Tires For Winter Road Trip

I don't even own chains.. sad to say. LoL The roads I want to play on are mostly closed in winter. And I work indoors so I avoid driving the passes most of the time.

My truck is NOT a good example of fuel economy changes. I've got bumpers, sliders, skids, winch, topper, lift, 33" E Load tires, and 4.56 gears.

Completely stock truck I averaged 19.1 MPGs on my Fuelly account. Now days I'm happy with 15mpgs on my daily commute.

 

I put Duratracs on my Tacoma back when you could only get them in LT265/75-16 C-rated versions (2010). I think I got 55k miles out of them before I replaced them with Cooper A/TW's and they could have gone another 5k miles before they got down to the wear bars. I think I got a good amount of life out of them, and they were an all around great tire for a pickup truck but were just too noisy for me, especially as they wore down. They wore evenly and still worked reasonable well in the snow after 40k+ miles, and if I didn't do so much highway driving I would have replaced them with another set of Duratracs.

The Cooper Discoverer A/TW's that replaced my Duratracs were stock-sized P265/70-16 and performed a little better on packed snow and ice, but they wore much faster than the Duratracs. They were much quieter than the Duratracs but seemed to provide slightly mushier handling on dry roads, probably due to their softer compound and the fact that they were P-rated vs. the LT-rated Duratracs. The only reason I went with the AT/W version of the Coopers instead of the A/T3 was because I was in between jobs at the time and I wasn't sure if I would end up commuting to Boston during the upcoming winter.

Last week I replaced the P265/70-16 Cooper A/TW's with a new set of P265/75-16 Cooper A/T3's only because I got a new set of Tacoma alloys and figured that I might as well get new tires at the same time. The old Coopers only had about 25k miles on them but they wore down fast and I didn't want to put them through another winter. They still had maybe 15-20k miles of life left in them which would be fine for summer use and I sold them to a guy from Maine. This time I opted for the A/T3 version because I wanted to see if they last longer while still provide half-decent snow performance.

I firmly believe that if you want ultimate winter performance for your Tacoma you need to switch to the narrower 245-series tire from the 265-series. The larger tires tend to float on top of packed snow vs. dig into it.

 

Good to know what I can expect in the future. One day I'll have all that. It doesn't sound like the tires killed that much mpg.

 

If you want to go with separate/dedicated snow tires, have you considered the Nokian Hakkapeliitta LT2? Or the Cooper Discoverer M+S? I'm in New England and planning on running one of those two this winter in the 235/85/16 size. Also - having poked at the Cooper site a bit, it looks to me like the ST Maxx does have the M+S rating (snowflake). I also really want to go with a 255/85/16 AT for the summer and really like the ST Maxx, but I'm dreading the idea of the 59lb weight. Both the Hakkapeliitta and Discoverer M+S in 235/85/16 are roughly 41lb.

 

Where did you buy your sled deck? I neeeeeeeeeed one.

 

I haven't experienced the Cooper in winter, but I will say I have the Duratracs and winter tires. Took a while before I put them on and just last week we got our first snowfall and it was pretty icey after as it was freezing rain that turned to snow.

I didn't switch over to my nokians yet. All I can say is even if the Duratracs are winter rated they are absolute shit in icy conditions. The drive in, in the morning was scary.

I put my winters on as soon as I got home. The Nokians are amazing. I've had Michelin X ice, Blizzaks and now nokians. Nokians are far better than all the others.
Often rated the #1 winter tire which they are. Were talking about them at work and one of the guys mentioned I wasn't aware they use some sort of crystal in the rubber. Since where we live we can't have studded tires but Nokian puts these crystals that work like a stud to dig into hte ice. Looked it up on Nokians website after and the Hakkapelitia R2 do have it which are what I have.
Either way last winter and already at the start of this winter they've been great. Will definitely get them again.
And this is from Canadian winters.

 

M+S simply means mud + snow, so all season.

I have the Hakka R2. Not sure if there is any difference besides load rating.

 

The Cooper Discoverer M+S is a dedicated winter tire... poor nomenclature on their part.