Miles on Firestone Winterforces if used year round

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As in the title, how many miles would you expect these to run down to say 4/32 if they were run year round in SE PA? I'm reading very conflicting reviews of their running as low as 10,000 and as much as 52,000 with lots of tread still left. Pretty big gap.
 
3 thoughts:

1) Winter tires are designed to be used in cold weather. The rubber compounds will be soft and pliable in cold weather. This also means they will generate more operating heat. That's OK in the cold weather,but in hot weather, they will generate more temperature than they can tolerate - and the potential for a tread separatioon goes up dramatically.

Not a good idea.

2) Most tire wear takes place in the turning mode. Use a tire in a straight ahead, no turns situation - like traveling cross country - and you can get incredibly good wear, no matter how poor the quality of the tire is. Use a tire in a downtown situation - like a taxi cab or a downtown delivery service - and no matter how high the quality is, the tire isn't going to wear very well. So the range of values for tire wear in different situations is very wide.

Road surfaces also play a large role. More abrasive road surfaces will wear a tire faster than fine textured road surfaces.

3) In your locale, the roads are bad, hilly, lots of turns, and the rock used to build the roads is hard and can be quite abrasive. What you are considering is operating a tire outside its design envelope - and the wear potential is already poor to begin with. You should expect a winter tire to be on the low end of the range of values. Another reason not to go there.
 
I have Firestone Winterforce as winter tire only and I've done 2 winters with them and pretty satisfied. In term of kms, it means approx. 45,000 kms with them yet and I'm at the half of their lives.

If you're using them as summer tires, I'll have to say that depending of your driving style, it will last you about 30-45k miles.
 
this is a great topic, because I am intending to get a set of winterforces (can't beat the price, $67 ea in my size @ tirerack)but I was going to install them now because my present tires are done.
so I figured I'm still at least 2-3 months away from snow, but it will be getting cold here soon. but I don't want to get new summer tires just for sept-oct-nov.
 
I have them on my yaris, great all round tire with minimal noise. On my yaris I would expect to get about 25K on the fronts if not removed given the wear from the long winter here 6mos Nov-April. Wear will depend on driving style, vehicle weight, front or rear, alignment. I am an aggressive driver - but spin a tire a bit on snow does not = spin/slide a tire in 70deg heat in the dry.
 
I agree with Capriracer on this one, let me add another reason not to run them in the summer.. Rubber hardens when used in the summer, soft tires heat more....., Here was my first experience:

I bought two pairs of the original Sears Ice and Snow tires (made by Armstrong) and put them on two nearly identical cars (Fairmont/Zephyr. The Zephyr a wagon and was used for long trips to the mountains for skiing. The Fairmont was used around town a lot, and often towed a boat. I elected to leave the snow tires on year around on the Fairmont.

Now I was orginally stunned by how much better these ice rated tires were then any previous snow tire I had owned.
The Zephyr tires got long distances, but winter only use, other tires for summer. The Fairmont went shorter distances, but year around use. End result, both sets wore out in 4 winters BUT:

The winter only use tires still had incredible traction as they approached bald - on either car- they could pull a steep hill on totally snowpacked streets, and the rubber was still soft to the fingernail.

The year around use tires on the Fairmont had become rock hard, also in only 4 years. They were as bad on snow as any bald standard tire. We had noticed this effect by the second year of these tires lives, but just thought it was our imagination.

Incidentally, the Zephyr - with the nearly bald winter use only ice tires - was used to pull a ski boat to a waterski Show on Jan 1st (yeah, I know, skiers are nuts, but it was nationally publicized)! It easily pulled the ski boat up the snowpacked hill leading away from the river, while many FWD cars, pickups, etc could not drive up it pulling nothing!

I bet CapriRacer can tell us lots more about the relevant rubber chemistry issues as we age these tires in a hot environment!!
 
That's interesting, I experienced the same thing with a set of Nokian WR tires. These were supposed to be their "all weather" tire, carrying the severe service snowflake symbol but also recommended for year-round use, purporting to eliminate the need for changeover. They were fine the first winter. I left them on the car, as recommended, through the summer, not putting many miles on them at all. The next winter, despite having most of their tread left, they were worthless in the snow and were very very hard, much worse than a regular all season tire, and I junked them. That was an expensive mistake, and I don't think Nokian should represent the tires this way.
 
Quote:
I'm reading very conflicting reviews of their running as low as 10,000 and as much as 52,000 with lots of tread still left. Pretty big gap.


Depends on how you drive. If you drive like me, you'll be closer to 10k. If you drive like a skeerd senior taking corners at a crawl, they'll go the longer haul.

Alex.
 
Originally Posted By: onebigunion
That's interesting, I experienced the same thing with a set of Nokian WR tires. These were supposed to be their "all weather" tire, carrying the severe service snowflake symbol but also recommended for year-round use, purporting to eliminate the need for changeover. They were fine the first winter. I left them on the car, as recommended, through the summer, not putting many miles on them at all. The next winter, despite having most of their tread left, they were worthless in the snow and were very very hard, much worse than a regular all season tire, and I junked them. That was an expensive mistake, and I don't think Nokian should represent the tires this way.


I am surprised. I had the same Nokian WR on my Isuzu for 4 years/35K miles. Still have over 6 mm (almost 7 mm) of tread left. Rotated once, alignment done right after the tires were put on, and after the rotation. I love these tires. Great in winter (TOD/AWD almost never kicks on, so I drive in 2WD in Alaskan winters), great in summer and rain. Good stopping distances, even on black ice, plow thru a foot high snow drifts without any problems.

Nokian is one of the most popular brands up here. If it were not for the terrible dealer customer service (they stripped one of the lug bolts and cracked a keyed lugnut), I've bought a second set for my Kia. Got GY Tripletreads instead.
 
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