Do tire treatments work?

I’ve been using a treatment on my old crusty R comps to bring them back to life and have always wondered if they really did anything.  It always felt like they did but I didn’t know if it was placebo effect or not.

I decided to find out.  I put on a lab coat and glasses, dug out the Type A durometer, grabbed a clipboard and went to work finding out.

Here is a freshly minted Hoosier R6…

And here is an old crappy one (the kind I run.)

I repeated the test on about a half dozen new and old tires with very similar results.

Then I treated the old tires and got this:

Once again, tested many tires in many spots and results were roughly the same.

Then I changed the formula and process a little (tire off rim, do inside as well, place in plastic bag)….

Back to new numbers 🙂

After running the tires a couple sessions I checked again after they sat overnight:

So there you have it…pretty much exactly what all the guys on the web and my butt said.   Does it make a difference?  Yes.  Are they good as new again?  After a few laps, no.  They are better than with nothing but not as good as new.  It is messy and takes a little time, and who the heck knows if it makes you quicker.  I’m probably going to keep doing it when I have the time.