Because of this, grooving larger lug tires is the way to go. It allows the tire to take a better and more frequent bite out of the terrain. On the other hand, grooving too much can cause the terrain to take bites out of the tire, causing premature failure.

Companies such as BFGoodrich and Goodyear, have tire grooving down to a science. They use tire grooving in all forms of racing, but where it becomes more an art is in the off-road sector. It seems that the art began in the desert, but it is seen more commonly in the CORR short-course series, where track conditions are groomed to perfection. There, nearly ever tire is grooved.

Today, as the rock crawling scene continually grows to phenomenal success, we are seeing an increased presence of grooved tires. You need not look no further for proof of this than the tires currently winning the major series such as RCAA, ProRock and UROC, where a tire specifically designed with grooving in mind is taking victories like candy from a baby; it's the BFGoodrich concept tire known as the Krawler T/A. We won't go into the tire much here, other than to say that tire grooving has become standard for nearly any competition crawler and your seeing a lot more grooved tires on many more tamed daily drivers as well.

Since I use my Jeep 99 percent of the time for off-road use and only one percent street cruising to the trails, I considered grooving my Swampers.

Super Swamper is known for there large unique lug patterns found on the TSL, TSL/SX, and Bogger tires. It is these lug patters that have become increasingly popular in the Rock-Crawling world. The large, deep tread grabs the rocks like no other tire.  Now that I was convinced to groove my Swamps, I needed to buy a groover. I again looked online and found a nice, reasonably priced tire groover for about $60.00, which included a tip and some blades. For that price, you can purchase a groover that is ready to groove.

When the groover arrived upon my doorstep, I headed out to the Jeep. Because as you may have guessed, it was Grooving Time! After looking at some pictures of different grooving patterns people have done, I decided on what I wanted to do.

Basically, all I wanted to do was split the main inner lugs in half. (The "V" shaped lugs) This seemed to be a popular groove for the Swampers because it allows the preceeding large lug to bend and flex much better while smashing over Rocks. There are several different ways you can groove your tires. Although we said early that it is an art, you can look to any professional groover such as Joe "Spike" Sudol of BFG or Little Joe of Goodyear to see that tire grooving is an academic science to them that, more often than not, is a major factor for many championships.

Either way, it takes a lot of experience to become as good as either of those two are. When they groove a set of tires, it can take anywhere from less than five minutes for a thinner lugged tires with a simple pattern to nearly a day for an intricate design on a large lug set of tires such as the Krawler T/A.

Because BFG has an aray of tires they use on the competition circuit, such as the Krawler, the All-Terrain and the Mud Terrain, it isn't uncommon to see different tires up front than in the rear. For such a setup, you'll usually see an AT or MT up front to assist with lateral traction such as turning. In the rear, you'll usually see a larger lug tire such as the Krawler or maybe even an MT if an AT is used up front.

When it comes to Goodyears, only one tire is generally used, the MTR. As is the case with any other tire, they'll usually groove the front tire more than they will the rear. As with anything, the more experience you have doing it and testing the results, the better you become. And for my purposes, it took me only 5 minutes per tire to get the job done.

Evaluation:   

After grooving my tires, the increased traction put a smile on my face. Not only did the tires perform noticeably better on the rocks, they also became quiter on the road. I didn't touch the outer lugs. I stuck to the inners but am thinking about grooving them in the near future.

How does a Tire Groover work?

A tire groover is similar to a soldering iron. It heats up to temperatures that allow the groover to melt through the tire like a hot butter knife throug butter. It uses 110volt electricity.

On the end of the groover there are two pieces. The tip, which attaches to the groover and holds the cutting blades regulates the groove width and depth. You can purchase skinny or wide tips, depending on how wide you want your grooves to be. I just used the tip that came with the groover. It measures approx. 1/4" wide. The second piece of the groover is the cutting blades. these are basically like a "U-Shaped" razor blade that attach to the tip. This is what actually cuts the grooves in the tire after being heated up. That's it!

We picked up the MRT Tire Groover for about $65. It included a tip and extra blades of various sizes. The Groover works awesome!!!