Snow driving tip

[CoMclovin]

At the end of the day the tire distributor stands behind the siped tires. I couldn't find a single quote anywhere about people having problems with either tire failure or warranty claims. None. Maybe you can dig some up ...

Having a family member who actually works in the Tire industry (for a manufacturer) I can say from what I've been told, that siping is not factory supported and if the tire fails, you will generally not get factory support from the manufacturer if they realize the tires were siped. Whether or not the tire distributor itself supports you is a different story.

 

[codemonkey]

So rather than sitting on the sidelines lobbing a spoiler & blasting the poster of the link to DT and sipers.com, why not do something constructive rather than just post criticism. Post some fact based cogent arguements why it's a bad idea, proven to be a bad idea, suspected of being a bad idea, or just simply your OWN experience of whether or not it works or not for you.

I did a fair amount of research on the web, including a number of mud, snow and off road racing oriented locations and forums and the general consensus was that it was still effective. Now it does depend on the tires - it's certainly not necessary for those already pre-siped or winter tires but where you've got very 'blocky' tread there seemed to be improvements overall in wet traction and braking. Siping the side blocks of the tires isn't recommended for off-road/AT tires but certainly doing the center of the tires, in the worst case did no harm, and in the best cases improved performance significantly. My own personal experience so far is that, with Nitto Terra's at least, I'm getting better wet weather and snow/ice performance so far. I put over 50k on my last set and they didn't feel this good on road in these conditions. I don't have ANYTHING good to say about the Goodyears so I'll refrain from any further abuse there ...

At the end of the day the tire distributor stands behind the siped tires. I couldn't find a single quote anywhere about people having problems with either tire failure or warranty claims. None. Maybe you can dig some up ...

I'm not just sitting on the sidelines, what I posted is a cogent argument - you're cutting up a well-designed tire trying to get it to perform in a way that it was not designed to. Buy something designed for your conditions.

As for fact-based, here ya go, this took about 10 milliseconds to find:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...-tires-11-06/overview/1106_tires_siping_1.htm

I doubt you'll find much more in the realm of fact-based than Consumer Reports, certainly compared to your careful research. Did you sipe a set of tires, test them under controlled conditions, and then take an identical set of tires and test them in identical conditions un-siped? I'm guessing no. CR does. They said it's not worth it, and in fact hurts non-snow and non-ice performance. Pick your poison - slightly better snow and ice vs worse wet and dry - and that goes back to my original statement.

If you're siping non-winter tires to get them to perform better in winter, just buy winter tires! If you spend more time in winter and ice conditions than you do in dry - which you would need to to make siping worth it - then you should be on dedicated snows.

Tire chunking is an issue with tires used offroad - which is something many of us do here - even without siping. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see that cutting up the treads will accelerate that. By only siping the center to avoid chunking, you're not really getting much of your claimed benefit, so you might as well not bother.

And I can't think of a more cogent argument than this, so I'll say it one more time: buy a tire designed by real engineers for the conditions you expect, rather than taking a tire designed for something else and cutting it up.

 

[GrahamWelland]

Well actually I did look at the Consumer Reports article - unfortunately if I went along purely on the recommendations of only CR then I'd be driving a Toyota Camry or a Prius.

Each to their own.