Picked up a set of steelies + snow tires off Craigslist last month, but three are down to the wear markers, one is brand new.
My other option is to keep running my Douglas Performance GT-H's (crap) that came with the car.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Douglas-Performance-GT-H-Tire-195-60R15-91H/1819271
Apart from trying both sets, which is a pain, which would I expect to give me better traction in 3-5 inches of snow?
1990 Miata, open diff.
Is this a stupid question? I can't tell sometimes.
i would run the old snows. The softer compound i would think would work better. YMMV
What snow tires? Some have the stick stuff all the way down, some dont. My WS60s hit the first wear bars last month with 5/32ish tread left because thats the start of the more or less all season compound. They're still better than most all seasons in the snow but the ice performance is GONE, which I discovered in a code brown moment.
Probably a close call. Snow tires work partly because of the compound and partly because of the large spaces between tread blocks and the "deeper" tread block design. They also tend to have a series of small cuts in the blocks to "grasp" ice and snow. In theory, but not always in practice, the compound should be unchanged. On the wear bars, you've probably lost a lot of the depth in the tread blocks and most of the extra grasping surfaces. On ice, I'd probably still go with the snows because of the compound. Deep snow, I'd lean towards the newer A/S tires as there is probably more tread depth there. I'd also be concerned about "3 snows on wear bars" + "1 new", as that could do some pretty weird stuff to your handling. As a alternative, I might spend a little and buy a second "new" snow and put those on the back, worn snows on the front.
On a Miata, in 3-5 inches of snow, you're pretty much hosed either way. I don't think mine even has 5 inches of ground clearance.
kazoospec wrote: Probably a close call. Snow tires work partly because of the compound and partly because of the large spaces between tread blocks and the "deeper" tread block design. They also tend to have a series of small cuts in the blocks to "grasp" ice and snow. In theory, but not always in practice, the compound should be unchanged. On the wear bars, you've probably lost a lot of the depth in the tread blocks and most of the extra grasping surfaces. On ice, I'd probably still go with the snows because of the compound. Deep snow, I'd lean towards the newer A/S tires as there is probably more tread depth there. I'd also be concerned about "3 snows on wear bars" + "1 new", as that could do some pretty weird stuff to your handling. As a alternative, I might spend a little and buy a second "new" snow and put those on the back, worn snows on the front. On a Miata, in 3-5 inches of snow, you're pretty much hosed either way. I don't think mine even has 5 inches of ground clearance.
I considered buying another new one, but we're unlikely to get much more snow this year.
Our streets get plowed pretty well, I'm not too worried about deep snow. I'll take a picture when I get home of the tires.
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