Goodyear MTR w/Kevlar GROOVED for snow... Snow Rags #2

[H8PVMNT]

I bought these 35x12.50 15 Goodyears last fall and put about 34K miles on them since then. The tires worked great at 3-4 psi in the snow last winter, the few times I got out. They are pretty well spent with only a few 32nds tread left. Probably 7-10% tread. For the first half of the tread depth these have OK siping and were plenty sticky on road ice and snow. First snow this year with worn tread and no sipes they were not that great. Finances being what they are I probably won't be buying any tire until January so I decided to take the groover to them to try and get a little more sticky.

I put on a #3 knife and started with the tight middle center rib and pretty much cut them in half accross the lugs. Then the outer lugs got cut across with one good slice ending right before the edge as to not make them too squirmy. The second lugs in got two slices about 2/3 across the lugs and then I made two little cuts on the inner lugs so they now have a kind of zig zag spot. As expected they work way better on road ice but the real suprise is that they seem to work better in soft snow than when they were new. The extra cuts make them suck in the mud because they hold the mud and ball up, but the same thing happens with snow and snow sticks to snow really well! So now I have this shallow, sticky tread on nicely broken in carcasses with more forward motion that won't dig to china.

Can't wait to try these in some decent depth if they last long enough...

[Nobody]

Looks like there is plenty of meat to add some siping. Worn out tires can out perform new tires in a lot of situations. Sipe the hell out of those things.

BTW, tires are too expensive for commuting!

[H8PVMNT]

Yeah I was thinking of adding some sipes for even more sticky. I think these are a good tire to cut up, there seems to be plenty of rubber.

I got rid of my work car this year because I have been using it less and less with mostly rural work trips and we needed to finance our mill for the house building thing. The 4Runner gets great milage with the 3RZ swap so I drove it way too much this year. I need to buy another one and leave it more stock for DD and run cheap small tires. I have my '80 pickup but my wife kind of stole it for a feed truck and it's always full of hay and junk so I tend not to drive it as much for work as I used to.

[n16ht5]

looks like it will work really well. my wife's mtrs are worn past the siping too, and I haven't siped my MT's yet. ugh money.

[H8PVMNT]

Ugh indeed. I think some ATs for DD and powder and a set of swampers on the side are probably the way to go for me. Years ago I had like 7 sets of tires for different conditions and it totally played. Of course I didn't have kids and a mortgage at the time, but it works out because you never put that many miles on any one set of tires.