Hacker News Reader

Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

You can travel mountain passes in the winter without putting on chains (most of the time). Regardless of whether you're running winter/snow tires.

View on HN

In my experience you still have to have at least M+S tires with AWD. You can't try the pass with summer tires or plain all season (non M+S, non 3 mountain peak) tires just because you have AWD.

Plain all-season or M+S count here. Summers don't. (If I were god-emperor, I'd change the privilege from AWD drivetrain to 3PMSF tires.)

As someone who traverses the Cascades on a regular basis during winter months, I've found all-weather tires like Michelin CrossClimate 2 to be phenomenal for year-round driving.

Michelin CrossClimate 2 are M+S/mud & snow. Or was that your point? The snow tyre lines are mostly due to the rubber compound which is far more effective <-4c, but wear quickly >7c (ideally don't use until cold)

They're 3PMSF, which is a step above M+S

It's orthogonal to the M+S rating. You can get a 3PMSF stamp without M+S.

Sure, though I think it's safe to say it is strictly better. M+S is a geometric tread definition, and such tires may have awful compounds that get rock hard in snow. 3PMSF requires a tested performance level in order to achieve. The only time I can imagine an M+S being better by any metric is if that metric is not related to cold performance. E.g. treadwear, price, warm weather handling, etc.

Yep.

I've been driving on a set for over 3 years, summer and winter, and still have plenty of tread left. If they do wear "quickly" at higher temps, for me at least they don't wear quickly enough for it to matter.

I think GP is talking about dedicated winter tires, which wear quickly and have poor performance in conditions above 45F. "All-weather" tires like CC2s are designed for and must tolerate year-round use.

Fair enough. I suppose the underlying question I'm left with is, are dedicated winter tires obsolete?

> are dedicated winter tires obsolete?

No -- they're still superior to all-weather tires in snow and ice. If you get a lot of that, they may be worthwhile. E.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K8ThRGNaoM

Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Smk69SCu5WrI3yRd_FO6...

WA defines "traction tires" as M+S OR All-Season, with no requirement for 3PMSF (yes, it's dumb). CC2s meet all of those criteria (I use them too).

Yep, I use CC2s as well, year round. They are good tires, and 3PMSF. Paired with AWD, Oregon is fine with them being used in lieu of chains when going over the Cascades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com