What's new
CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.

To sipe or not to sipe?

Truckman4life

Truckman4life

3/4 Ton Status
 Premium
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Posts
9,283
Reaction score
13,811
Location
Cleveland, UT
I have some 35 inch old school bfg mud terrains on my k5 with really good tread. They suck on hard packed snow/ice. Has anyone had good real world experience with getting their tires siped at the tire shop and it actually making a difference in traction? Oh yeah I also run them at 25 psi and they are on 7" wide rims so pretty skinny overall.
 
Last edited:
buy a ideal brand tire grover for around 80 bucks.

flip the blade over to have two knife edge tabs down .

heat up and sipe your own tires . . . then later grove your own tires.

other problem is if tires are real old the rubber is hard/dry and less able to flex and grip like new tires or snow specific tires.
 
sweetk30 said:
buy a ideal brand tire grover for around 80 bucks.

flip the blade over to have two knife edge tabs down .

heat up and sipe your own tires . . . then later grove your own tires.

other problem is if tires are real old the rubber is hard/dry and less able to flex and grip like new tires or snow specific tires.
Click to expand...
These are at least ten yrs old. But in perfect shape.
 
rubber is hard . . . . . it might help with siping but don't expect to much .

there getting old man better just run them off or sell them at this age . there going to start dry rotting and cracking .
 
sipe them and throw a jug of bleach in the truck, pour some on the tires when you need the extra traction. It softens the rubber plus melts the snow. My father in law showed me that trick years ago when we were driving from Utah to Washington and back during winter break. got me thru 36 inches of snow on the highway from Boise to Snowville one Christmas.
 
Yeah I will probably just make do. I will get a new tcase for my DD as soon as I get a chance and it's not single digits then go back to driving that and buy a new tow rig when my insurance money comes. The blazer will get parked during winter usually. These tires will just have to get run til they are done and then I'll get some new ones.
 
diesel4me said:
I'd get some tire chains--nothing better on ice!..
Click to expand...
Yeah crappy part is this time of year main roads are clear but side roads still pretty icy. I do have a pair of chains from a semi that I need to fit to my 35s for winter fun time.
 
Driving my truck in this area kind of sucks the same way--.
My street is usually snow & ice covered,but a 1/4 mile away where I go to enter the busy highway,its bare tar,with a white ghostly layer of salt !..

My transfer case for some unknown reason doesn't stop sending power to the front driveshaft in 2wd,its been like that since I got the truck in 2003..probably some internal issue,I tried adjusting the linkage to no avail..(NP-208)...it works in low range OK,so I'm thinking the shifter pads & forks are OK ?--

...so if I lock in my hubs,so I can go down the snowy street safer,when I get to the bare road,I cant just shift into 2wd and drive it on the bare tar,the front tires will jerk and pull around a corner and going over 20 mph could do some worse damage to the stub shafts ,etc..(which have yokes whittled down thin due to rust)..

This made going to do some plowing at a friends place 5 miles up that road a real chore,I have to get out and unlock the hubs when I get to the highway,and hope I dont need 4wd en-route..and I have to pull over and remember to lock the hubs back in before I try plowing the parking lot, where the city plows have put a few feet of hard packed slush at the entrance..more than once I forgot,and ended up high centered in the middle of the snowbank,and needed to be yanked out !..

One winter in another truck I had ,I lost the front shaft,I hit a curb plowing and it folded in half!...
I had to put chains on the back tires and shovel as much snow as would fit in the bed for weight,and still was barely able to push anything...
I had a hard time getting home to get the chains--the weight of the plow up front and an empty bed made spinning the rear wheels way too easy..like it was on glare ice,with slicks!..:doah:...
 
I once had a set of 35" Pro Comp MTs that were like certain death on ice. I had a tire shop sipe them with the screw cutter machine and the tires became mildly tolerable. Since I only had one set of tires, this let me at least have a decent off-road tire instead of Long Trails or something.

You need to think about what it costs and what the tires are worth. The price is probably similar to buying a cheap cutter, which lets you fix up other tires that are starting to wear (adding sipes to the center blocks of regular car and truck tires really wakes them up in the winter). Keep in mind that while cutting a sipe is easy, cutting them continuously around the circumference of 4 tires is a lot of work.
 
When I bought my Blazer it had worn out mudders on it. I bought a set of tires from a friend of a friend that was 10 years old for a couple hundred bucks. They had so few miles on them that they still had the whiskers on them. Went to several tire shops to get them put on my wheels. The shops would not touch them for liability reasons. They said they were to old and company policy won't allow them to, even as new looking as they were. I decided to just get new tires so a flat would get fixed when I got one.
When I was in Montana I bought a 89 3/4 ton Chevy 4x4. It had 2 brand new tires (toyo open country +4's) and 2 worn out tires. The spare was brand new as well. So I purchased 1 new toyo to match, put the best worn out tire as a spare. I had them all siped at that time. I rotated them every 3,000 miles. I got 11 years of use out of them before I had to replace them. Sipping adds life to the tires because the rubber moves more and wears slower. Because the rubber can move more you get better traction in snow and ice. In the 13 years in Montana I probably didn't put the rig in 4 wheel drive more than a dozen times. I was very impressed with the toyo tires. In 1999 they were $160.00 each for a 16" tire. I'm sold on sipping your tires for ice and snow.
The tires on my K5 now are sipped M&S tires that are not very aggressive and don't perform good at all in the mud so I'm going to get another set of mudders on another set of wheels for play'n in the mud.
For what it's worth, that's my nickels worth.
 
Old tires are old tires. They may last forever or they may blow apart at high speed.

I've got an Ideal knife like mentioned above. I love it and have siped and grooved a lot of my tires in the last 12-13 years I've had it. Gave me back my money many times over and turned many sets of "meh" tires into good or even great tires.
 
I will have to look into one of those. I think these tires might just get ran as is till they are done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest Posts

Top Bottom