Winter tires for PNW winters

AT or MT tires work great in the deep stuff. Its the 32 degree wet slush over ice that we get that makes the true snow tires worth the money. Thanks for the comments on your son's Blizzaks.

 

We get more like the PNW every year up here. My wife and I both drive Tacomas, and both have dedicated winter tires. I document mileage each time I change them out, and since 2011 have ran the equal number of miles on both sets. I run the studless Nokians while she has the Hakkas with studs. She does more town driving than I do, but we stay impressed with both. I hate running the winter tires on dry pavement, so procrastinate til the last minute. The difference in summer and winter tires is pretty incredible.

 

I have always used a studded set of winter tires for all my rigs. I need 4x4 capability in a vehicle just to get to my home whatever the weather is doing. The most snow I’ve ever had to deal with on my steep dirt driveway was 18” with a dedicated set of studded AT tires on my wife's Rav4. I used a bladder bag filled with 30 gallons of water last year for added weight. That was the 1st winter I owned my Tacoma and didn’t need a set of studs last year. The winters here are becoming more like Napa every year.

 

To clarify I was just giving you a hard time because I know how far that is and I hate doing it once a year let alone twice a week. Good on you for supporting your wife in this time!

Ps I learned to ski/snowboard on bachelor and love it. (My grandparents use to live in sunriver)

 

I run KO2s year round and have never had a code brown moment. I'm an avid skier so I'm going back and forth from the mountains almost every weekend day. I had my old 2nd gen 4Runner(also running KO2s) for my senior year of college in the north east for a snowy winter in a hilly area and it did great.

Of course dedicated snow tires are going to be the absolute best in the snow, but good ATs designed with snow performance in mind are legitimately the next best thing. I think snow tires are definitely worthwhile if you're going to the mountains often and run normal all seasons(whether in a truck or any vehicle), even if they're snowflake rated. The snowflake rating is a minimum standard for a test that only takes acceleration into account. In this instrumented test: https://news.pickuptrucks.com/2016/03/winter-tire-test-some-treads-are-better-than-others.html you can see that the all seasons are actually slightly better than the K02s in the 0-30 test, but much worse in the 30-0 and lateral grip test(which seem like the much more important two metrics to me. The rating does guarantee that a tire will be acceptable in the snow, but some snowflake rated non-dedicated-winter tires perform much better than others, and good ATs like KO2s or Duratracs are at the top of that pile. I just don't find it worthwhile to have two sets of tires if the tires that fit my needs best the rest of the year are the next best thing anyway.

Honestly, I'm much more worried about other drivers in the snow than I am about me so I drive really defensively and leave so much space around me that I never need to come close to pushing the tire's abilities anyway. It's all well and good if I can stop well, but what about the Kia with bald tires or the 6000 pound bro dozer with razor thin mud terrains behind me?

 

I have Blizzak and got them from Costco. Night and day between dedicated snow tires vs. AT

 

Yea I live on an island and 45mins is a far drive lol

 

My duratracs are pretty decent in the snow

 

You are right on the mark regarding worrying about the other guys tires.

The Pickuptrucks.com article you linked is one of the best I have read on this subject. My personal experience matched the outcome pretty well in regards to an AT vs a mud tire vs studded snow tire. Its interesting to see the Blizzaks go head to head with studded. I would have liked to see them run a water truck over the course and wet it down and see if studs would pull ahead. That would be more representative of the conditions we get here in PNW especially on the west side of the Cascades...good dumping of snow packed on the roads followed by rain. Rinse and repeat all winter long.

Gotta love the photo at the end of the where they get the Taco on the course to pull the Ford out of the snow bank. Wonder what tires that Taco is wearing. Looks like Blizzaks on stock TRD rims from the grooves at each edge of the tire...and it is Bridgestone's track afterall.

 

I worked out of Pearl City for about 4 years and know that it can easily take 45 mins to get from there to downtown Honolulu. The time is the same just more or less miles traveled. No snow to worry about though. Tons of Tacos over there. Aloha

 

Blizzaks for sure. No studs.

Michelin XIce is good as well and you couldn’t go wrong but I find blizzaks better in deep stuff.

Also to consider, look at narrower tires which will be much better in snow and slush. They track much better on the highway and you be much less likely to hydroplane or lift off and lose traction in slush/snow.

Perfect size in my opinion is 245/75r17 if you have 17” wheels. Or 255/75r17 or 235/85r16 or 235/80r17 (both of which are only available in 10 ply LT tires)

 

The Michelin XIce came out at or near the top of the CR ratings. I looked for them on Discount Tire's website and they are "unavailable" in 265/70 16. I haven't looked any further but I should.

