[s-cars] Don't drop the crayon - throw it away at 50%

[mlp qwest]

Scott -  Never works that way in Colorado.  As some other, name with held to
protect the innocent, lister  passed on to me in a listing of "Murphy's
Other Laws" - Law #18, The 50-50-90 rule. Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of
getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.  I
always use and apply Rule #18 in conjunction with Rule 22, "If  the shoe
fits, get another one just like it."  I think Hap can verify both these
rules.

On a somewhat related matter, I thought I saw a tire "study" somewhere,
sometime suggesting that for tire performance characteristics that depend on
tread features, the loss of performance due to wear is not a linear matter.
Unlike a tires "dry" performance characteristics, at some point, and I don't
recall where it is, but say at 50% of tread wear, one may well be down to
something much less, lets just say for arguments sake in terms of wet or
snow or mud traction, less than a third or quarter of the same tires level
of traction performance when new.  Furthermore, I think the deterioration in
wet/snow/mud performance probably proceeds in a geometrically increasing,
rather than linear manner from there, so that at 40% of remaining tread life
one might be down to less than 15% to 10% of original traction performance?

Maybe the rule of thumb for those really concerned with maximum bad weather
performance is to consider changing out the damn things at the 50% mark.  I
think that's certainly the case for those dual compound, chocolate layer
cake Blizzaks.

HTH
Mike

~-----Original Message-----
~From: s-car-list-bounces On Behalf Of QSHIPQ at aol.com
~Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 11:39 PM
~
~Er, that's a lot of work on the backside?  Thankfully, with the
~introduction
~of directional tires, Justy manages to average bettern' Sosa with
~a .500 on
~getting them tires rightly mounted every season.
~