replacing individual tire

[Sister7]

'93 legacy AT AWD

 

I just put a hole in the sidewall of one of my new tires.  No chance of patching it.     The tires have ~5k miles on them.  With this low of mileage, can I replace the one tire or am I SOL?

[rverdoold]

You can get the same tire and have it surfaced till the same circumference as the others.

[Stevo F]

Do most tire shops to resurfacing or shaving of tires, or is that only certain places that have the equipment. Our local tire shop can barely handle repairing tires, let alone something as precise as that.

[1 Lucky Texan]

I doubt 5K has removed enough tread to matter. Might depend on the tire type. Some soft summer-only racing tires might be down 1/3 of their tread. Some hard touring tires might be barely worn.

 

some people have bought used tires from ebay that match their other 3. Or have found a shop to shave some tread off.

[Sister7]

They are all-season touring tires with a tread ware rating of 620 (michelin mxv4's) and 60k warranty.   I bought them at Costco, so I'm hoping this is covered in their road hazard warranty.... we shall see.

[Pgh_Scoob]

General rule of thumb for AWD vehicles is no more the 4/32 tread difference between tires and with michellins you should be golden in just replacing the one unless you have excessive edge wear due to bad alignment

[Gloyale]

You'll be fine.

 

Put the brand new one, and the other best one on the front...it will quickly wear some....then rotate it after 1000 miles.

[AdventureSubaru]

Yeah, replace it and go. Michelin is a pretty good brand. 5000 miles would not make enough difference to matter.

[idosubaru]

doesn't matter.  install new one and other best one up front.

 

if there's significant tread wear difference then rotate the other three tires and leave the front one up front until it wears down to match the other three.  then rotate as normal.

 

due to the open diff nature of the front and rear there's also the idea that one mis-matched tire up front can't do any damage anyway....so to that end it doesn't really matter what you do.

 

although if you have a rear LSD (probably not) you don't want the rear two mismatched.

[Sister7]

Thanks everyone.   I got the new tire yesterday, and Costco did cover it under the road hazard warranty.  They even waived the $1.09 disposal fee for the old tire, so I wasn't charged anything.

[Rooster2]

Thanks everyone.   I got the new tire yesterday, and Costco did cover it under the road hazard warranty.  They even waived the $1.09 disposal fee for the old tire, so I wasn't charged anything.

I like reading success stories like yours. As stated earlier, you don't have enough tire wear on the Michelins to make any significant size difference to affect all wheel drive. Drive with confidence on your tires. You are good to go.