jimbro1000 said:

It is worth nothing that your owner manual advises NOT to rotate the tyres (ie fronts to rears and vice-versa). The reason is that your car has very different camber on the rear to the front and as a result your rear tyres will wear more on the inside edge and once this wear pattern starts it alters the way the tyre would sit, wear and handle if moved to the front. The front tyres tend to wear flat and this has a lot to do with where you actually loose rubber.

As for putting tyres on the rear - it all comes down to water displacement. A road tyre will only displace water up to a depth roughly equal to the tread depth and after that it aquaplanes which means no grip at all and your stability control can do nothing about it. An understeering car is much safer so you put the fresh tyres on the rear or the alternative is very messy.

In general driving in a straight line doesn't wear the tyres much at all, even hard acceleration and braking (with ABS and traction control especially) doesn't do much. The tyres need to get hot first and this only really happens when cornering. Lots of fast cornering preceded by heavy braking and/or followed by hard acceleration will wear the tyres. Get them hot enough and the rubber melts and the tyres will wear out in minutes, not 1000s of miles.

A lot of this depends on how smooth you are - the difference between smooth driver input and harsh driver input is amazing and it shows most on the tyres. Sharp, sudden input will heat the tyres more, much more and the result is immediate tyre wear. Smooth input helps to keep the tyres from overheating.

All of that said the steering geometry on the Abarth 500 does not lend itself to tyre longevity, the rear camber combined with a fairly pointy front end setup means you will wear the tyres out. 8000 miles for a front pair is fairly average...

Click to expand...

jimbro1000 said:

It is worth nothing that your owner manual advises NOT to rotate the tyres (ie fronts to rears and vice-versa). The reason is that your car has very different camber on the rear to the front and as a result your rear tyres will wear more on the inside edge and once this wear pattern starts it alters the way the tyre would sit, wear and handle if moved to the front. The front tyres tend to wear flat and this has a lot to do with where you actually loose rubber.

As for putting tyres on the rear - it all comes down to water displacement. A road tyre will only displace water up to a depth roughly equal to the tread depth and after that it aquaplanes which means no grip at all and your stability control can do nothing about it. An understeering car is much safer so you put the fresh tyres on the rear or the alternative is very messy.

In general driving in a straight line doesn't wear the tyres much at all, even hard acceleration and braking (with ABS and traction control especially) doesn't do much. The tyres need to get hot first and this only really happens when cornering. Lots of fast cornering preceded by heavy braking and/or followed by hard acceleration will wear the tyres. Get them hot enough and the rubber melts and the tyres will wear out in minutes, not 1000s of miles.

A lot of this depends on how smooth you are - the difference between smooth driver input and harsh driver input is amazing and it shows most on the tyres. Sharp, sudden input will heat the tyres more, much more and the result is immediate tyre wear. Smooth input helps to keep the tyres from overheating.

All of that said the steering geometry on the Abarth 500 does not lend itself to tyre longevity, the rear camber combined with a fairly pointy front end setup means you will wear the tyres out. 8000 miles for a front pair is fairly average...

Click to expand...

jimbro1000 said:

It is worth nothing that your owner manual advises NOT to rotate the tyres (ie fronts to rears and vice-versa). The reason is that your car has very different camber on the rear to the front and as a result your rear tyres will wear more on the inside edge and once this wear pattern starts it alters the way the tyre would sit, wear and handle if moved to the front. The front tyres tend to wear flat and this has a lot to do with where you actually loose rubber.

As for putting tyres on the rear - it all comes down to water displacement. A road tyre will only displace water up to a depth roughly equal to the tread depth and after that it aquaplanes which means no grip at all and your stability control can do nothing about it. An understeering car is much safer so you put the fresh tyres on the rear or the alternative is very messy.

In general driving in a straight line doesn't wear the tyres much at all, even hard acceleration and braking (with ABS and traction control especially) doesn't do much. The tyres need to get hot first and this only really happens when cornering. Lots of fast cornering preceded by heavy braking and/or followed by hard acceleration will wear the tyres. Get them hot enough and the rubber melts and the tyres will wear out in minutes, not 1000s of miles.

A lot of this depends on how smooth you are - the difference between smooth driver input and harsh driver input is amazing and it shows most on the tyres. Sharp, sudden input will heat the tyres more, much more and the result is immediate tyre wear. Smooth input helps to keep the tyres from overheating.

All of that said the steering geometry on the Abarth 500 does not lend itself to tyre longevity, the rear camber combined with a fairly pointy front end setup means you will wear the tyres out. 8000 miles for a front pair is fairly average...

Click to expand...

306maxi said:

Tbh i doubt a 500 is that sensitive. MacPherson strut suspension isn't going to care one bit.

I've got an Abarth san-tjet and I've rotated my tyres and all is fine and I've never had issues over almost 56k miles.

Click to expand...

ahmett said:

If I remember correctly Fiat 500 manual says to rotate tires?

Click to expand...

306maxi said:

Tbh i doubt a 500 is that sensitive. MacPherson strut suspension isn't going to care one bit.

I've got an Abarth san-tjet and I've rotated my tyres and all is fine and I've never had issues over almost 56k miles.

Click to expand...