Best dedicated winter tire?

FCR112 said:

Finally broke down and got a second set of rims.
Which winter tire do you guys think is best?

Probably LT285/70/17's D or E load Studded

Use will be from bare blacktop to 15 degree snow and ice covered roads -15 to 50 degrees (Colorado)

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Get a set of Goodyear Wrangler Duratracs. That is far and away the best A/T tire on the market right now and you can stud them as well.

That is absolutely what is going to be going on my new truck come December.

Go with D rated tires if you have a half-ton go with E if you have bigger.

I had Goodyear Dura Tracs on my last truck as a summer tire, great tread pattern, soft sidewall (comfortable ride), and some road-noise/hum like a mud tire. They carry the snowflake symbol on the sidewall, but could use more siping for better ice traction.

Goodyear has came out with an even better dedicated HD tire that is also studdable, the Ultra Grip Ice WRT. Has much more siping and a tread pattern similar to a Bridgestone Blizzak. I have a set of 275/70R18's on order.

http://www.goodyear.com/en-US/tires/ultra-grip-ice-wrt-lt

One thing to consider as well ... I ran a set of generic studded snow tires last winter. I'd have done just as well with a set of non-studded Duratrac's .... If you're buying tires, buy real tires, because the generic ones are almost never as good.

I have a set of E rated General Studded Snow tires on spare rims. 265/70-17. They perform very well and I only install them when I plan to use them. Our winter wasn't all that bad this year so I just ran my brand new BFG A/T's which also have the snowflake. The roads are not usually frozen here in the valley but somewhere up the hill we hit wet roads and wet icy conditions and the studded snow tires make it feel a lot better not slipping around the corners and being able to stop quickly.

They are made in the USA, bought at Sears for $812 out the door.

DURATRAC'S are super expensive and noisy. I have them now with 23000 miles on them and not real happy with how they are wearing. To heck with studs im going back to a toyo mt!!! They are awesome a little spendy but not as bad as the goodyear and seem to last just as long.

I cant comment on the BEST winter only tire, But I have had duratracs on my 1 ton Dodge for the last 3 years, and they are by far the best tire I have ever ran in the snow. Out of all the tires I have ever ran, BFG A/ts, General All terrain A/t, Kumho Road Venture AT, Pro Comp M/T, Toyo open country M/T, and firestone transforce,bfg long trail, the Duratracs are far superior all around. I have them in a load range E which they do not have as much sipping as the load range D has but on the hard pack and Ice they have very good traction best out of all the tiresI have ever ran. Currently they have 34,000 miles on them and there is atleast 5/16 tread left. I also run them in the summer pulling my gooseneck with 14,000 lbs on it, grossing about 22,000lbs and the tires have held up great even doing that. I'll buy another set thats for sure.

Big plus one for Toyo M/Ts. Best truck tire made, IMHO. Great snow and wet traction, super quiet(you don't even know how quiet a truck tire can be until you ride in a truck with them mounted), great handling if you drive fast, nice ride that can be massively adjusted by air pressure, nice aggressive look and they last at least 60,000 miles. My current set has over 50K on them and they still have much more than half their tread depth left. My plan was to get a set of studded snows for my truck for towing in the winter but with these tires I have never felt I needed them.

Opinions about tires are like anything else I guess. What one guy swears by, another will never put on his truck again...

My thoughts:

Toyo MT. Looks really good. Winter traction sucked, even after I had them siped. I ran mine for one year, and towing my heavy 5th wheel in the summer they wore out in no time. Total of 20,000 miles on those tires, no burnouts.


Goodyear Duratrac. Also looks good, but not as aggressive as the Toyo. Mine are studded, so it is hard to give an honest comparison for winter traction. I would suspect they would not fare much better towing the 5th wheel though.


Nitto Terra Grappler. Nice deep tread, for an All Terrain. Good traction year round. Better than my Toyos in the winter, not as good as studded duratracs. Quieter than either. Wear reasonably well towing the 5th wheel.


Cost, I shopped around and all 3 in a similar size (35x12.5) are pretty close in price. I currently run the Nittos in the summer, and will be throwing the Duratracs back on when conditions dictate.

