What to do with worn down winter tires

[DonR]

The winter tires on my Mitsubishi are to the point where they won't be much good next winter. Most of the sipes are starting to disappear. Would you just run them all summer long to use up some of the rubber or would you just replace them?

Don

[Frank Lee]

[TomO]

I would think your summer tires are lower rolling resistant than the winter ones. Winter tire compound gets very soft when temps are above 45*-ish and would hurt your mileage. I know I eeked out an extra season of my winter tires by having them siped again at a Discount Tire store. I'd suggest asking around at your local tire places to see if they offer siping services. My tires had to have 5/32nds on them to be siped, which they just barely did. It only cost me $10 per tire (i did two tires) and was well worth it.

[Christ]

Donate them to a neighbor who can get a summer's use out of them on his car, who can't afford to replace his tires?

[Creeper]

If you want to have some fun roast em on the car or donate them a burnout can get messy and kill a good amout of gas.

[MN Driver]

The cost to replace the tires will be higher than the cost of the MPG lost. If you can stomach the loss of MPG ego, I'd use them during the summer before switching back to your usual summer tires. Same goes for if I bought a car with bad rolling resistance to the tires, even if the tires were new, I'd still use them as the cost of tire replacement is going to be around $300+ for most cars and your loss of MPG likely won't amount to that unless the car is a gas hog to begin with, in which case it LRR tires probably won't make as big of a difference due to the other factors involved. Just keep the tire pressure up to get better MPG with the winter tires. I've managed to get 70mpg trips most of the time on my commute home from work and 84mpg when I hypermiled the trip using Blizzak's and they are not very low rolling resistance at all but seem decent as long as they are sitting at 30 something psi. You'll wear through them quick on hot sun drenched asphalt though so be sure to watch the tread.

[gone-ot]

...back in the "old" days, people just had them "recapped" for next winter.

[pounsfos]

skids up!!!!!!

smoke out your driveway, then use them in the garden as planters, or burn them in a 44gal drum to annoy the neighbours if you want.

or

when you get new ones, take the old ones to the top of a steephill and see how far they roll down the hill

[03NHVW]

Been there...made some people pretty happy donating a set of tires so they could keep rolling when they might not have been able to pass inspection otherwise.
bought myself some good karma to offset the bad karma that builds up behind me while I'm rolling 5mph below the limit.

[SlideWRX]

Dismount the tires, put screws into them from the backside, remount, and go ice racing.