I know tire siping has been discussed but I thought I'd share my experience.

I have 35 inch tires from Big O and frankly they are terrible on ice and snow. I can get around in 4W-Hi but it's not just the going, it's the stopping as well.

Finally in mid-December I went back to Big O and had them sipe the tires. What an amazing difference this has made. Even without 4WD it's much easier to get moving and it's a lot more responsive when stopping. We had a nice storm come through about two weeks after we had it done and that's when I really saw the difference.

The snow was deep enough in front of our house that passenger vehicles were getting stuck in the middle of the intersection. I ended up helping 4 or 5 people throughout the day. One was a mini-van that wasn't going anywhere even with 5 people pushing on it. I hooked up and even with ice under 6 or 8 inches of snow I had no problem dragging them across the intersection.

For anyone thinking about doing this I say go for it, you will be glad you did.

And for those that will try to tell me that I've voided my tire warranty I have two things.
I purchased the tires from Big O tires, they are their brand...Big O Bigfoot XT's. They offer the siping service and told me about it the day I bought the tires. They also honor the warranty even if they've done the work.

Secondly, I don't care if they did void the warranty. I would much rather have the performance increase and the peace of mind than a warranty. Wouldn't bother me at all if they said it was no longer covered.

Beel

 

If you get 30,000 miles out of them and they were due for 40,000, I'd consider it a worthy trade-off. How much did they charge ya?

 

When I originally purchased the tires in May of '07 they quoted me $10 per tire.

They actually charged me $20 per tire plus $5 each to remove the rocks. If you have it done at the time of purchase they obviously don't have to worry about rocks in the tread.

More than I expected but still worth it as far as I'm concerned. I'm not thrilled about these tires overall and I've considered replacing them even though they have plenty of life. Now having siped them I'm a lot happier and $125 is a lot cheaper than $1,250 for an entire new set.

The tires have a 40,000 warranty and I'm at about 17,000. Siping actually reduces tread wear and extends the life of a tire so I'm sure they will be fine for quite a while.

Beel

 

I have had many of my AT tires siped over the years (never owned a MT before) and found that tire life actually increases on highway use as the tires tend to run cooler. Don't know if this is true of the latest designs, but certainly was true up through the 90's.

I would guess that if you are doing a lot of rock crawling, you might have a tendance to toss chunks (that sounds bad) where the sipes weaken the tread design, but they sure do make a tire handle ice and packed snow a lot better.

 

Your local Discount Tire should be able to help you out.
Mine will do it for $10/tire, but YMMV.

 

I bought my own tire groover. It was around $75 and it took me a bit over an hour to do it. I don't know if I did it correctly, but my traction's definitely better on the roads in the snow than it was.

 

h$$p://www.can4x4.com/tech/siping/sip-and-groove.htm

Here's a pretty good article on what it looks like and how to do it. The brand of the tire groover is Ideal.

 

I really did consider buying the tool to do it myself. I even tried it with just a razor knife on a couple of the blocks, but that was slow going. I think it would have been easier if I'd tried it in summer with warm tires, but it was 20 degrees and the rubber was very hard.

That tool looks pretty cool and I was interested because I figured you could "customize" the siping pattern. In the end I just didn't know how much I'd use it after the initial job.

Beel

 

i first seen that type of tool in a rally race. the waether was iffy so instead of running full rains, they grooved some slicks just enough to move the water around. i thought this was just awesome!

 

I get all my tires siped. It greatly improves wet weather and snow and ice traction. The main drawback is the cost of the siping and when wheeling, tires tend to "chunk" a bit more. All in All siping is worth it.