Let me start off by saying I am in no way a tire expert. Ok so I get in my new Wrangler MT/Rs and head off to my local "expert" tire place to have them mounted. They ask me do I want the white lettering on the inside or the outside, I say inside. They mount 4 of my five tires, spare was a day behind with UPS. No major issue there everything is good to go. Today around 4 I drop off the spare to be mounted and balanced. They tell me it will be about 45 mins before they can get to it. No big deal I have tickets for a movie at 7. I come back in an hour and see my tire and rim still sitting on the floor. The manager meets me at the door and says "bad news we mounted your other tires on backwards". Tells me the tires clearly say "this side inboard" and they missed it when they mounted my other other four. Not being an expert I differed to the "expert".

So I ask him how much is it going to cost to fix this. He goes over to his computer and starts typing up a new invoice, then changes his mind and says they will fix for free. For the record I would not have paid anything. So by this time it's after 5 and my wife is quite pissed. Long story short we missed the movie. I wasn't paying all that close of attention to what they where doing but I caught them pulling a tire and flipping it back over and then tossing it back on the Jeep without balancing it. I asked the manager if each tire needed to be rebalanced after being pulled, to which he said they had to be. So I pointed out that I saw that his tech had not done that with one of the tires. He questions the tech and I was right. So now I'm concerned I may have missed this with the other tires. Plus all the wheel weights seem like they are going to fall off. This place is one of the largest local chains, WTF.

So now I have a pissed off wife and I'm not a hundred percent sure it was even needed. Do MT/Rs really needed to be mounted a certain way?

 

Im not sure on the direction of the tire... should say on the sidewall. But properly balanced tires is HUGE. Bad wobbles and vibrations could happen if they are out of balance. I would take the Jeep back to the tire place and insist that the tires be checked. If they refuse take it to another tire place and have them look at it.

Good luck

 

I'm pretty sure that I have read that before here. If you look I'm sure you will see the writing on the tire that's states the direction of rotation if it's there. A lot of tires don't have that but some do. I worked on motorcycles for years and all those tires do have a direction of rotation. Tires I got for my wifes liberty are also specific to rotation but my km2's are not

 

So I guess my question is why do these need to be mounted a certain way?

Also if these tires are required to be mounted white writing out, does anyone know of a way to black it out.

 

If the tire was "spinning" the wrong direction with the blackwall out, can't you just rotate it (not remount) to the other side of the jeep so it spins the right direction when going forward?

 

That would mean that there was different tires for each side. I know that can't be the case. So I can't figure out why?

 

Exactly, if they are all going the wrong direction, swap sides.

 

Correct ... if you look at the tread it is not a mirror image on both sides ... They can only be mounted 1 way ... letters out.

 

Ok I guess that makes sense. So does anyone know of a good way to black out the white writing?

 

I agree but since I already have 1500 into these tires, there has to be a fix for the white writing.