Snow Equipment Owning/Operating Cutting / Groving / Siping R-4 for snow

[gladehound]

I know R-4's in snow has been discussed to death but after a quick search I couldn't find anything about cutting them for better performance. I recently picked up an Ideal Heated Knife, also known as a tire groover. With a little help from a forced air heater to really get the tires warm, it worked like a charm. (I tried to go to work on 10 degree F tires at first and it was slow going)

My plan is to both groove and sipe my R-4's for better traction. This evening, I did the grooving part. 20 minutes for the first rear tire, 15 minutes for the second (since I had some practice on the first). Here are some pictures of what I did. I'm hoping this improves snow traction some.

When I get a chance I will sipe them on either side of the grooves for even better traction in hard packed snow/ice. The theory is, the more biting edges the better the snow/ice traction.

It's snowing now, I'll see how they go in the morning! :thumbsup:

 

[jake98]

Nice job! Did you have to do some soul shearching before starting that?

 

[Ford tractor]

DO you ever load heavy with the FEL? If you do, and spin the tires slightly, siping will all the force to tear them up quick. Just a word to the wise.

 

[mjncad]

Please let us know how well that works out for you.

 

[kday64]

Did you make a template first or did you go freehand?

Looks good. Keep us posted.

~Kevin

 

[gladehound]

"Nice job! Did you have to do some soul shearching before starting that?"

Thanks! Not too much, I like to mess with stuff. :thumbsup:

"DO you ever load heavy with the FEL? If you do, and spin the tires slightly, siping will all the force to tear them up quick."

I hear you! I do take the tractor to it's limits. I'm going to sipe so that there is rubber connecting the lug on both sides of each sipe with just 4 sipes per lug. I think this should maintain enough strength. This is how the sipes are on my 7,000 pound truck which has much higher contact patch pressure and can spin all 4 on asphalt and has never torn a lug. So I think it will work out OK. I certainly have to be careful not to teke too much out! I've noticed that all the lugs have a 2x width to height ratio so I maintained that with the groove, only going 3/8" down with an inch remaining on each side. The groove is open ended on one side but the sipes will be close ended on both sides.

"Did you make a template first or did you go freehand?"

Free hand

I'll keep TBN posted on how this turns out both in terms of traction and long term durability of the tires. Now it's time to plow some snow! :thumbsup:

 

[NC tractor driver]

Wouldn't chains work better and not reduce the life of your tires?

 

[RalphVa]

You could also put some metal screws into the lugs.

Ralph

 

[Duffster]

Wouldn't chains work better and not reduce the life of your tires?

You could also put some metal screws into the lugs.

Ralph

Or studs but I am guessing he doesn't want the surface damage.

 

[gladehound]

I used them this morning and traction in the rear was much improved. More than I thought it would be.

We had 6" of light snow. Not much of a challenge so I took it out of 4WD and put the 6' blade strait to let the snow pile up in front and plowed the 200 foot lane from the barn to the road without slipping a tire. The groves allowed the tires to hold snow on the surface of the lugs where it would normally just fall off and this gives much better traction and one reason snow tires work as well as they do. They worked so well that I don't think I'm going to sipe them. Not unless later I think I need more traction.

Yes, chains are fantastic for traction. But there are several reasons why avoid them.

1. surface damage to neighbors paved driveways and to my garage floor.
2. I don't have clearance for rear chains (design error in my opinion)
3. I have front chains and have used them and didn't like the damage to my garage floor or neighbors driveway.
4. I'm worried about over stressing the front axle with front chains and very heavy plow hanging off an already heavy bucket on a relatively small tractor.

I don't believe that increased tire wear is a real concern for the rears. In theory the increased wear would be proportional to increased contact pressure. So I might get about 10% faster tire wear in the rear.
After 420 hrs there is little wear on the rears, so I'd rather have the snow traction.

Siping on the other hand should not increase the wear rate so long as it's done in a way that the lugs don't chunk off since contact pressure is not changed.

The fronts are a different story and are at around 50% wear. I will not grove or sipe the fronts. There is too much contact pressure and the lugs are already only half as thick as the ones in the rear.

 

[teg]

...I recently picked up an Ideal Heated Knife, also known as a tire groover...

What size blade did you use and how deep did you go? Would you change anything if you were to to it again? I'm thinking maybe a smaller blade with two rows instead of one? Looks good!!!

http://pitstopusa.com/b-4665-ideal-heated-knives.html


.

 

[gladehound]

What size blade did you use and how deep did you go? Would you change anything if you were to to it again? I'm thinking maybe a smaller blade with two rows instead of one? Looks good.

