Quote:
Originally Posted by California98Civic
Interesting test. Thanks. But maybe you could sharpen it a little and make a thread? What were the methods and conditions of your test? There are a lot of variables here that you are not describing: starting tire temp, outdoor temp, road temp (hours of sunshine), how many minutes you drove... heck, even the number of times your turned these front wheels and the speed at which you took turns might affect these results a little.
Also, do your results matter for tire wear? Who says the resulting temperatures are a problem? Tirerack claims a 50* F increase after 30 mins driving is normal. These two temperatures might be functionally meaningless if they are well within the design limits of the tire.
I'm not trying to snipe at you. I think you have the start of a really interesting thread more rigorously testing these things.
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These are just some preliminary results - this thread got me thinking about measuring tyre temps, rather than just going by OEM recommendations, which I've always found to lead to shoulder wear. It's not so much the overall temperature that's in play, just the temperature delta across the tyre. Overall temp will be influenced by the factors you mention, the deltas less so.
An even temperature across the tyre means each tread block is doing the same amount of work - that should be good for wear. I'll air up to max side wall next and see what happens.
Frankly, it would take weeks for testing to arrive at a rigorous conclusion - probably why no one on the internet seems to have done it. I find dozens of references to how tread wear affects dry/wet braking distances, but nothing for pressures.
Remember, the OEM placard says 'recommended' there's no possible way they can give you optimum pressures for every possible scenario.
http://www.rarespares.net.au/rarespa...oduct=92048297
If your placard lists only a single pressure (as my test car does) and you're running at high load and high speed, you're actually running much too low pressures. In my case the OEM tyres were 175's, but the car was fitted with lower profile 205's so the OEM number becomes meaningless. Even if I air up to max side wall, I'll still have more contact patch than the 175s.