Five year old article on the "15 inch tire problem"

sccachallenger said

Back in the late '80s Goodyear and Goodrich would ship some of their street tires that they had shaved to 1/2 tread depth at no extra charge. This improved road course and autoX performance. I wonder if we could buy our rock hard BFGs or Coopers pre-shaved it would improve their performance? If anyone knows where I can buy shaved tires, please share it. With as few miles as most of us put on our cars I don't think the loss of some tread would be an issue.
And I'd totally try some non-radials, I've used bias racing tires and like them a lot.

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I think you can have any tires shaved so long as they haven’t seen the road yet. I remember asking about shaving Radial T/As a while back and the consensus was that it wasn’t going to help much.

Looking at it now, the compound, while never great, is at its best for about one season. Shaving the tires would certainly reduce rotational inertia, mitigate squirming tread blocks and possibly improve their grip limits and responsiveness as well. Since it wouldn’t technically shorten their life and maybe make their already poor wet weather performance only slightly worse, I don’t see a down side!