I used a #4 blade and went 3/8 inch deep. If I were to change anything it would be to make each groove longer (which I can still go back and do), continuing so they get closer to the outside edges of the lugs. this is because it's easy to see that the snow only sticks on the lug where the groove is. On the outside part of the lug where the groove isn't the snow falls right off.

This is the first time I've done something like this so I don't know if other size groves would work better or not as well. I think it should work well. Maybe better than one larger groove. The trade off is lug strength. But you'll be fine if you don't goo too deep. You can always re-groove them as the tire wears.

I plowed 5 driveways since I grooved the tires and am still very impressed with the increase in traction. I have a gravel driveway which has a hard pack of snow/ice on it from repeated snows. There is a hill at one part that the tractor could not go up in 2wd before grooving the tires. Now it has no problem going up the same spot in 2wd. It is also pushing piles better in 4wd than before and I have not yet spun a tire since grooving them.

It's easy to see why the traction is so much better. The snow packs in those grooves and then uses that as an anchor point to spread across the top of the lug. 2 grooves would give two anchor points and maybe more complete coverage of the lug with snow and that is a good thing. Post pictures! :thumbsup:

 

[nuffer460]

Very cool!! If I changed any thing. It would be to make the cuts closer to the outside lugs. I have both Ag tires and Turf tires. The turf tires are twice as good pushing snow than the Ag tires. Maybe, have to do a little surgery to the rear ag tires.:laughing:

 

[gladehound]

It's so embarasing to have these big lugged tires and to sit and spin on a little bit of packed snow that a Honda accord with snow tires would drive right up. :laughing:

A true snow tire has a tremendous number of grooves and sipes! (see pic) So I didn't think making just one groove per lug would make such a noticable difference in traction, but thinking of it another way... no difference bigger than the difference from 0 to 1 :laughing:

With that one groove my tires hold snow over about 50% of the lugs surface area. So does that mean that I've realized 50% of the available traction gain from siping? I figure once you get to 100% snow coverage on the lug, adding more grooves or sipes wont help.

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Interesting...I've never heard of cutting tires before...

 

[teg]

...Siping on the other hand should not increase the wear rate so long as it's done in a way that the lugs don't chunk off since contact pressure is not changed...

What "tool" would you have used to do Siping? ...just cutting the tire with a regular knife/blade? A lot cheaper than the the Ideal Heated Knife.... Interesting the story about Siping on wiki...

On a side note, I so loved spinning the wheels in the snow (when I knew I was going to get stuck!) I would like to get more traction without going to the expense of chains (poor clearance in the wheel / fender area). Besides, I'm just a tight wad.

 

[gladehound]

You can use the Ideal heated knife to sipe also. Just take whatever blade you get and turn it upside down. You'll have two prongs sticking out and will make two sipes at a time.

Alternatively, if you have a torpedo heater and can get the tire real hot it might be reasonable to use utility knife instead. Obviously the heated knife will be faster because the blade is heated.

 

[Diamondpilot]

Very nice job. This may be the saving grace for the guys down the roads 35 HP JD with R4'. It stinks in the snow. I end up doing his plowing. I will forward this to him. He buys the tool and I will do the work.

Thanks

Chris

 

[Johno Geo]

I have R-4 on my NH 4060.
With 4wd , the traction you get, is what you get (chains not withstanding)
You always run out of traction before you run out of power, even on dry earth.
I am not a tire expert, but at the cost of new tires, no way would I cut the tires..... only my opinion.
I understand the "More bitting edges" theory, but you also weaken the tire and apply force to a smaller area, which means more stress..(FORCE/UNIT AREA)and more Strain (deformation/unit area).. none of which can be good for rubber....
Good luck...

 

[gladehound]

I am not a tire expert, but at the cost of new tires, no way would I cut the tires..... only my opinion.

I am not a tire expert either, but at the cost of new tires, no way would I go out and buy another set to get better performance when I can just cut the ones I have

To each his own! Yes, any cutting you do will weaken the lug. But how much stronger is the lug than it needs to be to start with??? In the rears, I believe the answer is a lot!

Compare the force that each lug in the rear handles compared to those in the front (with 4WD and a loader). Typically the front is loaded as heavy as the rear if not more so and it has tiny tires with tiny lugs. And while the front's wear out much faster than the rears, I spin them all the time on all sorts of surfaces and have never chunked off a lug in the front! The width to height ratio of the lugs in for the fronts is closer to 1 to 1. So grooving to maintain a 2 to 1 tread block height to width ratio in the rears is still very conservative. Again, just my opinion. And you can bet that when I eventually get new rear tires, the first thing I will do is cut them to my liking! :thumbsup: