Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83
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If I have this right, the concern is the car following the grooves in the pavement. We tire engineers call that "groove wander" - although the term "tramlining" is also used (I prefer the former - a bit more descriptive, I think.)
What is happening is that the grooves in the tire are lining up with the grooves in the pavement and when edge meets edge, the tire tends to be follow the edge in the pavement. This phenomenon is going to be affected by the number of grooves in the tire (and the number of grooves in the pavement) and the amount of footprint pressure for each groove.
Obviously over inflating the tires is going to put more pressure on the center grooves - and those grooves will dominate the way the tire behaves. Less pressure will tend to engage the rest of the grooves and decrease the effect.
2 problems: While there are standards about pavement grooving - spacing, width - there are so many non-standard pavement grooving, it is difficult for a tire manufacturer to space the grooves in a tire to account for all of them.
Grooves in a tire are necessary to allow a pathway for the water when the tire rolls through the water - which is what the grooves in the pavement are also doing. In designing a tire, well defined grooves work better that grooves that are interrupted by the tread pattern. Plus the edges of a tread element are areas were the wear will be more rapid that in the center of the element. "Heel and toe" wear is a good examples of this at work. Well defined grooves tend to be more resistant to irregular wear, especially diagonal wear.
In your case, I would try decreasing the pressure and see if that doesn't help.