Edit: I looked a bit deeper for these. Michelin's website says they make them in our size and load rating. Costco says they are out of stock but they have the Blizzaks (Costco butchered my daughters wheels so they are last resort in my book).

I agree with you on looking at narrower tires. I did that on my F350 and it helped. It probably helps gas mileage a bit as well...I couldn't tell on the Ford however as it was bad no mater what I did.

Thanks

 

Very true, used to take me an hour to go 8 miles

 

Yeah, it at least confirms the intuition that Snows>AT>AS>MT, I just wish I could find more tests like this that used instrumented testing on a broad array of tires, you can find tests for snow tires but I'm actually way more interested in seeing how ATs and all seasons stack up. Reason being all snow tires are designed for snow performance and if you buy a set from a reputable brand they'll serve you well, but many AT and AS tires are engineered to the test so they specifically to pass the minimum standards for the three peak rating and will disappoint while others genuinely put a lot of engineering into making their AT or AS tires perform well in the snow(KO2s, Wildpeak AT3W and Duratracs spring to mind as ones people seem to have good experiences with). I mean, I can't remember for sure, but I'm 90% sure that the stock Goodyears that come on my TRD OR were three peak rated and I know at least M+S and it was a night and day difference in the snow when I put KO2s on.

I also only trust user reviews and anecdotes on tires to a certain extent, it can help a lot to determine which tires are generally good and which to stay away from, but once you get to debating between tires lots of people swear by and few have had bad experiences with, like KO2s vs AT3Ws vs Duratracs and if it's worth having snow tires for winter even if you have one of those three you aren't getting anything useful because there are so many variables in play, and so few have owned two of the tires under debate, let alone all three. I even own two of those right now(KO2s on my Tacoma, AT3Ws on my Range Rover Classic) and have used both in a wide variety of conditions, but I could not tell you which is better because they're attached to such different vehicles. I mean, I've had the KO2s get a touch squirrelly in 2wd or understeer in 4hi on me more in wet, snowy or icy conditions than the AT3s, but the KO2s are attached to a pickup truck with a light rear end that's either rear wheel drive or locked four wheel drive and the AT3s are attached to an SUV with full-time all wheel drive and a limited slip center diff so of course that's how they drive while the K02s have taken me further up absurdly step snowy and icy hills that almost nothing could make it up, but it has a locker and ATRAC while the Rover has open diffs FR.

Tire and rubber technology has come a very long way in the past couple decades so it could just be that the rubber technology in studless winter tires has gotten good enough to match or best studs in every or almost every scenario. I would never use studded tires in the Pacific Northwest now that studless tires have gotten so good as they do actually hurt wet(as well as dry) pavement performance, and no matter how much you're driving to or through the mountains you're kidding yourself if you think you're not still going to be spending a minuscule amount of time driving in snow compared with rain. Plus IMO they're one of the most selfish things someone can put on a vehicle, you're tearing up the road for everyone else when there are now options for winter tires that demonstrably perform as well or better than studded tires in pretty much every winter driving scenario and perform much better than studded tires in the dry and wet.

If it were me I'd just look hard at how I use my truck. Of course the Bridgestone should put Blizzaks on the Tacoma they apparently use as a support truck at their winter testing center, it literally spends all of its time on the snow and probably is pulling stuck test vehicles out all day long, but I know that isn't my use case. No matter how much someone in Oregon drives in the snow compared to other drivers it's a small percentage of the time unless you like work at Timberline and commute from Rhododendron every day. Even crossing Hood or Santiam, the routes are so well travelled even if there's snow on the road surface they keep it so gritted and packed a car with summers could drive it unless you're hitting it in the middle of a snowstorm. If a quality set of ATs suit how you use your truck for the rest of the year I'd get those first, and add winters later if they don't do as well as you'd like. They are safe and will get you there, but snows will stop ~10 feet faster per every 30 mph of speed you're carrying and I'd imagine keep the rear from slipping around a bit if you're in 2wd in mixed conditions(no matter how slick it's been in 4HI with KO2s the tail completely stops trying to step out). If you're planning on keeping the stock tires or going less aggressive to all seasons I'd probably go for the snow tires.

 

I know this is leaning to dedicated snows and probably better for your case but just an FYI to anyone that wants a A/T tire but good snow performance, Falken AT3 and Goodyear Duratracs will be better than KO2s.

 

Very true, wet slushy snow on top of loose dirt, and then the problems start!!!

 

My nitto ridge grapps did great in deep snow, slush, etc. No tire is going to save you from ice though unless you're running studded.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Btrg7ZslFcu/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/BehXLuHlVJh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

 

I had DMV2s on my 4runner and they were awesome

 

Beautiful rig!

 

I second that! Looks right at home in the deep stuff...