Does "Siping" an All-Season tire help with winter and/or ice traction? I have access to tons of A/S tires in my size for cheap, and I need better winter traction than they offer in adverse weather conditions. I am also a cheap-@$$, so I want to do this on the cheap, if possible.

Thoughts on siping?

My 17" Toyo Proxes4 tires were okay last winter, but I got stuck in some pretty lousy weather from time to time, and I want dedicated winter tires for this year.

 

i grew up on the east coast and siping definitely does actually help. Thinking back there were 2 or 3 types of siping. They all had about the same effect, but there was one that reduced tire life due to the siped tires picking up more debris. I want to say it was like "cross hatch" siping....sipes that were 90 degrees to each other. Other than that things were fine. Also i do know a few people that do serious off-roading and they swear by sipes. Unfortunately i don't really remember much else about it since i've been in a city that has seen snow about 6 times in the last decade and i don't personally off-road.

 

sorry to bug in, but what exactly is siping ?

 

Siping was a waste of money. Snow tires performed much better for me

 

Snow/winter tires always looked to me like A/S tires with sipes added, which is why I asked.

If siping A/S tires won't be of benefit, I will just buy winter tires...

 

http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...reSiping.shtml

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Best explaination I have seen...

 

siping helps a little bit with some tires, not at all with others. depends on if the tires have any significant amount of sipes in them from the factory.

snow tires blow any siped A/S tire right out of the water, no comparison can be made.