How often do you get new tires?

[kfergos]

Asammy - Thank you for asking this! I didn't even know I wondered, but reading the responses has been really informative.

This is what I go by too. Not flat in that they're not holding air, but flat as in more rectangular...like when you look at the tire from the side, there's almost an edge across the top because the road has worn the rubber sort of flat and wide.

Uh-oh, my rear one has looked like that for a while now... Maybe it's getting to be time. Then again, I haven't had any flats or issues with them so I might just wait a while longer.

I rotate them - maybe at the beginning of the season or if the rear is looking especially tired, so I can milk some more miles out of them.

Whoa, what a good idea! I would never have thought to do this. Crazy. I might just have to try switching the front & rear tires. I have Gatorskins and they're such a pain in the neck to get on and off, even after I've had to change a few flats with them, I usually avoid tire removal at all costs. But if I could squeeze another few months out of them... Hmmm...

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

What I found was that when my tires had 5,000 miles on them, they didn't look so bad to me....until I bought a new set in preparation and compared the old and new tires side by side. Oh my gosh, it was scary how worn they actually were without my 'seeing' that!
The thing is, I'm a pretty safety conscious person, and what I really want to avoid is having a tire BLOW OUT while I'm going 30mph on a county highway here with no shoulder with a big truck passing me at that moment. My worst nightmare.

So now I have vowed to change tires a little more frequently. I never want to leave them til 5,000 miles again. The hell with saving $10 by getting a couple more months out of an aging tire.

I think another factor in tire wear is how smooth the roads or paths are that you usually ride on, and how much debris you deal with on a daily basis.

[Blueberry]

I won't put the more worn rear tire on the front. I'll move the front to the rear, and put a new one on the front. A blow out on the front can be much more dangerous than one on the rear - it's just not worth the risk to me....

CA

[aicabsolut]

I don't rotate. I just replace the rear.
That's kind of where I am now.... but the new version of the tires i run don't look the same, so I'd have to have a mismatched pair. The rear one is looking pretty sad. They got through a full race season (starting in Feb, including trainer time--a real good way to kill a tire). I might just change both and keep the front one as a backup. That means I can finally ditch my current backup tires which have some bigger problems, like a cut I'd have to cover with a folded dollar bill.

The only time I've put a front tire on the back is when I had to loan a tire to a friend for a while, and I didn't want to give him the one that was nearly worn out, so I gave him an old front tire. The reason I don't rotate is because I wouldn't put the worn rear on the front, and putting a slightly worn front on the rear just means i'll be replacing the rear even sooner. Otherwise, I might get close to 2 rear tire lives out of the front.

[jobob]

Sheldon agrees with CA

This article might be useful:

Sheldon Brown on Rotating Tires

Here's an excerpt:

It is common for a front tire to outlast a rear tire by as much as three to one. Rear tires have more weight on them, and also have to deal with drive forces.

[...]

Well-meaning cyclists, even some mechanics who don't know any better, sometimes try to deal with this by swapping tires, putting the less worn front tire on the back wheel, and moving the worn-but-usable rear tire to the front. The idea is to equalize the wear on the two tires, but this is a serious mistake, don't do it!

[...]

The reason for this is that the front tire is much more critical for safety than the rear, so you should have the more reliable tire on the front.

If you have a blowout, if it is on the rear tire, you have a very good chance of bringing the bike to a controlled stop. If your front tire blows, you can lose steering control, and a crash is a real possibility.

[maillotpois]

Yeah, I am too lazy to rotate in addition to the safety issues. I replace the rear at probably a 2 to one ratio to the front, and a rear lasts about 2000 miles for me.

Reminds me we need to get some new tires... Always good to have plenty of matching spares on hand.

[coyote]

When you slam on the brakes, skid to a halt and find that the middle rubber strip is peeling off

I meant to do it sooner, its just so hard to let go of the bike for even a day.