All weather tyres

[Brian Kirby]

No less important, IMO, that tread pattern, is tread depth. Commercial tyres seem to start off at somewhere around 8 - 10mm. As that wears the traction the tyres can develop on soft ground will diminish. So, anyone finding poor traction with part worn tyres which they replace with new tyres with a heavier tread pattern, is almost inevitably going to be impressed by the greater traction of the new tyres. The question then is, is that due to the greater tread depth, or to the tread pattern?

 

I have no proof for this, but my suspicion is that tread depth is playing the bigger role, and that once the heavy tread gets worn to 4 mm or so, the performance difference will have all but disappeared.

[StuartO]

The "cuts" of tread pattern are there to provide an escape route for water, to allow the outer tyre surface to remain in contact with the road when its wet rather end up running on a film of water.  A "slick" racing tyre (which has no tread pattern at all) is best for grip in the dry because it maximises rubber contact.  But a slick tyre is hopeless in the wet because the water cannot escape and so aquaplaning becomes unavoidable.

 

Unlike water on the road, mud doesn't flow out of the tread pattern easily - and indeed mud tends to stick, filling up the tread pattern and effectively converting a patterned road tyre into a slick one.  So if you drive on to squelchy mud you lose most of your grip more or less straight away.  

 

Off-road knobbly tyres are designed to provide gripping "edges" as well as weight-bearing contact surfaces and the wide valleys between the contact areas will allow mud to flow and prevent it sticking.  So they are much better on mud than road tyres.

 

I doubt there is all that much difference on mud between roads tyres of any tread pattern or depth and at best you are talking bout the difference between poor and very poor grip.  Mud fills up the tread pattern very quickly and your tyre behaves like a bald one, sliding on the underlying slippery mud.

 

I suppose wet long grass might provide more grip than short-cropped lawn but if the ground is soft and wet, neither are going to resist MH wheels sripping the grass off and reaching the underlying mud.  As soon as your tyres make contact with mud, you will lose almost all your grip.

 

The only way you can make progress on slippery mud in a motorhome is by providing your tyres with something underneath which they can grip on, ie something solid in the mud.

 

And I think this explains why I have found the "rope ladder" type of gripping aid so much more effective than the ridged plastic treadways,  The "rungs" of the ladder provide much better solid "ground" under the tyre as they dig in and help each other to take the load by pulling on the "ropes" connecting them.  The plastic treads, even if they are placed under the driving wheels before you try to move off, seem to me to be prone to whizzing out like a projectile as soon as the wheel spins.

 

[Steve928]

Brian Kirby - 2016-05-09 4:50 PM

 

No less important, IMO, that tread pattern, is tread depth. Commercial tyres seem to start off at somewhere around 8 - 10mm.

 

I mention this purely in passing as I confess to not having studied the rest of the thread in detail, but the Falken R51 commercial tyre comes as new with a stonking 12mm of tread. The set that I use had covered around 35.000 miles on my previous van before I transferred them to the Bailey (because I prefer their road manners, comfort and grip to the the Michelin Agilis Camping) and have now covered a further 17,000 on that van. Now at 52,000 miles they are now down to 'only' 8mm tread, so I suspect that they will eventually be retired on age grounds.. :-)