Interesting line on this on the Kia Owners Club Forum Quote:
On the Sportage AWD models, tyre wear imbalance is OK front to back, provided that the better tyres are on the front. [This advice is not applicable to non AWD vehicles and in this case the better tyres should be on the rear.] Tyre wear imbalance side to side is bad news on any car.
It is preferred that the tyres are periodically rotated front to back as the fronts will wear faster than the rears, this will equalise tyre wear and mend that you get to change all four eventually as they are worn evenly. Many tyres are directional so it is not recommended to rotate left to right since this will mean the tyres are turning the wrong way. Swapping the fronts for the rears on same side is the way to go
NEVER purchase tyres from a dealer - nearly all tyre specialists will beat them on price.
This kind of discussion makes me wonder what people do about punctures. What about space-saver spare wheels? If you have a regular spare wheel and you get a puncture, the spare wheel will have a different tread depth from all the others on the car, will you damage the transmission if you fit it? If you get a puncture in one tyre, and the other one on that axle is say 10% worn, do you replace them both?
Don't all cars have in-built tolerances that would take care of all the above eventualities? Id be surprised if they didn't.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that the main dealers were brainwashing their customers into believing that they need new tyres. The proof is that I only have a front wheel drive and yet every time my car went into the Volvo dealer for the MOT or annual service they always made a big issue about uneven wear on the tyres which are all exactly the same brand and tread pattern. The MOT check list boxes were all ticked but the comments at the bottom were always the same that one of the tyres was uneven by 1.5 mm. which is unimportant when the rear wheels constantly rotate freely (no drive).
Just gone through the owners manual for my 2017 Kia Sportage AWD. There is no mention of having to replace all four tyres if only the front or rear are worn. The only caution is not to mix brands / tread pattern on same axle.
Also just another thought but when driving the rotation speed of all wheels will always be changing unless your going in a straight line, every corner you take the outer wheels will be rotating faster than the inner wheels. In my part of Derbyshire there aren't many straight roads!
I have always tried to replace my tyres as a pair, rather than all 4 at once, mainly because of the cost. I have been driving cars since 1967 and never had a problem with tyres apart from the odd puncture. I have had 4WD vehicles and 2WD like my present one. I have certainly never heard this "warning" until this thread came up. Mixing tyres is more likely to cause handling problems than to wreck the transmission, in my opinion. I can't see any manufacturer making vehicles where a few mm difference in tread depth could damage the transmission. They just wouldn't sell!
I wouldn't mind betting that if I went outside and measured my tyres they would all be slightly different, simply because of the fact that the roads aren't all straight and even.
It was never a problem on the old style 4x4s I used to have (Suziki Grand Vitaras) .. manual control of the 4x4 system with part time 4x4 that you were told just to use in snow/ ice/ mud ... if you used it all time in the dry you were warned it can wind up the 4x4 system.
The Rangie was permanently 4x4 with viscous coupled 4x4 which was supposed to mean no problems.
My last car was Hyundai Tucson and I changed all 4 together as wanted new set of All Weather tyres on but also concerned about the problems that were going around .. the 4x4 system was automatic and was supposed to cut in when needed.
This current car is a 4x4 but there is no physical mechanical connection of the drive from the front wheels to the back ones so no problem with tyres being worn different front to back.... front wheels are petrol engine and electric motors and the back wheels have their own electric motor.
The last 4x4 I had was a Mazda Bongo, which had a viscous coupling. The only way to disconnect one set of wheels was to remove a prop-shaft. Never heard of any problems with them. My current car is a Hyundai Tucson, but mine is the 2WD version.
That viscous coupling protects the drive system from the effects of the different travel of the front and rear drive systems .. tyre wear etc.
It is what was supposed to protect the Rangie but on the P38 you had to make sure it was working properly as quite a few owners found if the viscous coupling failed it wound up the propahafts and would result in one snapping.. usually the front one.... a number of owners took the front prop shaft off leaving them with rear wheel drive only.
I had a BMW E53 X5, and the handbook for that gave similar advice - tyres should be the same all round with minimal tread depth difference. Where the front rear wheels rotate at different speeds, this can cause an expensive problem with the transfer box / system that controls the drive to the two axles. I guess this is not capable of accomodating the different axle speeds.
Rotating wheels is not always possible as some cars have a staggered set up where the rears are wide than the fronts.
I think this advice can be taken a bit too literally. Yes the tyres should be the same all round, meaning the same size maybe even the same make, as opposed to different sized tyres.
It should be possible for someone who is good at maths (which isn't me!) to calculate the difference in rotational speeds between a brand new tyre and one the same size with just legal tread depth. I would imagine it's minimal. To calculate the difference when there is just 2mm less on one set than there is on the other.............
I would have thought that any car would have tolerances that would cope with that difference more than adequately. If the transmission could be damaged by having tyre tread depths just 2mm different, I doubt whether any would sell. I certainly wouldn't buy one!