We got snow..should i air down?

In Michigan it is a primary driving offense to leave snow on your vehicle - all surfaces including roof hood trunk and windows must be cleared of snow.

We got a foot overnighht so first thing was to grab the pushbroom and clean off the truck. Then drive through the beauty with fully inflated tires, 4Hi, and a big smile.

 

Huh, and you guys think we in Cali have restrictive DMV laws!

 

I am super happy with the stock tires. In city snowy roadways they are good...and 6-10" deep powder on the forest service roads are good to go as well.
I have been looking at new tires, but honestly I don't think another A/T tire will perform any better than the stock ones in all conditions...so I am going to run stock tires until I need to switch them out.

 

I went to KO2s to be legal when required.

 

I have 30 years of driving in the Ca Sierras above 5k feet and I have always seen that all my vehicles respond positively to lower pressures on snowy roads. From my wife's car to my FJ to my work trucks to my crawler, all have beneifited to at least 10psi lower than my non snow pressures. We do have different snow and it does pack up real well and cutting through to the road bases rarely happens, even with my 255 skinny ST Maxx.

 

So you're saying lower air pressure = less contact patch? Are you focusing on the lateral contact patch versus length-wise? Lower air pressure greatly increases overall contact patch length-wise, performing like tracks, which is increasing friction with the surface.

 

With my beadlocked 40s the ability to turn the steering wheel on hardpack changes significantly depending on air pressure. With hydro assist disabled I can turn the wheel at 25psi but aired down to <15psi and you cant turn without moving. In a controlled environment airing down might lead to less contact, but i have never seen it on the street or trail.

Even running my streetbike tires with low psi helps with "gription" when hooning around.

 

Yes, same here, not quite 30 years but 18 and have also had the opportunity to drive in may other states and have yet to drive in any snow like what we have here. It's funny cause people think we are crazy for lowering our air for snow, I have had friends that moved over here from the east coast that were so skeptical they would even try it until they slid off the road trying to follow me with lower air pressure, I finally got them to lower the air pressure to get out of the ditch and now they are believers lol.
My brother in law just got back from being stationed in fort drum and he was saying when it snowed over there he had no problem getting around in his 2wd ford ranger with a decent set of snow tires, he was shocked at how different the winter driving was over there after growing up here.
Again it goes back to my original statement of there are different types of snow that require different techniques for traction. Being set in one way or the other could possibly get you into trouble some day if you find yourself in sierra cement!

 

I also lived and drove in the Sierra, at Bear Valley. Most of the time I used snow tires and since I just worked at the ski area, I stayed on snow all week and would only go downhill on weekends. Airing down would not work well if we had to chain up on bad days, and since all residents had to park in one big lot downtown during the winter, we would never have considered airing up and down our tires due to the inconvenience of having one more thing to do between finding and digging out our snow covered cars.

I always thought there was only one Sierra Range, where are the rest of them?

 

Sierra mountainS or sierraS for short.

Big Bear is just northern LA and I would not be surprised that many visitors had no idea how to drive in the snow. Lol

And chains work fine with low pressures as long as you have extra tensioners, which you should have anyways. We dont air up our tractor tires before we chain them to remove fresh snow on the parking lots.

 

oh yikes, this is terrible. Good way to lose traction fast. This is why full time lockers are terrible in snow, no way to turn it off.

No we didnt. We never aired tires down...

 

There’s only one Sierra Nevada Range, made up of many mountains, each one has its own name (Muir, Whitney, Williamson, etc.), each mountain is part of the Sierra for short.

Big Bear- My dumb, I meant Bear Valley, a small town in the Sierra. I used to also work at Bear Mountain, east of Los Angeles, hence the mistake.

I used to tighten up the chains by putting them on with low tire pressure first, then filling up the tire more, but man, low pressure on chains is going to cause havoc on the back side unless you tention there, too. I’ve seen weekenders wrap chains around their axles running with oversized chains or loose ones!

 

The problem in Seattle was not the snowfall, it was the extremely wet day sitting in the high 30s followed by a rapid descent to below freezing temps after sunset.

 

Check your sources, that was last year.

http://www.wweek.com/news/city/2016...e-averaging-five-crashes-an-hour-in-the-snow/

 

The best things you can do when driving in snow is understand how to read the road conditions, how to modify your driving for the various situations, and spend a lot of time practicing safely.

Things like airing down are optimizations you make in a specific situation when you or someone helping you understands the need.

 

increasing weight while maintaining constant surface area (Weight/Area) increases the coefficient of friction between a wheel and the ground, the inverse of which gives the opposite.

In other words, add weight to increase traction in back of your truck, making your tires wider won’t help as much.

 

Only need to air down if you are going cross-country. If you are on anything better than an unimproved road and the snow depth is below the center line of your hub, you don't air down for snow. You want a smaller contact patch and self clearing tread. Take that -10 manual and toss it out the window.

<20 years driving everything from motorcycles to HETs, running convoys and 88M instructor for US Army and CA National Guard.>

 

The pressure of a given amount of gas held at constant volume is directly proportional to the Kelvin temperature.

Perhaps just make sure your tires have the right amount of air, if you want to remain efficient on the road?
I check mine every 2 weeks ish, particularly when the temperature hits -30 celsius

 

Charles always had a problem with gas.

 

Wait, I remember this pic from last year. I remember thinking what a waste of a quicksand that was when I read it.

you should write to your newspaper people and ask them to use up to date pics for their news stories! Tell them you heard on TW.

http://www.wweek.com/news/city/2016...e-averaging-five-crashes-an-hour-in-the-snow/