thoughts on siping, is it worth it?????
 

I need to get new tires today and want to know if siping is worth it....

If you drive through thick mud alot, sure.

AFAIK, it's just a way to utilize tire flex to keep the treads clean to keep traction in bad situations. The only time I've heard of people doing it is with off-road tires.

If you drive in the snow, or rain you want tires that have Siping as well.

When you say siping, I'm assuming you're referring to cutting your treads for better tread clean-out due to tire flex.

If you're referring to siping that would be present in the OEM shape/tread pattern of the tire, I don't know why it wouldn't be a good idea, and I can't imagine it hurting anything.

I live and work in the rainy Willamette valley in Oregon. I work for the major power company and we sipe all the tires on cars and trucks up through our f-550 bucket trucks. It helps wet traction and makes all season tires work like studless snow tires on ice. I highly recommend it.

Here's an exceprt from another forum:

Re: Siping of tires

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For those who don't know, there are 2 types of tire siping:

1) The kind the tire maufacturer puts in the molds. These will always have a small gap in them. In some respects, these are just very tiny grooves.

2) The kind put in after the tire is made - and that's probably what we are discussing here. these typically have no gaps and are produced by a series of circular kife cuts:

Needless to say, there is a charge for this service.

There are a lot of claims about this process - some true, most NOT!! So what is the truth?

1) This will violate the tire manufacturer's warranty. It is altering the tire and that is expressly forbidden by every tire manufacturer's warranty.

2) Wet traction improvment: Yes (No effect of hydroplaning resistance)

3) Snow traction improvment: Yes

4) No affect on wear? No, this adds more movement to the tread elements - which is why you get wet and snow traction!!

5) No effect on fuel economy? No. Movement = heat = increased fuel usage.

6) Dry traction: worse.

7) Ride: No effect

8) Handling: very slight degradation in crispness. Where you would see a major change is in grip (traction)

Overall, I'd recommend forgoing the treatment, except to get the last bit of wear out of a set of tires in an area where slow speed wet traction is pretty much the only issue.

^^^^Most of this is wrong^^^

Yes sipping works to improve traction in rain and snow. No, it doesn't increase wear or fuel consumption. The effect on handling depends on the type of tire you have. You wouldn't want to sipe a dedicated performance or summer tire.

This was the exact reason that I siped my Winterforce tires last year. they had 4 seasons of heavy use on them and had finally made it down to the minimum 5/32" required for siping them.

They were noticeably losing their grip in snowy situations before siping. After siping they were gripping like new again until the last of the tread depth disappeared.

All in all a $50 investment for two 155/80/R13 Winterforce tires and 5 seasons of great use out of them was well worth it. The siping was $10 per tire and well worth it since the price of the Winterforce tires went up since the initial purchase.

As far as siping an all season tire...I do have a set that I could try it on and get results back, seeing as that particular set has poor wet traction.