Well the siping has disappeared on my Procomp MT's, 31x10.5x15,,,So I ordered up another iron(my other one grew feet) and thought I would show how to make a mud tire climb rocks and ice/snow like a Geko on Meth. I will  groove and sipe these tires, the grooves will be added to make smaller tread blocks impacting the pavement, but not cut full tread depth to retain the bulk of the integrity of the large blocks in mud.

Ideal 250W tire iron


Grooving blade,


Modified for plunge siping.


Ready to groove,


Before,


After,


The plunge siping is very hard to see, but they are there. Conventional pass tire siping are closer to 1/32" groove whereas the siping iron used to plunge cut are actually slits. I plunge cut the sipes so that they do not enter/exit the edges of the tread block, this helps them from ever chunking.

The ride of the tires increased greatly, far less tread slap and tread noise!

I had to look twice it looks so factory. Nice. 

Thnx,

I went into town yesterday and stopped by my cousins NAPA to grab some oil and stuff, one of the local heepsters seen the tires and asked when Procomp came out with a new design tire, LOL

Nice job thanks for sharing , I am a firm beleaver in siped tires ,Ive used chains ,studs and then got a set of siped tires and found a new world in traction on snow,ice and wet roads like we have here in Oregon.

Excellent job....and I must complement you on your paitence....lol!

I take it this didn't affect the balance....maybe you did not take out enough to affect it....

Good Job!

Thnx,,,

It doesnt take long at all, and is rather easy, it doesnt take much muscle, just a constant light pressure as the heated knife edges cut and melt thru the rubber, 15 minutes for each tire to groove and another 10 minutes or so to sipe. And I did this with the tires and wheels still mounted on the vehicle.

Because the grooving was a uniform pattern all around the tire,  the ballance wasnt affected and the siping removes zero material.

Tell thats cool that it doesnt affect balance. A friend of mine has one of these irons and has used it to cut every other tooth off of his 38" boggers on his trail rig. I just havent thought about doing anything to on-road tires. cool way to extend the life of your tires and get some extra grip.

I had only done the siping on one rear tire and was starting to finish the siping on the 3 other tires this morning. You need to apply some downward pressure to plunge the blades and I was using a oven pot holder and it is scorched real bad now, LOL,,,,,,,SO then a lightbulb turned on above my noggin,

it needs a handle

,,,it took about 90 seconds to create a handle, lopped off about 6 inches of a old broom, grabbed a hose clamp and a drywall screw, viola a handle!
 

I broke down the changes to the tread,

Originally there was 160 tread blocks per tire, I added 120 grooves(80 horizontal across the tread and 40 at 45 degrees) creating 280 tread blocks with 960 sipes per tire.

We had a shyt load of rain over night and it was still raining this morning, so I went for a drive to check out how these tires worked on wet pavement and back dirt roads. The tires hold wet blacktop very well! surprisingly well! There also feels to be a significant lower rolling resistance and on the red shale fire roads the tires are no longer sliding all over. And when the red shale is wet, it is slick as snot on a wet glass doorknob.

I finished up siping the front tires today, the makeshift handle actually caught fire just as I was finishing the last tire, LOL

I aired them down to 8psi Front and 6psi in the back and I took a ride up onto the mtn to a trail that has some steep areas with some wet rocks that I usually could only make it up if I had some momentum, this time I could get up at a much lower speed and barely spin a tire. Now I could use a lower TC gearset.....


I am very happy with the results to say the least!!!

That is a lot of grooving.  But it does give you a lot more edge.

That's pretty cool, how much are those irons and where did you get yours?

60-70$, use amazon and search for "ideal 250watt tire iron" and find the best price.


They still perform just as well in the mud if not even better. We have had alot of rain due to a stalled out low front and things on the mtn are getting real sloppy

Thanks, I'll have to look one up.  I like the look of your tires, after and I can see it's benifits.

Here is a picture showing the siping, now with a few miles on the tires they are showing,