Hybrids - The New Winter Tire

[James]

It’s a bummer Goodyear does not sell the UltraGrip Arctic 2 tire in the US. Europe and Russia.

https://tiresvote.com/articles/test-world-large-r16-winter-tire-test-2021/

 

[anders_nor]

we go 60-70mph "all day" on slush, ice, snow no problem on roads, proper tires + winter = tons of grip, when its super cold and snow is hardpacked its surprising how much grip you can get. better than a bad tire on wet !

You dont buy 4S for the great miles per $

 

[James]

This is interesting. Testing winter, vs highway terrain h/t, vs a/t, vs mud terrain m/t on a rwd Tahoe.
Surprise- the big chunky blocks of a mud tire are not good on snow or ice. The all season (h/t) was better.

Shocker, the winter is best on snow and ice.

HT vs AT vs MT vs Winter Tires on Snow - Tire reviews and ratings

Can off road tires really out perform a full winter tire, or even an all season tire on snow?

www.tire-reviews.com

 

[tball]

^^^ That matches my experience with a good number of tires in winter driving: A/T Tires < All Season Tires < True Winter Tires.

With AWD or 4x4, you won't get stuck with any of them unless you do something idiotic. It's braking on packed snow, and especially ice, where A/T tires really suck, even compared to sucky all-season tires.

Here's a great example of the worthlessness of the 3PMS Mountain Snowflake designation. CR's objective testing shows that two A/T tires I own but don't have the 3PMS designation test better in snow than the Wildpeak AT3Ws that do have the designation:

IMO, both my A/T2s and Wranglers are crappy winter tires. I would never run them on a ski vehicle through the winter, yet folks are buying lesser tires for winter conditions because of the stupid mountain snowflake on the side. All that means is they are 10% better in the snow than a crappy tire.

3PMS tires are not winter tires, and in my experience, A/T tires are terrible in the winter compared to all-season tires, which suck a little less but are also awful compared to true winter tires.

 

[Bill Talbot]

Just put new Bridgestone Blizzak WS90's on my steelies for the upcoming season.

No worries here.

 

[James]

^^^ That matches my experience with a good number of tires in winter driving: A/T Tires < All Season Tires < True Winter Tires.

With AWD or 4x4, you won't get stuck with any of them unless you do something idiotic. It's braking on packed snow, and especially ice, where A/T tires really suck, even compared to sucky all-season tires.

Here's a great example of the worthlessness of the 3PMS Mountain Snowflake designation. CR's objective testing shows that two A/T tires I own but don't have the 3PMS designation test better in snow than the Wildpeak AT3Ws that do have the designation:

View attachment 145603

IMO, both my A/T2s and Wranglers are crappy winter tires. I would never run them on a ski vehicle through the winter, yet folks are buying lesser tires for winter conditions because of the stupid mountain snowflake on the side. All that means is they are 10% better in the snow than a crappy tire.

3PMS tires are not winter tires, and in my experience, A/T tires are terrible in the winter compared to all-season tires, which suck a little less but are also awful compared to true winter tires.

Do you ever go to a higher load rated tire? Like from an sl to an xl? Curious as to the handling/feel and mileage differences.

 

[tball]

Do you ever go to a higher load rated tire? Like from an sl to an xl? Curious as to the handling/feel and mileage differences.

I haven't tried different load-rated tires. I just bought the vehicle spec.

One thing that has worked out well for me in handling is mounting my Hakka 9's on the stock 20-inch wheels on my Sequoia and picking up some take-off 18-inch wheels with Michelin AT/2's from a TRD Tundra.

The extra sidewall rides better in the summer with the A/T tires and is much better off-road. I also think less sidewall on the winter tires helps reduce the bit of squishiness you feel with all winter tires.

 

[tball]

Back to bashing 3PMSF A/T tires...

These are the CR rankings of the other tires I own (not including Hakka's because CR doesn't test studded):

Despite the "excellent" snow traction rating of the LTX, it shouldn't be confused with a winter tire. There's a night and day difference between the ice traction of the LTX and proper winter tires.

My subjective ranking of the winter performance of my tires lines up with CR rankings:

Michelin Premier A/S < Michelin AT/2 = Goodyear Wrangler << Michelin LTX <<< Michelin X-ice 2 < Michelin X-ice 3 << Hakka 7 < Hakka 9.

