Tire Groover

[bmwjnky]

Does anyone have an electric tire groover I can borrow? I'm looking to try and get a little better snow traction out of my MT's and as a side benefit hopefully quiet them down just a little. If no one has one I may buy one and rent it if people are interested.

 

[bmwjnky]

*update*
Just got my tire groover from ebay yesterday. Going to try and groove my tires this weekend or Monday after work. I haven't picked a pattern yet and I'm on the fence of weather or not to sipe them as well. I'll have pictures and an initial report mid to late next week on how it went.

 

[bmwjnky]

Stayed after work today to groove and sipe my tires. The tires are a little quieter and it feels like less steering effort is need when turning in parking lots at slow speed.

This is how the tire started out.

Final product. Grooved the large tread blocks and siped the smaller ones.

 

[LandCrawler]

No additional road noise?

 

[The Jade Bean]

Interested to hear more on your thoughts after some time. Was it hard to do?

-Daniel

 

[93yotasr5]

very cool!

 

[bmwjnky]

No additional road noise?

The tires are slightly quieter now. I have a feeling if I were to do some additional cuts or more siping it would be better. I did not touch the outer lugs as people online say it can lead to chunking.

Interested to hear more on your thoughts after some time. Was it hard to do?

-Daniel

It wasn't too hard to do once I figured out a good way to prop up the tire to get a good angle with the groover. It took about an hour and a half to do all 4 tires. That time includes setting up the groover for the first time and removing/re-installing the tires on my 80. I'm tempted to cut the large tread blocks in half vertically but will drive it for a little while and see how it goes first. I would like to test them in the snow but this next storm doesn't look like its going to produce much if any snow at lower altitudes that are close for me to drive to.

If anyone wants to try this on their own I'll rent the groover for $25.

 

[bmwjnky]

Got bored and did the vertical cuts in the large blocks, only took about 30 min to do all 4. You can see the siping is a little more visible now that the tires have about 35 miles on them.