Hankook I*Pike are a great tire my family runs them on their trucks and I'm going to buy myself some on the weekend. I'd recommend a thinner tire for winter, I've heard the stock width tire don't have great control. My cousin runs 245 70 R17s and they work great in winter.

 

Interesting, does anyone can explain why 245 will work better than 265 in the winter?

 

245 is not as wide as a 265 giving you more lbs per square inch resulting in better traction

 

Nice suggestions so far! I just grabbed a set of General Grabber AT2's for winter, 265/70/17 on a Ram 1500.

Heard some good things about the Hankook ATM's as well though.

 

OE tires have load range of 113, can I go down from this number? Let's say 108 for the winter tires? I'm not going to tow anything during the winter :-). Does it require an extra work to put 245 tires instead of 265? Thx.

 

No, it won't be any extra "work" persay. My truck had 245's on it before

 

You know, that's something I've often wondered about regarding going to a thinner tire for snow. Not that I'm disputing it, cause I've always heard it too, and I grew up in upstate NY where EVERYBODY used to run a "winter tire" at least those with trucks.

A snowmobile gets winter traction because of all the tread that's put in contact with snow and ice. They sell track setups for ATVs for winter use and big rig trucks boast about having much better traction in winter because of all the combined square inches of tire being put in contact with the surface.

But "they" recommend going to a thinner tire on a pickup (or SUV or passenger car for that matter). I know the theory here is to get a couple more lbs/sq. inch on the tread, but when I was ice fishing during the winters of my younger days, it seemed the guys running soccer mom treads were outperforming all the dudes with A/T and M/T treads because they had more tread making contact. They'd grip much better than anyone else short of those who run studded tires on the ice.

I always ran a thicker all-terrain tread myself and put about 200# of sand in the bed, over the rear axle and never had a problem...

 

I just finished reading of all threads related to winter tires so I'd like to summarize. It looks like everybody agree that having winter tire is really cool however only 1 person actually uses winter tires - Hankook I*Pike. All others are actually use different types of all seasons. Here is the list of suggested ATs for winter driving:
- Nitto Terra Grappler
- Cooper ATZ
- Firestone A/T
- Toyo Open Country A/T
Looks like all of them performs pretty well during the winter.
But I live in Ontario, in snow belt. I'm driving 100km each day on country side roads which are "plowed" but usually have packed snow. So maybe Ontarians will use winter tires anyway but they are ashame to tell about this? :-)

 

And forgot Goodyear DuraTrac...Goodyear? Are you sure about it?

 

No movement on this thread...
So I decided to go with pure winter tires and just ordered Bridgestone Blizzak DM-V1 265/70R17 from 1010tires.com (Canadian site so price + shipping was the lowest among all other sites and local dealers). I will share my experience next spring :-)