The majority of A/T tires in the CR rankings have the 3PMSF mountain snowflake designation. Yet not a single one of them tested "excellent" for snow traction like the Michelin LTX and Continental TerrainContact H/T tires from the all-season category. Neither of those tires has the 3PMSF designation.

On so many tires, the mountain snowflake symbol is just a marketing gimmick. It's sad folks are buying them thinking they are winter tires when they are not.

 

[Muleski]

I have a set of LTX in storage with came mounted on our newest to us Land Cruiser. They are a true jack of all trades, master of none. Incredibly hard rubber compound, even for a 6000 pound vehicle. They are surely NOT a winter snow/ice/frozen slush tire. Like cement!

 

[tball]

I have a set of LTX in storage with came mounted on our newest to us Land Cruiser. They are a true jack of all trades, master of none. Incredibly hard rubber compound, even for a 6000 pound vehicle. They are surely NOT a winter snow/ice/frozen slush tire. Like cement!

How old are your LTX's? Each LTX generation gets a bit better.

I had the predecessor CrossTerrain on my truck and had the Premier LTX on my wife's old SUV. Her new to us GX came with new LTX M/S 2's. The even newer Defender LTX test even better.

I had to really try to get the LTX M/S 2's stuck in our two-foot blizzard in March. They did great on top of the snow. I got it stuck on a steep hill when they eventually dug down and created ice.

A true winter tire would have no problem there. The ice traction of a true winter tire also helps in deep snow. You make ice when you are stuck and spinning, as you can see in that picture.

For the context of how much it snowed, there's a Sequoia under there:

 

[James]

Back to bashing 3PMSF A/T tires...

These are the CR rankings of the other tires I own (not including Hakka's because CR doesn't test studded):

View attachment 145637

Despite the "excellent" snow traction rating of the LTX, it shouldn't be confused with a winter tire. There's a night and day difference between the ice traction of the LTX and proper winter tires.

My subjective ranking of the winter performance of my tires lines up with CR rankings:

Michelin Premier A/S < Michelin AT/2 = Goodyear Wrangler <<< Michelin LTX <<< Michelin X-ice 2 < Michelin X-ice 3 << Hakka 7 < Hakka 9.

The majority of A/T tires in the CR rankings have the 3PMSF mountain snowflake designation. Yet not a single one of them tested "excellent" for snow traction like the Michelin LTX and Continental TerrainContact H/T tires from the all-season category. Neither of those tires has the 3PMSF designation.

On so many tires, the mountain snowflake symbol is just a marketing gimmick. It's sad folks are buying them thinking they are winter tires when they are not.

But then you get stuff like this quote. They fdo try to moderate it a bit
———————-

What makes an all-terrain tire good in winter?​

Due to their tread design, all-terrain tires have an inherent advantage in snow. Big tread blocks with multi-angled edges are good at digging into snow and clawing their way out. This is why most all-terrain tires will fair decently even in severe snow. However, excessively wide tread notches, while desirable in loose mud, can reduce grabbing edges and influence snow traction.
——————————-

Michelin seems to make an Ltx winter but it’s load range E. Also may be discontinued-

NTB - Tires & Routine Auto Maintenance

www.tireamerica.com

 

[Muleski]

Re: our LTX’s, I do not know. Tires are put away in storage. I bought the vehicle in the fall of 2013, and the seller had bought and mounted them, thinking they’d help with his price. They didn’t.

That car spent some time with Christo Slee, then I spent a few days with our kids….and drove it home. 2300 miles.

Mounted studded Hakkas on it soon afterwards. This was our 4th LC in a row, so I went with familarity.

I’m sure new LTX’s are much better. For the most part all tires are better, right?

What I need is a tire for the 328 xi, for the 7-8 non winter months in NE. My problem again is that the weather is all over the place.

One day last winter we had a 70+ difference in temps between home and mountain home. Deep dry snow, again, is not to common.

Thanks. Cheers!

 

[tball]

What I need is a tire for the 328 xi, for the 7-8 non winter months in NE. My problem again is that the weather is all over the place.

Also had a long conversation with a very knowledgable car friend. Lots of experience with cars like mine, and a long line of Audi S and RS cars. He’s running “all weather” tires on virtually all of his cars 8-9 months of the year…through the summer.

His favorite tire is the Michelin Pilot Sport All Season 4, which he claims gives away almost nothing over what we considered to be the best rated “summer tires” of the past, while be pretty darn good on the occasional light snow or early winter surprises before winter tires go on.

