Went snow wheelin last night with the club. We all aired down to 14 psi. Let the pictures do the talking! www.uxoc.com/photos

Also, found this well written, well respected article. Read away: http://www.rockcrawler.com/features/baldwin/may98/

Im no expert, but I was under the impression that airing down in snow was meant for actually "floating" on top of it. It makes your footprint enormous and you dont even break through the surface. I have seen pictures of full size lifted trucks floating on 3' of snow.

No, no way, you simply can't get a vehicle as heavy as the Xterra to not compact the snow on the sort of tires we can fit. Sure you might, might be able to do it if you were running some big, wide 40" tires, but it ain't gonna happen on an Xterra.

Yeah, I tried searching google (unsuccessfully) to find out what the maximum PSI "average" snow will support before you can no longer float on it. For example, Mattracks boasts 1.5 to 2.8psi. That's not much. My guess is that even with nearly flat 32" tires you're still gonna sink in quite a bit unless the snow is very dense (high ice/water content). If you figure about 1000 pounds of weight over each tire and a low-pressure tire's footprint is 11"w x 12"L that's still over 7psi.

I think that everyone has the right to believe what they want as far as what air pressure they want to run in the snow,but from my experiences
I'll run the lower tire pressure....
I say to anyone go out and do some experimenting for yourself.Just make sure you have other people with you when you do..

Duh......

I forgot to put the obvious answer:

Chains (preferably big ones) help lots, too.

And make sure they are on all 4 wheels.

...or if you only have one pair of chains, put them on the BACK. The rear end is much stronger and will handle the abuse much easier than the front. Plus, there's typically more fender clearance for the back wheels.

You would chain the front??? Most people have clearence issues as it is.. chains will make is very expensive to turn the wheel..

I run 30" BFG AT's in the winter. And chain up when I feel like it. V-bar chains fit front and back

the clearences may be different from the frontier to the xterra.. i run 31's on a 2k without new front fenders, i doubt i can run front chains..

You can't run chains up front on 31's. That's why I have 30's :rolleyes:

It all depends on the chains.

I guess offroadx must be wheeling in sub saharan africa with the discos. The narrow tire philosophy tries to get below what's wet and mushy on top to what's hard beneath it. Never air up, always air down in snow. And i think the search whore has been silenced.