SilberGrau57

I just rotated my tires after putting 10K miles on them. The tire shop convinced me to cross the rears when moving them to the front, thus reversing the original direction of rotation. Upon leaving the shop and getting up to speed, I immediately noticed increased tire noise from the fronts. I also noticed another strange thing: the TPMS would not reset. After driving what I thought was an overly long period, the TPMS display finally popped in, but within another short time, it disappeared again and wouldn't come back. Upon arriving home, I checked my manual, and it definitely stated to maintain the direction of rotation when rotating tires. This is from my W240 manual. When I checked the W220 manual, it talks about maintaining the direction of rotation for unidirectional tires only, which mine aren't. I went back to the tire shop and had them reverse the fronts so they were back to the original sides. This time, the TPMS reset itself rather quickly as I would expect. So, the question is: does the car learn the direction of rotation of the TPMS sensors? It sure seemed that way.

Kebowers47

I do not rotate tires-period. All it does is 'even out' wear patterns--but scrubs away more tread 'erasing' what is there. IF your tires are wearing a noticeable pattern, the wheel alignment is incorrect and causing excess stress and wear on that tire. My objective is too have the 4 tires wear out at the same time. Adjusting tire pressure is necessary to even out wear across the tread. Your particular driving habits and LOAD are important. Driving too fast around the spiral in a parking garage scrubs away costly tread and establishes a destructive wear pattern. New tires do CURE into a direction of rotation, which should be maintained. Earlier generation radial tires would often suffer tread separation if rotation direction was changed. Tread blocks Would and Will develop tapered front to back wear.

TPS are not capable of rotation sensing. The auto system want to know where each TPS is so it can tell you which tire has a problem. Not all auto systems will automatically reset TPS locations.

QUOTE=SilberGrau57;7817444]I just rotated my tires after putting 10K miles on them. The tire shop convinced me to cross the rears when moving them to the front, thus reversing the original direction of rotation. Upon leaving the shop and getting up to speed, I immediately noticed increased tire noise from the fronts. I also noticed another strange thing: the TPMS would not reset. After driving what I thought was an overly long period, the TPMS display finally popped in, but within another short time, it disappeared again and wouldn't come back. Upon arriving home, I checked my manual, and it definitely stated to maintain the direction of rotation when rotating tires. This is from my W240 manual. When I checked the W220 manual, it talks about maintaining the direction of rotation for unidirectional tires only, which mine aren't. I went back to the tire shop and had them reverse the fronts so they were back to the original sides. This time, the TPMS reset itself rather quickly as I would expect. So, the question is: does the car learn the direction of rotation of the TPMS sensors? It sure seemed that way.[/QUOTE]

wallyp

I do rotate tires, based upon the fact that fronts and rears usually wear at differing rates, and I prefer to replace all four together. It might or might not be germane that Michelin cuts the tread-wear warranty in half on staggered size set-ups, where rotation is not practical.

I don't have the TPMS on my 2003, so don't have any knowledge or comment on that question.

SilberGrau57

I'm prepared to accept that the delay I just experienced before the TPMS reset had nothing to do with the fact that I initially had the old rear/new front tires rotating in the opposite direction that they were spinning the first 10K miles with these tires. That would be too weird. I do recall being concerned about the TPMS pressure values when I first put these tires on my wheels after buying the car in 2016. I recall that I saw values quickly, but they were not in the proper positions on the car display. This was evident because I specified a higher pressure in the rear tires per the placard. Then eventually (I don't remember how long) they settled into the correction positions and stayed consistent throughout the last 3 years/10K miles. What was different this time was the length of time the display remained blank with the statement that the values would appear after driving some number of miles.