shaved?

[thomas]

sorry perverts .....im talkin about tires. i was looking at a set of tires and they said they were shaved and had 3 heat sycles on them. what does all that mean? there depth is 3/32nds there toyo r888's. i can pick a set up for 150bucks 305/35/18. not sure how good of tread that is. i might put 5k on a yr. that depth ok?

[Craig 94 TA GT]

3/32?? That's half of the depth on my Nitto DRs. Seems awfully low to me. The only reason I can think of shaving is to have more surface area for a drag type slick effect. I would personally not buy these or even consider them.

[wolfdogs]

2/32nds is the legal number for a tire being worn out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[darkhorsecustoms]

Autocross racers often shave tires to avoid "tread squirm." This makes the tire more responsive around corners. Heat cycles are basically just how it sounds, how many times the tires are heated up and cooled down. The first one is the most important, as it is the break-in for the tire. If this is done incorrectly, you can ruin a set of tires. This is why a lot of tire suppliers offer it as a service. Every heat cycle changes a tire to some degree, generally in the direction of harder, less flexible, and less adhesive. Race tires can loose effectiveness before the tread wears through if they go through many heat cycles. For some tires three cycles is too many, while others show a performance drop off initially and then maintain a good level of performance until the tread is worn off. And just like the others said, 3/32s is way too low for street driving. I would be surprised if you'd get 6 months out of them before they would be illegal.

[formula_gramps]

i might put 5k on a yr. that depth ok?

LOL!

I can tell you that wouldn't fly up here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Tires with that little amount of tread would not pass vehicle inspection.

Don't know what kind of rainfall you get where you are, but we get a lot up here in New England, and with our type of cars being somewhat prone to oversteer, being RWD and with the weight difference from front to rear anyway, driving with tires like that up here would make for quite an adventure every time it rained.....

Now, promise us you won't drive in the rain with that set of tires, young man.....

(Darkhorse: nice info on heat cycles. I've seen the teams in Indycar and F1 use those procedures and I was never quite sure what they were trying to accomplish when a team would for example choose "scuffs" vs. "stickers" (even though each was the same compound) for a given stint.)

[Wild Willy]

If tires are raced without having a couple of heat cycles, they will frequently fail- they need a couple cycles before racing- sounds like these tires are ready for the track, not something you would drive on the street-