[solarguy]

I'm cheap. I've been frugal since I was 14. I discovered treadwear ratings on tires in about 1980, so I never bought inexpensive tires, but always bought the ones with the highest treadwear ratings. Those tend to be harder compound, and I wonder if that systematically reduces or increases hysteresis losses and/or RR.

Anyway, I have always been a big fan of running my tires at 3-5psi over sidewall. I have been doing it since at least 1977. I had a nice set of toyo radials on my gmc shortbed pickup truck that lasted for 70k miles and still looked pretty good when I sold it. I check the tire pressure 4 times per year and I run snow tires in the winter.

Yes, the ride is a little stiffer. No, I never experienced any unusual tread wear in the center, or anywhere else. Never had any unusual tire failures. I always got excellent tread life by doing this. This would include tires on the following vehicles:

82 GMC pickup
Pontiac Firefly, not sure the year, 4-door
Chrysler Sundance POS, worst car I ever owned, no problems with the tires though.
'99 Subaru Outback
'93 Ford F-250 4wd, gasser
'96 Dodge 3/4 ton diesel
'96 Toyota Corolla
'04 VW Jetta diesel

This is still not a very big sample size, and no real mileage data, but for anecdotal "evidence" it's not bad.

Please carry on.

troy