Art of forming tire treads with elongated traction-augmenting elements

Claim 1

In a tire having a rubber tread portion with lateraly-spaced, circumferentially-extending rider strips, each rider strip being zigzag in plan view so that the sides of the rider strips present alternating peaks and valleys, the bottoms of the valleys on one side being spaced from the bottoms of the valleys on the other side of a rider strip to provide unbroken stock of substantial width, and an elongated traction-augmenting member positioned in said unbroken stock in at least some of said rider strips, the peaks on the sides of the rider strips providing rubber stock projecting beyond the sides of the traction-augmenting members to retain the latter in position during use, which rubber stock is in the form of a series of triangular blocks, the width of the traction-augmenting members being substantially equal to the transverse distaance between the bottoms of the valleys on one side of the rider strip and the bottoms of the valleys on the other side of the rider strip, there being a sipe slit extending transversely into each of said triangular blocks from the peak thereof, the length of each sipe slit being substantially equal to the altitude of each triangular block.