I keep good tires on all my vehicles. 5 yrs they go bye bye. You should never play games when it comes to tires. I hydroplaned enough on so so tires. Got too old for that nonsense.
Replace tires at 5/32s?
- Thread starter buck91
- Start date
Meh
It heavily depends on the climate, your driving style (defensive vs. aggressive) and your driving environment.
If you live in an area that rarely has a severe thunderstorm and no ice (or dry ice) 3/32s is perfectly fine. This is especially true if you are a defensive driver, and live in an area where folks are generally polite and laid back when they're behind the wheel.
If you live where there's lots of bad weather, aggressive drivers, and tons of roadside hazards human or otherwise, 5/32s can work perfectly fine. As someone has already mentioned you can always sell a premium tire with 5/32s left of tread to make up some of the cost difference.
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If you live in an area that rarely has a severe thunderstorm and no ice (or dry ice) 3/32s is perfectly fine. This is especially true if you are a defensive driver, and live in an area where folks are generally polite and laid back when they're behind the wheel.
If you live where there's lots of bad weather, aggressive drivers, and tons of roadside hazards human or otherwise, 5/32s can work perfectly fine. As someone has already mentioned you can always sell a premium tire with 5/32s left of tread to make up some of the cost difference.
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Here in Florida I will not try to get max miles out of tires due to the rain.
Safety and dry rot cracking are my concerns.
Yes but in Florida you need Hurricane traction!
Don't get much rain here and if we do it rains 4 minutes then dries in 10. Run them tires down to 0/32. Bald tires do better in sandy conditions.
I'll probably drop my 5/32" winter tires at local used tire joint when they get replaced this week. At this point for me they are 6 years old and too low for good winter.
That doesn't mean they can't help someone that needs to get passed on inspection and get them to work more safely than bologna skins.
That doesn't mean they can't help someone that needs to get passed on inspection and get them to work more safely than bologna skins.
JHZR2
Staff member
Seems wasteful, tires are an expensive wear item. That said, sometimes peace of mind is more valuable. Were considering similar on my wife’s odyssey. We have about 67k on them, plenty of tread, but winter is coming. We are very careful driving, so we’re going to wait and see what Black Friday deals pop up….
The 2020 elantra has about 5 seasons on the general as-05(bought 3/2021) I had planned to replace them this year/next spring but with only 1000miles this year on the car,
and tread at 5-5.5/32 they will go next year too.
Continental vikingcontact 7 winters on another set of wheels are about done too 6-6.5/32 tread depth.
and tread at 5-5.5/32 they will go next year too.
Continental vikingcontact 7 winters on another set of wheels are about done too 6-6.5/32 tread depth.
On a typical passenger car tire, full tread depth is ~10/32", +/- one or two. The wear bars represent 2/32".
That results in ~8/32" of usable tread depth, or more than half consumed. Light truck tires start with deeper treads, so even greater.
I don't know what the final outcome was, but there was a lot of hand wringing when the Europeans were considering a change to reduce the minimum legal tread depth over there.
Your concern for your spouse's safety, as well as others on the road, should be applauded, even if some might consider it premature.
Certainly the flip side of the "if it holds air, no matter where patched, it's fine, and never had a problem" camp.
That results in ~8/32" of usable tread depth, or more than half consumed. Light truck tires start with deeper treads, so even greater.
I don't know what the final outcome was, but there was a lot of hand wringing when the Europeans were considering a change to reduce the minimum legal tread depth over there.
Your concern for your spouse's safety, as well as others on the road, should be applauded, even if some might consider it premature.
Certainly the flip side of the "if it holds air, no matter where patched, it's fine, and never had a problem" camp.
In my experience, the rubber has become quite hard by the time I reach 5/32”, and the effective wet traction is gone, even if there’s a little tread left. I replace based usually based on wet stopping ability, and that varies by tire.
I was recently surprised by a set of Kelly edge tires which were at the wear bars but still stopped rather well in the rain. Being at the wear bars, we got the tires replaced. That was a good set of tires.
I was recently surprised by a set of Kelly edge tires which were at the wear bars but still stopped rather well in the rain. Being at the wear bars, we got the tires replaced. That was a good set of tires.
Hard or soft doesn’t necessarily improve or worsen traction in the rain.
I have a set of so called 4 season Chinese tires and ended up leaving them on this summer because I couldn’t find a matching 4 th tire for my nokians.
They are most definitely soft and aren’t great in the rain (especially light rain) despite a mile of tread. Heavy rain I never hydroplane but they are pretty noticeably mediocre during light rain compared to my mediocre Bridgestone Ecopias that were on before.
At least snow performance is significantly better than all seasons but not really close to the blizzaks I had years ago.
5/32 is the minimum tread depth for driving in snow, 4/32 in rain.
I was in the same position around this time last year and knew that I had to get new tires before winter set in but I was willing to run the tires down right up until the end of October or beginning of November, whenever I got the new tires installed.
I was in the same position around this time last year and knew that I had to get new tires before winter set in but I was willing to run the tires down right up until the end of October or beginning of November, whenever I got the new tires installed.
