Tires Snow handling: Turf Tires (R3) vs. Ag Tires (R1/R4)

[Brotherdan]

When I was ordering mine, I called over to a dealer near kingwood, wv. They get a lot of snow. They recommended r4. I use them year round.

Your area gets more than mine, but last winter mine went through that 30" storm without any slippage problem at all.

 

[Jeff F.]

Turf tires with a paved driveway on my BX2660 with a box blade for weight. I never had an issue until I bottomed out in the ditch. They worked so well I have them on my B3200. I do not see a need for chains whatsoever in my situation.

I really think you should try it one winter and make your decision after that.

 

[SDT]

Agreed, Fallon.

Turf tires are better in snow than either R-1s or R-4s, though none are designed for snow and any serious snow work will require chains.

Chains work better on turf tires than on R-1s unless you have the expensive so-called Duo-Grip type chains because the ladder chains will work themselves down between the cleats on the R-1s, reducing effectiveness. Such issues are reduced somewhat when using ladder type chains on R-4s and eliminated on turf type tires.

SDT

 

[radioman]

i am laughing at those who say turfs is worthless in the snow. the op want to use a snowblower so he will ALWAYS be on a cleared path so turfs will be just fine unless he has a gravely hilly driveway. if it all blacktop - turfs is the best imho. i leave my garage on grass with my BX with plow mounted and push my way to the blacktop. from there i am just fine. if my grass is not frozen yet, i raise the plow few inches if i am in deep snow and leave a layer of snow then back drag to pack it down otherwise i just back drag on the grass to the blacktop to have a layer of snow on grass so it will refreeze into ice. dont need chains there. FYI - my rears are loaded and i did try a year the first year i had tractor. i really liked the feel of loaded turfs in the snow.

 

[Egon]

Turf tires, add studs=better, add chains=best,, chains on all four wheels will be just awesome and really help steering.

 

[art]

The biggest key here is if you are removing snow with the front snowblower you are not driving through deep snow!!! On paved driveways I have found the turfs to give the best traction if you are scraping to pavement. We have customers that have also found that the turf tire without chains has the most amount of traction. Turf tires give you the most contact area on ice!

 

[Wilburdog]

Thanks - did you have a front-mount snow blower?

I have no problem using my bx25d with tuff tires (no chains) & a front mounted snow blower. I either a box blade or blade is mounted on 3PH.

Clear snow on gravel driveway with some slope. Combination works well for me. I have no need for tire chains.

Only thing I need to be careful of is not to get the small front tires in too deep of snow but regularly blow 6+ inches of snow.

 

[RaydaKub]

BX2230, FEL, loaded rears, turfs, 5 foot blade on rear, paved driveway.
I clear more snow than anybody in the neighborhood except the neighbor with a 3/4 ton Suburban and 8 footer.
I've gotten myself stuck in the ditch a few times when I slid off, but have always gotten myself out. I have had to turn the blade totally vertical once so there was no drag at all, but I got out. I've also pushed a 14" wet snow so hard I lifted the front wheels off the ground and then squawked the rear tires. On my 5 foot rear blade, I added a 6 foot wide 1 foot high piece of horse mat to it, got Mark Hodges Stabilworks so I could swing the blade over to one side and catch the spill from the FEL and push it all to one side.

You'll be fine with some rear weight.

 

[JWR]

As usual -- more info on here than you can use. So I will add even more.

1) If you live where the snow removal is to be done (not letting it build up for long periods) you will probably be OK with turf tires. I think your next step of traction is to add chains on the front only. That gives you ability to keep it headed where you want and will probably be the worst-case needed in your area. May only have to put on the chains in rare cases.
2) With the objective of minimizing tire changes, chain mounting and time lost fooling with the machine you may like what are often called "bar tread." These are neither turf nor Ag R1 nor industrial tires. Unless your are very hyper about your lawn they really do not hurt the turf but they give way better traction in sand or snow. Here is a picture of those on a BX2200.View attachment 523120

3) Tires and wheels are expensive so surely you will want to try just using the turf tires and add front chains if and when you need them at minimal cost.
4) Comment from experience:
a) If you find yourself in deep or packed snow turf tires are nearly worthless. The tiniest bit of spinning produces ice under the tires and you are hung with 4WD being very little help. Living at the removal location you can probably just avoid letting the snow get either packed or built up that deep.
b) If your lawn tolerates them, R1 Ag tires are SO MUCH better in snow -- night and day. The lugs give you at least some traction even when you have packed snow or deep snow. The bar tread gives much better traction but not quite as much as Ag tires. To me the bar tread is a great compromise.
5) About that blower: A key thing is to keep your bottom scraping "cutting" edge underneath the rotating parts angled very slightly upward. If it is pointed down the thing will dig in, pull up gravel, damage blacktop, etc. Just a slight upward angle does wonders for routine ease of operation. With a FM blower that means the loader is off so a rear blade is nice, allowing you to do something headed both directions. You may be able to add "hard plastic" to your blower skids and avoid blacktop damage. There are high tech names for the hard plastic but many welding shops keep some of it around.
See how your first season goes and decide from there. Good luck!

 

[BigBoyToys]

R3 turfs on pavement and gravel work just fine up here using a bucket. Should be a non-issue with a snowblower up front! Lots of snow up here and have never been stuck!



If you're using a bucket, "skids" make a big difference on gravel preventing the bucket from digging in. Could be made to work with a snowblower as well.