I ran dedicated snow tires for the first time last winter. I used the Michelin LTX winter tires in 10ply load E 265's. Not many options out there for dedicated winter tires in a 10ply load E in 265 or bigger. I run Michelin all terrains and All seasons in the summer, and while they are still rated as one of the best "year round" tire in snow... they don't hold a candle to their LTX winter. Never need to stud them they are that good. Tons of siping and lots of contact patch to the road. Can't get a better quality ride than with Michelin's (especially in a Heavy Duty). They are $$$ though...

I've been using Cooper Discoverer M+S for the past several seasons:

http://us.coopertire.com/Tires/Light-Truck/DISCOVERER-M-S.aspx

Discount Tire has them/can get them. LRE, I've used 215/85-16 and 235/80?-16 - forget. Two sets of the wider ones, one set of the 215s.

All were studded, all were on a 2wd Ford 1-ton van towing an open 2-place. I always got there.

The 215s seemed like they went too far in the "narrower snow tires are better" direction - I swear I had more traction on snowpacked FS roads (not plowed, softish, but not _soft_) with the 235s (or were they 245s? forget....).

Either way, though, they were great. Mileage, ehhh, it is a soft winter-only tire. I ran them year round a couple of times; if at the end of a winter season, they looked thin enough that I thought I'd want to replace them before the following winter anyway, I just left them on.

I carried chains. I needed them several times, but mostly on FS roads; getting out of the Vail Pass turnaround a couple of times, one time I preventatively chained up going to Corona (probably would have made it without, but that's one of those "if I did NOT make it....." deals), driving from Steamboat to Buff Pass, breaking trail up the road, 8" down low, 16" at the top, about halfway up, I needed chains.

Not bad at all. I really like them.

HOWEVER, I'm jumping ship this year - replaced the 2wd van with a 4wd Dodge. I got 20-30k out of a set of Coopers (and anything past 20k or so I was starting to think about "new tires"). I figure if I get 40k out of the Duratracs, I'm ahead.

The new Goodyear ice-grip/studdable tire is appealing, but the Duratrac is MORE appealing to me because I can run them year round; IME, most _winter specific_ tires just dissolve on warm days/dry pavement - which we get a lot of in Denver, even in the winter. The Duratrac gets rave reviews here and elsewhere, and while it IS studdable and it allegedly works great in snow, it is not (to my knowledge) a "snow tire" compound; it is intended to be run year round, unlike the Cooper/Blizzak (Bridgestone makes a LRE Blizzak)/General Altimac (which I've had on my cars - at least the car version is pretty awesome).

I'm a tire junkie. I'll certainly post with impressions of the Duratrac; my Michelin LTX M&S are pretty thin now, but not worn out - I really SHOULD run them for another couple of months, but the pull is strong, I want to get some real tires on this thing. The Michelin is a great highway tire, and supposedly good in snow (the M&S variant), but I REALLY like studded tires - IMHO, they give that extra chunk of grip on bumpy, snowpacked parkinglots.



RH

GYear Duratrac... Studded... Best tire I've had to date for the winter.

Winter:
Studded Duratrac 35's. Awesome winter tire. A little soft for summer and will wear quickly in the heat.

Summer:
Toyo M/T 35's Too hard to be effective in the winter. Runs good in the summer.

Do they make a Blizzak in 35's, lol. That would look good on the beast. Might as well put pastel flames on it while I'm at it.

Lots of good tires mentioned here. Tires are just like tracks, there is NO BEST because we all have different snow/ice conditions to deal with. Where I live we have dry fluffy snow which becomes hard pack ice because it doesn't get plowed often and salt is not used, just sand. So a grippy tire is more important than big lugs. Studs add an additional layer of traction on hard pack/ice, but give less traction on bare pavement.

Cooper Zeon LTZ are pretty good for snow

I bought the worst snow tires ever. Nitto trail grappler. I bought them last november and it didnt snow at all here in Iowa. What the heck! Now it hasnt rained in months. I switching back to stock tires..

I will say this from a whole lot of personal experience, towing in winter, driving day in day out in the oilfield, etc:

Anyone who tells you to run a mud tire in the winter has no clue. Period.

Mud tires ***SUCK*** on slick roads, end of story. Yeah SOME of them you can stud, but why would you stud a mud tire when you can stud an actual winter tire and be that much better off?

Mud tires are totally useless for anything but mud, period.

Dogmeat, but they look cool don't they?

I work in the woods and don't run anything more than an A/T. They get me where I need to go, but I have my studded Generals mounted on Craigslist rims ($100 for 4 aluminum rims).