro eats through rear tyres faster? I check tyre pressure regurarly and I have 2.1 bar in the back and 2.3 in the front, with cold tyres as per user manual. The wear is 100% even through the whole tread not even slightly on the shoulders (front and back).

[ainarssems]

In my experience front tyres wear faster on quattro with the extra weight on front and front tyres doing steering and most of braking and rear tyres just keeping back off the ground and a little bit of braking. I suppose there could be some differences due to driving style, if you are very gentle on braking and with a steering but accelerate full throttle in the straight line maybe rears wear faster, or if you mostly do motorway miles then fronts need to handle less steering. I have heard from some people who swear they get even wear.

Only one I heard of rear tyres wearing faster is Q7 but then again some people also report fronts wearing faster on Q7, generally Q7 is going through tyres very fast either way.

40k km (25k miles) that's pretty good anyway, I get about 20k miles from Michelin swapping front and rear couple of times but with fronts wearing faster.

[Versace]

Q7 = Cayenne in the suspension components and I can confirm that.
I've had a Cayenne S, the rear tyres wore faster. I confirm on 4 sets of P-Zero 275/40/20.

[Joe2.0E]

3.0TDI D3 & D4 both wore rear faster than fronts but not a lot in it for me.
I generally swapped them around to allow me to replace all 4 together.

[ainarssems]

Could be down to which diffs you have, early D3 had 50/50 centre diff and open rear diff, later it got 40/60 centre diff, I think it was introduced at different times for different engines. Then a bit later it got an option for sport rear diff as well.

[Versace]

No 4E/D3 ever had other than a 50/50 Torsen center diff as far as I know, and never a sports diff in the rear as the D4!!