I think your friend is onto something. I love this video:

 

[pais alto]

Back to bashing 3PMSF A/T tires...

These are the CR rankings of the other tires I own (not including Hakka's because CR doesn't test studded):

View attachment 145637

Despite the "excellent" snow traction rating of the LTX, it shouldn't be confused with a winter tire. There's a night and day difference between the ice traction of the LTX and proper winter tires.

My subjective ranking of the winter performance of my tires lines up with CR rankings:

Michelin Premier A/S < Michelin AT/2 = Goodyear Wrangler << Michelin LTX <<< Michelin X-ice 2 < Michelin X-ice 3 << Hakka 7 < Hakka 9.

The majority of A/T tires in the CR rankings have the 3PMSF mountain snowflake designation. Yet not a single one of them tested "excellent" for snow traction like the Michelin LTX and Continental TerrainContact H/T tires from the all-season category. Neither of those tires has the 3PMSF designation.

On so many tires, the mountain snowflake symbol is just a marketing gimmick. It's sad folks are buying them thinking they are winter tires when they are not.

CR rates the Michelin CrossClimate+ and CC SUV as Excellent on snow, and they are both 3PMSF rated. I had no problems or deficiencies with snow traction when I owned the CrossClimate SUV. They were great on snow.

I think you’d be much more accurate if instead of claiming that 3PMSF tires aren’t good winter tires, and just stuck to saying that the 3MSF rating isn’t a guarantee that those tires are great winter tires…but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t, either. I think you’re overreacting.

 

[James]

I think you’d be much more accurate if instead of claiming that all 3PMSF tires weren’t good winter tires, and just stuck to saying that the 3MSF rating isn’t a guarantee that those tires are great winter tires…but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t, either. I think you’re overreacting.

I think the point is All Terrain 3pmsf tires. The Cross Climates are prob better

 

[cosmoliu]

CR rates the Michelin CrossClimate+ and CC SUV as Excellent on snow, and they are both 3PMSF rated. I had no problems or deficiencies with snow traction when I owned the CrossClimate SUV. They were great on snow.

I think you’d be much more accurate if instead of claiming that 3PMSF tires aren’t good winter tires, and just stuck to saying that the 3MSF rating isn’t a guarantee that those tires are great winter tires…but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t, either. I think you’re overreacting.

Great to have input based on your direct experience. Since installing my set of CC2s, I missed out on driving on anything more than a dusting of snow, and now they are worn down to about 7/32", likely to dip below 5/32" by the time I call on them to drive back up to Snowbird. I won't overthink what to buy when it comes to replacing them.

 

[sparty]

I think the point is All Terrain 3pmsf tires. The Cross Climates are prob better

Do manufacturers self-certify 3PMSF compliance, too? Not saying that anyone might be fibbing, but I seem to recall that with the self-certified DOT motorcycle helmets, there were some companies that failed when their available-to-the-public helmets were tested by a third party (and we're talking real helmets, not the "novelty" ones with the fake DOT stickers).

 

[nay]

This is quite the thread. I have not waded through it, but I have a question pertinent to the first page anyway.

I need a tough 4wd tire that does not suck on ice. The KO2 sucks on ice.

My wife is very skeptical of any tire without studs. We have gone with Blizzaks and Michelins (can't remember-X-ice or Arctic) a few times, and they were acceptable, when fairly new with full depth treads.

Now I have two part time vehicles which will see some winter driving and some rough off road use, a Sprinter 4WD van and a Grand Cherokee. The van needs something tough, is 8,000 lbs and recommends 70 psi rear, 50 psi front. I drive it on horrible rocky roads if there are fish to be chased.

We have a third rig that gets full studs for the winter and summer tires for the summer. I'd like to set up the other vehicles with tires to use full time. The jeep is low mileage, with limited highway, the van sees a bit of everything. I'm thinking the jeep, which lives in the second home in the Rockies, could get away with a soft rubber tire all summer, though it will see some backroads too.

Any ideas? I'm I nuts and the perfect tire does not exist?

Falken AT3W. I used that tire on an ‘04 Sequoia that saw a ton of ice. Pics and video are scattered throughout this thread, starting at the beginning.

And the Milestar Patagonia MT is just an amazing tire. I’ve got vids of that tire from last March in our mega blizzard on this thread. It can also climb walls if that matters to you. This is from Sunday. That’s a 38“ tire for reference.

