Hi, I'm driving a MY01 and juz had my front tires replaced with Bridgestone Potenza RE750s 205/50 R16s at one of the local Bridgestone/Firestone Shops.

To my astonishment, my friend happened to spot that the tires were actually mounted in the wrong direction of rotation after I've driven them for 2 weeks putting 1500 miles on them becoz of the long weekend trip!!!!!!

Furious I approached the store manager regarding the matter and all he said he could do was to put them back correctly!!!

Now question is.... the tires were actually designed as Uni-directional, so going at the wrong direction at that mileage, will it degrade or affect the structure?(internally - steel belt / externally - thread grooves). And imagine if my friend had not pointed the MISTAKE I'd still be driving the car with the tires in the wrong direction!!!! (Did not check as I had installed my rears with the same shop and trusted them!!!!!!)

Do you guys think there's a chance that i can request for new replacements??? Anyway I called Bridgestone Office and still waiting for the district manager to contact me... So remember to check on rotation direction of you newly installed tires!!! Cheers......

 

Eh? Were they BOTH facing the wrong direction? In which case, simply swap your left and right wheels. No big deal. Although it sounds like the tire shop already fixed things...

In any case, I can't imagine any issue whatsoever from this. The only possible problem would be in the rain. The directional tread design is meant for two things, from what I can tell - first is water evacuation, the second is looks.

 

It doesn't hurt the tire to run the wrong direction. In fact we did some tire testing running directional tires the wrong way and the only thing that the directional tread helped with is standing water.
You will be fine. I would just try to get a little discount for your time and effort.

Jim

 

Yup, unless you hydroplaned and smacked a concrete barrier, don't worry about it. Swap the rims or just keep running 'em in the wrong direction--it's no big deal and won't affect anything in the dry.

 

Thanks guys for your replies... the thing is, after i had the rims/ tires swapped at the shop, the car seem to pull to the right side slightly when driving on the the freeway! (Tried on both the left and right lanes and the car tends to wanna pull slightly to the right with the steerinf wheel going straight)

I did not experienced this prior to the swap or even before i changed to the Bridgestones!!!! Thats why i'm not sure if the tire threads are affected due to the wrong installation. Dun think itz a alignment prob too as things were well before i had them swapped back!!!! Sigh...............