I'm thinking about siping my outlaws. Siping is cutting grooves into the existing tread so it has more flex. This flex would let the tire get more traction on ice and snow. In mud and rocks it should perform just as well or better. From what I have read in 4x4 truck magazines siping works very well and has no ill effects on the life of the tread. So has anyone tried siping their tires on they truck or atv? Oh and I also might be siping my BFG Mud Terrains too, I hear it helps them alot!

Let me know what you you guys think and how I should sip them.

 

I have never seen it done on ATV tires but I know the talked about it on the Radial outlaws. I always have the tires on my cars and trucks siped. Makes a huge difference on ice, and I think the tread lasts longer too. On my truck I only have the center areas up to about a inch and a half from the outide edges done. That is to help prevent the tread from chunking off little pieces in the rocky areas off road. The tires do grab better on rocks too. Let us know how it works on your quad I might have to try it.

 

Brent... siping the tires will help greatly for Ice, & slippery rocks, etc. but most of the truck tires that are getting siped, have a much harder rubber compound than most ATV tires... & Outlaws have one of the softer rubber compounds of the ATV tires... I would think that siping a tire like the Outlaws could seriously effect tread life, & easily chunk off tread, if used in too extreme of terrain...

Do you trail ride your Outlaws, or better yet, what are you hoping to gain by siping them... the mud performance should be no better or worse... I would think the best type of terrain to warrent siping tires would be mossy, slippery logs, slippery ( rounded ) creek rocks, extreme rock crawling, etc... but in these type of terrains, the Outlaw would be a long way from my 1st choice for a tire to use anyway...

IMO, if you wanted to sipe a tire, you'd be better served to use a hard ruber compound tire, like the Mudrunners, or 598's

 

After a winter on the outlaws on my P650 I find they love to skate. They also have very little contact to the ground so on ice they like to spin alot. I think sipping them would help the skating issue on snow and gravel. I do trail ride alot of my outlaws, I also drive through alot of rivers, swamp and normal mud. I do have some good chunks already taken out from hidden debris. My left rear tire must of caught a nail or very sharp big rock because the inside tread on the sidewall is chewed up alot, that happend last summer I think, or 2 summers ago.

I think your right, they might be to soft for siping. Hmmmm, well off to work.

 

I'm not sure what siping is exactly but it sound similar to grooving. I grooved a set of Blackwaters I had on the rear of my Warrior, they worked well and wore what I would consider typical. They had very little side bite and were stiff unless aired way down. Then they would allow the rim to spin in the tire (1 wheel drive quads don't go very well). I bought one of those hand tire groovers and cut 2 1/2" wide grooves evenly spaced about 3/4 of the way down each lug. It made a world of difference in the way they performed all around.

 

EASTER... siping is thin tiny cuts similar to what a razor blade would do... no rubber is actually removed from the tire... the idea is that the tread edges, rather than the tread blocks is what bites on slippery surfaces...

 

FYI: I had my truck tires siped about 2 years ago and noticed no traction improvement on wet, slippery paved roads. I also noticed no extension of the life of those tires. I feel like it was a waste of money for my purposes (street only). I never used them to do any serious offroading, so I have no idea how siping would have affected offroading performance.

One thing to think about is how much surface area that a typical truck tire gets on a paved road surface as compared to how little surface area a typical ATV mud tire gets on a hard surface like ice or rocks (assuming the tires are aired up normally and not deflated). That being said, it seems to me that siping atv mud tires would not be as beneficial as it might be for truck tires...but that is just my uneducated guess.

Happy trails...[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

How deep would one have to make the cuts? On the outlaws the treads are very deep and seem to be strong. I really don't know how deep to cut to make it worth while. How deep do you cut in a truck tire?

 

I personally wouldn't go over 1/4" or a few mm's ... when you are siping a passenger vehical, the bulk of the tread contacts the road surface... on a tall lug tire like the Outlaw, only the lugs tips contact the surface... this will greatly accelerate the wear & chunking, over a tread pattern that fully touches the surface...