 

[varmint]

I've used turfs and R-4s, both with buckets and rear blades and more recently a front snow blade. I have found turfs work fine (L3400 tractor- not too heavy or too light) unless you have ice below the snow, and then chains would be required with any tire, unless you had studded tires. I use rear chains, but I have fronts, also, which aid in maintaining the desired direction, since heavy snow and a large blade tend to push the tractor off away from the angled blade, unless you have a massive machine. Some years I am lazy, and don't even bother with the chains. In my larger "avatar" photo below, because the snow was pretty deep, I had the rear chains on.

 

[FatTire]

When people in these forums say that you need ballast and chains to work in snow it makes me wonder what kind of conditions they have to warrant making those statements. I had chains for my 955. I never used them.

.

Situation like this, plowing 14" of stiffened snow. This gate is about 4 feet above the level of the road, and sits back maybe 20 or 25 feet from the road. So its not particularly steep, but still working against gravity to get up through the gate. Without chains I could blow it, or I could bucket it out of there (which would take forever), but for plowing "tire chains required".

 

[amhicks21]

Ive plowed commercially for quite a while and have had the chance to use tractors with both turf and r4's and skid steers with r4 and all terrain truck tires and there is no comparison. turf's win hands down. ive never used chains on any machine because its not acceptable in my area for commercial work. slick ice sucks either way and extra weight is always helpful. if you really want to get fancy you can get the center lugs siped and run the tire pressure at the max recommended.

 

[ruffdog]

Just like with truck tires, big fat lugs are not good on ice. Ice tires have lots of grooves and sipes to grip the surface. There are plenty of threads talking about using a grooving tool to add grip to r4 tires. I have been using unloaded turfs for many years and have not had a issue plowing or blowing snow. Here is a picture blowing deep drifts so solid you could almost walk on them. I did not have a traction problem, just a size problem!

 

[rScotty]

I am gearing up for winter, and would like to use my BX2230 for snow handling (FM snow blower.) Does anyone have a recommendation on tires?

I currently have turf tires (R3) installed - but I notice alot of people posting videos of FM snow blower have flat-tread R4 tires.

Does anyone have experience with Re turf tires in the snow?

Yes, I have a lot of experience (40+ years) using turf tires on 16 to 33 hp tractors. Our normal "soil" is a disintegrated granite sand in the Rocky Mountains. This is a large crystalline sand that works very well with turf tires, and poorly with anything more aggressive.

Since we have the turfs on anyway, and since they are so much better for sidehill and overturning stability we like to use them in the winter. The problem is that turfs are as poor on ice and snow as they are good on sand.

Our solution is to make up a custom set of tire chains. We use the same geometric configuration for the front and rear chains, with the front chains being about what you would normally see, but the rear cross-tire members are a little larger chain size and might have "V grabbers" or studs affixed to the links as well. This combination makes it possible to use the fronts only until winter really hits - and sometimes the front chains are handy in the summer as well. For both the front and rear chains we make up our own chains starting with the standard outer parallel circumfrential chains which we make to be positioned a little farther into the steel wheel area to allow easy installation of elastic rubber tensioners. Since we will not be abrading against this section of the chain, the outermost chain circumfrential pieces can be a size smaller and therefore more flexible than normal chain sidewalls. Use of the tensioning rubbers is very important.

The cross-chain components are the aggressive parts of the chain that does the work. For these we connect the cross chains into their "X" chain configuration circular rings as connectors which are first bent into shape and then welded or brazed. If brazed, I prefer a high % nickle composition brazing material.

I'll look around and see if I have a picture of chains built this way, and include them if I can find them.
Good luck, ask any questions... rScotty

 

[LouNY]

Every plowing/snow blower situation is different, every storm is different. A lot of people around here plowing with trucks use so called all season tires and get by most of the time lots of spinning at times. I have always used studded snows on my plow trucks, and for the last 20 years my driveway has required chains on the tractors and some times on the plow trucks. People that have never been stuck must have nice level driveways with no ditches or hills.
Try your turfs have a set of non studded 2 link spaced chains available if needed,with a front mount blower if you don't add weight to the rear it will be kind of light, chains on either end will help, if you get any ice storms or freezing rain or even a wet snow that gets packed down before you start clearing any tire is going to spin and slip.

 

[rScotty]

Every plowing/snow blower situation is different, every storm is different.

And every road surface is different, too. My comments were specific for dirt roads and drives because that is what we have here in our part of the country. Very few rural people have paved driveways here - although they are becoming popular closer to town in suburbia. Those surfaces are maintained differently, and our cleated chains would not be appropriatenon asphalt. I do some work on those asphalt & concrete surfaced drives using medium weight FEL tractors, standard industrial flat tread, 4WD, and have no need for chains.
LUCK, rScotty.

 

[George the Beagle]

I had a BX1860 and now a BX2370 both with turfs. Loaded rears. Heavy set operator. Front snowblower. Never had a problem getting stuck. Let's not forget that these tractors have 4wd. I think you'll do just fine with turfs.

 

[RichM752]

I had R4's on my L3400 for 10 yrs, loader on front/snowblower on rear, occasionally chaining up front tires.
On my new L47 with R4's, 84"plow blade on front and 74" blower on the rear I plan to do the same. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[ruffdog]

Here is info on grooving r4's for winter.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/snow-removal/193438-cutting-groving-siping-r-4-a.html