I ordered some Vitour 200TW tires and the shipper will not send them until there is no chance of them getting below freezing during shipping. I've heard for years that you're not supposed to let your R-Comps or super grippy tires freeze but I don't know why. Anybody have first hand experience with tires going bad after freezing? Does the performance drop off or what?
I've seen some rally tires crack and disintegrate upon reheating after getting too far below freezing- I've also had RT615Ks happily continue doing their thing after being 20F with no issues. I'm sure it varies a lot by tire.
I have had several different 200tw tires with severe sidewall cracking after being stored in my Pennsylvania garage. Lost about 12 tires we had for Lemons racing. They all just cracked like they were 30 year old rubber.
They're made in China. It seems pretty likely they've already seen freezing temperatures sometime between when they left the factory and arrived at the place you're ordering them from.
The real problem is usually flexing while cold. So just sitting there it doesn't do a ton. Flex, for example, throwing it off a loading dock in transport, it can crack the rubber. You might not know until the tire start chunking on track. Ive had some suspected cold damage before, but its usually hard to prove.
The tires I had damaged were mounted on wheels, but just sitting there in bags. Not even on a car.
This is why I store my summer tires in a corner of the den in freezing months.
In an email I received from Continental in reply to my questions they said not to drive on them below 40 degrees F and don't store them below freezing. And this was for the Extreme Contact Sports, a 340 tw tire. 200tw are even more vulnerable I reckon.
I just stack them, put a round board on top plus a table cloth. Instant table.
It's called the Glass Transition Point, and it varies depending on the compound of the tire.
And while the GTP of rubber is way below 32 degrees, there are a whole host of other components of Super 200's that move that point much higher.
I have personally had a tire crack (Toyo R1R) driving to an event in sub freezing weather (it warmed up later in the day).
Will the tire suffer permanent damage being shipped below freezing? Answer is somewhere between maybe and probably. Why chance it?
I used Yoko A048 on my Elise, for two winters in Chicago and St Louis. If you are careful, it was perfectly fine for me.
If I lived there fulltime, I would get some Blizzaks.
stuart in mn said:They're made in China. It seems pretty likely they've already seen freezing temperatures sometime between when they left the factory and arrived at the place you're ordering them from.
Why? They have heated/insulated containers and while I'm sure they cost more than a normal one, that's the sort of thing a responsible company will pay for if they're shipping $100K worth of products that can be damaged by freezing.
jharry3 said:This is why I store my summer tires in a corner of the den in freezing months.
In an email I received from Continental in reply to my questions they said not to drive on them below 40 degrees F and don't store them below freezing. And this was for the Extreme Contact Sports, a 340 tw tire. 200tw are even more vulnerable I reckon.
Hell, I've driven on ECS when it was 20F out and they lived. The tires were still grippy, too, which surprised me. I've had lesser tires "glass over" at 50F and that is friggin' spooky.
I just got mine out of storage. And by storage I mean my classroom at school.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:stuart in mn said:They're made in China. It seems pretty likely they've already seen freezing temperatures sometime between when they left the factory and arrived at the place you're ordering them from.
Why? They have heated/insulated containers and while I'm sure they cost more than a normal one, that's the sort of thing a responsible company will pay for if they're shipping $100K worth of products that can be damaged by freezing.
From my experience the former doesn't necessarily (or even likely) follow from the latter, IMHO.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:stuart in mn said:They're made in China. It seems pretty likely they've already seen freezing temperatures sometime between when they left the factory and arrived at the place you're ordering them from.
Why? They have heated/insulated containers and while I'm sure they cost more than a normal one, that's the sort of thing a responsible company will pay for if they're shipping $100K worth of products that can be damaged by freezing.
It may be so but I would be surprised if tires were sent across the ocean in heated containers. Then, there's transport once they get to the US, to a distribution center, then to a tire company, and then finally to the end customer.
In my experience, even with RComps, nothing. That includes also a set of Star Specs I was forced to drive in the slush because the manager at my contract job basically said "I know we are supposed to get some wintry weather overnight and I don't care. Figure out a way to be here or find a new job."
It was difficult to not keep a bottle of Jameson in the glove box working there.
To Andy Hollis's point, the chemical composition of 'sticky' tires may not respond well to low temperatures. It's kinda like leaving water in your engine block during the winter...it might be fine some of the time and you get away with it, but do you really want to find out the wrong way when the tire is up to temp and put under load having previously been frozen??? Plenty of people get frostbite and it thaws out just fine, but there are also plenty of folks that are also missing a few digits as a result of it. Some stuff just doesn't like being frozen, which is why you typically don't find lettuce in the frozen section of the food store. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The tire manufacturers do not benefit from giving you PITA recommendations for storage, but their engineers probably know a bit more about the 'round and black thingies' than the average punter.
My daughter's boyfriend had a PS4S blowout in Tahoe after it was 15F overnight. I don't think he even made it 10 miles from the cabin. That's a 340TW tire. Maybe shipping them would be fine but after seeing what happened to him I'd error on the side of caution.
JBinMD said:From my experience the former doesn't necessarily (or even likely) follow from the latter, IMHO.
You don't think Bridgestone or Michelin are responsible companies?
How about this? They dont want to get hit with a $100M wrongful death lawsuit after someone buys a brand new set of tires and dies when they explode because they were shipped at -20F? If the tire manufacturer knows about the hazard (and they do, because they warn you about it) and then proceeds to ignore it themselves, that's criminal willful negligence.
That's a good supplier, freezing can cause the tire compound to crack especially if the tire is flexed.
Note that it seems that car dealerships DGAF about this even though they've suffered recalls from the consequences:
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/would-you-run-these-tires-theyre-brand-new/276330/page1/
Counterpoint: I had some Toyo R888 100tw tires on my Impala for a summer and winter. I had a buddy who was married to a Toyo Exec, and they commonly liquidated their "5000-mile money back guarantee" rubbers for $50 so I thought I'd try them.
They absolutely sucked in the winter for obvious reasons, but they returned to being super sticky in the spring. I recall one night with some ice, I had to get towed six feet by AAA. I was parallel parked and the street froze. I couldn't budge an inch. Once AAA pulled me a few feet out into the salted part of the street, I was able to make it home.
Maybe I just got lucky? I'm sure they're all different in how they react to temps, but those Toyos saw -20F on several occasions.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I've also seen gravel rally tires shatter on a car being trailered. Wish I still had the pics, there was shards of sidewall rubber and intact casing cords.
Meanwhile, I'd also driven in the winter on my Michelin ZE80 tires. They sucked but they didn't break.
I wonder if heat cycles play a role. Could well cycled tires be okay below freezing, but fresh "partially cured" tires suffer failure?
My experience is this. Our Lemons car gets stored in sub freezing temps every year, current tires are 4 years old. They are stored on the car on dollys some hold air some don't. We just air them up and go racing, no issues in the last 12 years covering all brands of 200TW tires.
We have raced in freezing temps and snow a few times on 200TWs. The leftover tires from the freezing race work just fine at the following warm weather race. We've had much more trouble with overheated tires than overcooled. We pay tirerack to heat cycle our tires before we get them.
My Nankang CRS have been through two winters sitting in an unheated garage that went well below freezing and don't seem to have suffered any degradation but I am going to play it safe with the Vitours and keep them someplace warm for next winter. I wonder what the electricity bill would be to keep tires in heated blankets set at the minimum temp?
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