dougdmg

2017 Audi A4
I was looking at the first maintenance schedule at 10,000 miles or 1 year after delivery and noticed there wasn't a tire rotation listed. I called Audi service. They told me you don't rotate tires when you have the quattro system. Has anyone heard of this explanation?

superswiss

The explanation is BS. Tire rotation is still recommended by Audi, however, rotation is front to back and not diagonal. But, tire rotation is not included in the regular maintenance intervals, because the tire rotation intervals don't usually line up with the 10k maintenance intervals. Typically tire rotation is done every 5k-8k miles, so you do it outside your regular maintenance. Back when the first scheduled maintenance was at 5k, it included a one time tire rotation, but now that Audi has pushed out the first service to 10k miles, it's no longer part of the service.

Best is to measure your tread wear and once you see that one axle wears more than the other go ahead and rotate, but just like brakes, tires wear on their own schedule depending on many factors, so making it part of the scheduled maintenance usually doesn't work out most of the time.

yvantheterrible

Just out of curiosity, why not diagonal?

superswiss

Some experts advise against diagonal rotation in general, unless you can swap the tire on the rim itself, but most performance tires have a dedicated outside, so you can't turn them around on the rim, some tires are also directional, so the tread pattern is meant to be used in only one direction. The belts inside a tire settle in one direction as you drive. When you rotate diagonally and you can't rotate the tire on the rim, then they will rotate in the opposite direction causing the belts to resettle in the opposite direction. This forward and backward motion weakens the metal. It's the same effect as when you take a piece of metal and start bending it forward and backwards. It will eventually snap. Not really sure in practice how many times you would have to rotate the tires for the belts to start snapping, but this is one reason I've read. Similarly, the rubber of the tires gets worn in for a particular rotational direction. If you change the rotational direction you may not have ideal grip until the wear pattern of the tire changes, so generally you want your tires to rotate in the same direction for their entire lifespan.

yvantheterrible

Great info, thanks.

A4Nash

I simply had them do it at dealership for $40 when I brought it in for the free first service. I know it is overpriced, but I was there and saved another trip to a shop. Call me lazy! I only had 5K miles on it at 1 year mark, so it matched up well.

lowjdml

The Audi dealership I went to insisted on rebalancing when rotating tires, so I just had them do the 10k service and rotated the tires myself.

A4Nash

Nice try! Glad you did not go for it. I would have done the same.

Dan in St. Louis

It is probably worth telling the MMI to forget the old "tire pressure" data (which isn't really pressures at all, but instead frequency and vibration) so it can learn the characteristics of the tires in their new positions.

lowjdml

Good point! Yes, I rechecked and saved tire pressures after rotating.