3-Peak Mountain Snowflake vs. Mud Tires in Snow ?

[mtclimb3r]

These are a top recommendation of hardcore snow wheelers: https://www.intercotire.com/tire/102


These guys are serious snow wheelers in winter: https://4low-bc.com/
Here's their (awesome) youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@4LowBC

Might be worth a message to them or post on ih8mud.

@Nobody Is another member that does snow wheeling. I think he has an EB as well. He stated that the stock tires are actually decent.

For what it's worth, I suspect the bronco will not do quite as well in the REALLY deep stuff relative to jeeps on large tires. Talking about snow so deep that tall+skinny tires are not an option. I am worried about the IFS relative to the snow resistance and not sure if the engine coolers are up to the task of sustained snow wheeling or not. I ordered a Bronco primarily for it's capabilities in snow. Living in Montana, the roads/trails are snowy for a huge chunk of the year. As an ice climber/skier I want to more easily get to where I need to go in deep snow compared to the Tacoma I just sold. I am waiting on a (hopefully) 2023 Wildtrack for the upgraded steering with the eventual plan of adding 37" tires with either the icon rebound or a true bead lock for running 2-5 psi without worry.

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[NorthShoreBronco]

Is exactly what I'm planning to do - wear out my Territories then replace with 3-Peaks (or more Territories as they're cheap). Add a second set of wheels for M/Ts (undecided as to size, as 37s are that much more taxing on the rig in all sorts of ways, plus additional suspension-related expense).

I know but......

 

[WheelMe]

I know but......

You're killing me here! What's your suspension setup?

 

[Squatch]

I don't remember what yires I ran near Tahoe, but pretty sure they were BFGs. However, during Snowmageddon (MD,DC area) with two separate 16+" dumps within a week or so, my now discontinued 35" Mickey Thompson Baja Claws were a dream on freeway and in the unplowed deep snow of an entrance to Home Depot I used to get around traffic.

Sierra Nevada's........er ummmm.... rocky mountains.......

 

[NorthShoreBronco]

You're killing me here! What's your suspension setup?

RoughCountry 5 inch lift for Non Sasquatch Badlands. It's a UCA drop kit, so get to keep my Bilstein suspension. I love it!

 

[cyberfalco]

By experience I can tell you that 15 year old Interco SSRs will get you where you are going, just not in a straight line

 

[Silver-Bolt]

Use chains for deep snow wheeling.

 

[Snacktime]

You going 35s or 37s? I have Falken AT3W on my wife's F150 and they are a fantastic tire for the road and mild off-roading. You need to make sure you have at least a 1/2" to 3/4" spacing between the lugs. Snow traction is using snow between the treads to grab the snow you are driving on. Snow on Snow friction is how you should look at adding traction. People giving you AT tire recommendations are not giving you anything over the factory SAS tires.

You can be one of two people on the trail.

 

[Tricky Dick]

These are a top recommendation of hardcore snow wheelers: https://www.intercotire.com/tire/102

Can confirm, I've had them and they are excellent in snow.

 

[Dingbat]

That is 100% wrong. Snow packed in a tire would actually decrease traction. Snow tire work because of the specific compound they are made of. They are designed to stay pliable and flexible in freezing conditions. This enables the tread blocks and sipes to confirm or grip to the tiny imperfections in ice and snow. On ice the tire sipes open to expel the water that is formed by the friction of the tire against the ice. That water layer is what makes ice slippery.

Would you mind elaborating on this?
I’ve heard the snow to snow traction concept from a number of sources, some more reliable than others, but never directly from someone actually engineering winter tires.

A couple videos mentioning the concept:





Good snow tires use multiple strategies for dealing with varying snow conditions because more than anything, snow conditions vary and it’s mechanical properties vary with those conditions. Why would’t sintering or intergranular bonding be taken advantage of when conditions lend themselves to it?

Eta: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022489822000726

The conventional brush model is a well-known approach to the modeling of tire-road interaction. This simple model use small brush elements, linear elastic and independent bristles. Additionally, the brittles’ properties allow them to adhere to the front part of the contact patch and to slide in the rear. Snow accumulates in the tire patterns' voids and sipes when driving on snowy roads, generating snow-road surface forces. The conventional brush model (Bakker et al., 1989, Svendenius 2003) represents only the road-tire interaction without taking the tread pattern into consideration. Therefore, a double interaction brush model (Kusachov et al., 2019) was developed to represent an extra interaction between the packed snow in the voids of tire. This approach incorporates snow-shearing forces into a tire model using the brush model theory and it showed better match of test data compared with the single interaction models over a large slip range.

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