 

[nay]

^^^ That matches my experience with a good number of tires in winter driving: A/T Tires < All Season Tires < True Winter Tires.

With AWD or 4x4, you won't get stuck with any of them unless you do something idiotic. It's braking on packed snow, and especially ice, where A/T tires really suck, even compared to sucky all-season tires.

Here's a great example of the worthlessness of the 3PMS Mountain Snowflake designation. CR's objective testing shows that two A/T tires I own but don't have the 3PMS designation test better in snow than the Wildpeak AT3Ws that do have the designation:

View attachment 145603

IMO, both my A/T2s and Wranglers are crappy winter tires. I would never run them on a ski vehicle through the winter, yet folks are buying lesser tires for winter conditions because of the stupid mountain snowflake on the side. All that means is they are 10% better in the snow than a crappy tire.

3PMS tires are not winter tires, and in my experience, A/T tires are terrible in the winter compared to all-season tires, which suck a little less but are also awful compared to true winter tires.

Yea but your experience is like from 2003. ATs were sleds back then. No can comparo to now, completely different class of tire. I refused to run ATs back then and only ran certain MTs due to their extremely soft compounds (as in not really suitable for treadlife over about 20K miles). I had a set of BFG AT ko that were on my Cruiser when I bought it in 2005, I went out in a foot of snow in my neighborhood to test them to see if I still hated them. The tires did fine as they did until they froze up, which I’d had happen to me on the trail in snow as well, and I barely made it home. Sat and spun in my driveway in front of my garage with all three diffs locked, barely made it back inside. Pathetic is hardly a good enough word. This entire thread is, of course, demonstrating that this problem no longer exists.

Also, they need to stop testing with useless vehicles like a RWD Tahoe. I’ve posted so many videos on this thread of big chunky tires walking circles around other tires, including some winter tires. On ice. The vehicle matters, a locked center diff creates infinite torque and brakeforce distribution, a 2WD vehicle only has everything operating in a single plane. They choose a vehicle like this to prove a point, and I would agree, if you just must drive a 2WD into winter, for gods sake please use studded tires because the vehicle is tractionless in any direction.

OK, back to current tires. This is my hybrid hybrid tire. The Falken Wildpeak AT Trail. This was the first winter test going over Vail Pass when it started nuking in Frisco as we left our Whole Foods pitstop headed west. Test vehicle is a Subaru Ascent with every possible Subaru safety goodie onboard. 4,600 lbs curb weight. My wife is not a “secure” winter driver, although she’s gotten much better, and there was never a single grab of the oh-shit handle or brake pump of the passenger floor. She was just chillin’ and we were just chattin‘.

At the top of the pass it was starting to accumulate with temps dropping to 28F.

Very shortly everybody was hugging their winky blankets together in the left lane. So I went and passed them all at way too much speed in the pretty much unused right lane.

By the time we hit the steep grade, the eastbound summer tires club was starting to peel off the road. Uphill. I just put the Ascent into manual mode and used the paddle shifters for compression braking, whipped around the idiots clogging both lanes, and found myself driving too fast most of the time.

There was snow coming home today, although not as much, and again people were clogging up the fast lane with their fresh woogie blankets on both sides of Eisenhower. Tires were awesome and I took this pic because ms. nay was working using the Ascent WiFi (she took the pics above). Note the dash warning that it might be icy. Phew! Camera was also struggling to pick up both gauge needles, but hey we get the digital readout, too.

Probably shouldn’t be rolling 10 mph over the speed limit on those pitiful 3PMSF tires, but then, how else are we gonna test ‘em?

The Ascent is awesome. Just cruising 70 mph at 2,500 RPM up the steep upper grades at 11K elevation.
Things change even as people’s preconceptions remain tied to Jeep CJ7 (or RWD Tahoe) performance.

Someone should start a thread entitled “Why I think nay’s pics and videos are doctored simply because I don’t want to believe them”

 

[coskigirl]

Great to have input based on your direct experience. Since installing my set of CC2s, I missed out on driving on anything more than a dusting of snow, and now they are worn down to about 7/32", likely to dip below 5/32" by the time I call on them to drive back up to Snowbird. I won't overthink what to buy when it comes to replacing them.

@cosmoliu any update to your satisfaction with these tires? I'm debating between them and the Blizzaks. I love the idea of not having to swap out my tires and just keeping the CC2s on year round but just not sure. Would love some feedback.