The other summer I borrowed a tool from my neighbor and siped the tires for my Jeep plowtruck. The other day I learned that all the work I put into siping the old tires was worth it. My elderly cousin came to visit, and when he left to go home he ran off the road. The road looks wider than it actually is because the way the grader operator plowed with the wing on his machine the snowbank is about three feet past the edge of the road in the ditch. Even tho' my cousin's pickup is four wheel drive, with the tires on one side on ice and the other side in about a foot of snow he couldn't back out of the ditch. I fired up my Jeep, and we hooked a chain between the vehicles. The Jeep pulled his truck out of the ditch with no wheel spin even tho' the road was basically a sheet of ice.
As you can see in the picture below the tires don't have a lot of tread left. They are basically down to the wear bars.
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| One of the tires that I siped. Doesn't have much tread left. |
Today I was wondering if I could sipe my footwear after I fell on my ass getting out my truck. It was the second time I fell on ice this winter. Last winter I fell on some ice and my knee was fucked up for most of the year, it is now finally back to normal.
When I googled siping, I discovered that siping is named for John Sipes; he cut small slits in the bottom of his rubber foorwear to improve traction on wet surfaces. Some say he worked in a slaughterhouse with wet floors and another story said he worked on a ship with wet decks.
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| Tire siping tool. |
