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From: mls@husky.uucp (Mark Stevans)
Newsgroups: net.auto.tech
Subject: Re: snow tires
Message-ID: <234@husky.uucp>
Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 17:00:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: husky.234
Posted: Tue Oct 15 17:00:50 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 21:00:53 EDT
References: <314@g.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA> <187@cdstar.UUCP>
Organization: Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, NY
Lines: 39

As long as there seems to be interest in my snow tire dilemma (my life is
so exciting!), I'd like to, shall we say, "sharpen" the debate:

As Jack Saltiel says in the referenced article:

> Tall tires help raise your car and give you improved ground clearance.

That would be extremely valuable, but the wheel wells on my Supra (even though
the springs are still strong) only clear the tire by about an inch, so I
can't put taller tires on the car.  I can only vary the width and tread here.

Jack also says:

> In snow, narrow tall tires are best. The narrower the tire, the
> more bite they will have into snow, since the weight on each tire
> will be distributed over a smaller contact patch.

This makes a lot of sense, but wider tires would put more cross-tread against
the snow.  I imagine this would improve traction.  Considering the logical
extremes, inch-wide tires would work very poorly on snow and ice.  Yet, I'd
imagine that ten foot wide tires would work great, assuming they held onto the
rims and I stayed in the center of vacant three-lane highways :^).  Since the
Supra is a reasonably heavy car, at 2886 pounds, I'm not sure narrower tires
would be better.  If loading the car would help, John M. Sellens recommends
sandbags.  Any opinions?  Comments?  Jokes?

All concerned seem to agree that salt will kill my alloy mag wheels.  Thanks
for the info.  I figure I'll pick up three or four steal wheels, and four
completely non-matching hubcaps.

One mail respondent strongly disrecommended the Goodyear Eagle Mud and Snow
tires.  He said they were nearly useless for traction.  As you can see,
the Eagle M ans S tread design is somewhat simpleminded:

No, after four tries, I find myself no graphic artist.  To put it into a
thousand words, it just has inch-wide treads running the width of the tire
alternating with 3/4 inch wide gaps.  The treads are also cut to provide a
1/2 inch gap running parallel to the direction of motion every two inches.
Isn't it better to have some zigzags?