HiTec Retreading Green Diamond tires are indeed retreads. Between $50 & $100 each for common street sizes shipped to your door. I have a set of 245/75R-16s on my TravelAll that I bought last Summer but have yet to try them on snow-covered roads since I was working on the truck till last month. So I don't know how they handle in snow yet.
In that size, the tires came to me with an old-style snow tread design with lots of criss-crossing bars. (can you say 1970s?) Good design for road snow (lotsa edges) but I was disappointed since their ads and website show more agressive tread designs. HiTec applied the tread to a 10-ply Goodyear Wrangler, no doubt the 10-ply to handle the strength expectations of a retread on a used carcass. The specks of traction-aiding Green Diamond compound are visible in the tread. Looks like small bits/chunks of green kevlar embedded thru the tread depth. Looks like more Green Diamond bits will be there as the tread wears down. Looks cool.
The tires sat outside all last winter @50psi mounted on said TravelAll with little movement and each tire has since let loose a few 1 or 2 inch long slip cracks where the retread meets the carcass. Just slight separation on the edges. It doesn't
look like the tread is ready to separate, but I haven't driven the truck yet at highway speeds for a long distance to find out the hard way. Still have a few issues with the truck.
I'm not sure if the separation occured due to the sitting. You know, sitting tires wear worse than daily or weekly driven tires since the carbon black moves outward when the tire is driven and thereby keeps the tire conditioned. Even HiTec insists one must keep their retreads inflated properly to prevent overheating that occurs when low-pressured tires are driven at highspeed. I did, but let the tires sit on the parked truck thru a Montana Winter.
Lessons (IMHO):
1. Make sure you know what tread design HiTec intends to send you.
2. Keep the tires properly inflated (at or near the max for high-speed travel).
3. Once tires are mounted, drive truck on an a regular basis to keep them in shape.
P.S. When I get the truck highway worthy, I hope to drive down to HiTec to show them the slight tread separation at the edges to see what they say. (Gotta go near there anyway).
HTH
