Winter Tires

[primetime]

Originally Posted by thenorm

my first questions is if you spend most your time in richmond, or if you will be travelling at all to whistler, the interior or even the local ski hills.

the other question is regarding your current tires. If you have high perf summer tires on, then you will need another set for winter. If you plan on skiing or travelling, then u need snow tires

I usually head up to Cypress every other week last year, depending on my schedule at work. I'm planning to go up this season just as much, that's the reason why I'm looking at getting winter tires. (Better to be safe, so I can snowboard more)

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[Joey D]

I use my tire in a typical Michigan winter, snow falls of about 1-3" at a time with temps below 40 from November through the end of March. Occasionally we get a 6-8" snow fall or even the 10-12".

1. I use Michelin Alpin PA3's because I do mostly freeway driving and hate the feel of non-performance snow tires at 75mph. Really just about any winter tire will work better than all-seasons in the snow though. I had Hankook Winter i-Pike's on my MINI Cooper and they were fantastic and I even use a set on my rallycross prepped Dodge Neon too. Blizzaks are always highly rated too.
   
2. I use MOMO Winter 2's for my rims because I went with 17's and the tire shop had a hard time tracking down 17" steelies for me. If you could find someone selling Volvo rims on Craigslist you'd be able to get a nice looking set of rims for your car without breaking the bank.
   
3. I get about 2-3mpg better mileage with my winter tires vs. my summer tires. When I had my OEM rims and tires though I didn't see any noticeable difference
   
4. I'd just go ahead and do it now. If you are seriously considering getting winter tires you might as well get them this season instead of chancing it with the all-seasons.
   
5. Tire shop does it, but it's free for them to swap them over. If I had to pay I'd just do it myself.

[Focus YBTC]

Originally Posted by JonathanGennick

My experience is almost entirely with Blizzaks. They perform well, especially when new. They wear fast. They tend not to track as nicely on pavement as all-season tires do, but that's to be expected from the chunky tread design. Blizzaks have a layer of especially sticky rubber that wears away when the tires are about half used up. At that point, you must decide whether to endure another season without that layer, or to replace the tires earlier than you would otherwise do. Good tires though. I am running a set this winter on my van.



I've been having my tires swapped on both vehicles for years. This winter though, I plan to buy a second set of rims for my Focus. I'll go steel because I need to hold down costs. I might even minus-size, also to hold costs: My SE has 16" wheels. I might go with the 15" size that is stock on the Focus S model. Doing so saves enough on the tires to almost pay for the steel rims.



The safety benefit from snow tires is so great for me that mileage does not even begin to factor into the equation. Higher rolling resistance though. I would expect lower mileage.



After years of mistakenly believing that all-seasons really were for all seasons, I bought a set of snows. Huge, freakin', amazing, life-changing difference. All I can say here is that I wish I had known years earlier how much better they made winter driving.



Shop. And yes, they balance.



Buy some. I'm a believer. I recommend them. If you don't get much actual snow, there is still benefit from the rubber compound. But you can look at a tread more suitable to just cold pavement--the Nokian Hakka R, for example.



I live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just a few blocks uphill from Lake Superior. I'm in one of two notable snow belts in this region. Winter often begins with several weeks of frequent, lake-effect snow. Plowing is decent, but roads are still often covered with a layer of hard-packed snow. It just depends upon the weather of the moment, but it's not unusual for me to go for days, even a week or more, without seeing much in the way of pavement. Winter tires were a revelation to me when I first tried them after moving up here, and I have run them every winter since that first one.

Sounds like you get less snow, and more in the way of just cold and rain.

Jonathan, I used to live in the UP in the sticks in Houghton County and we would get massive lake effect snows like you probably do in Munising. One notable year I was there, we accumulated 391 inches of snowfall. A few years ago my daughter started attending NMU in Marquette. When I would visit in the winter it seemed like the road crews were a bit slow in clearing the roads (no doubt due to recession budget cuts) and you would get packed down snow that would turn to ice. Winter tires are a must up there I think. I cannot wait for it to snow down here in SE MI to try the new Blizzak WS-70s on my Focus which are surprisingly civilized on dry and rainy roads. I get a bit more road noise with them than my stock 18" tires but not much. At one time, a few cars back, I had Green Diamond winter tires. These tires use silicium carbide particles embedded in the tread for traction. They were covered up when new but as they wore down the carbide particles were exposed to provide traction. They worked very well on ice and snow.

[thenorm]

Originally Posted by primetime

I usually head up to Cypress every other week last year, depending on my schedule at work. I'm planning to go up this season just as much, that's the reason why I'm looking at getting winter tires. (Better to be safe, so I can snowboard more)

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definately get snow tires. 15" steel wheels and tires from tire rack, shipped to a parcel depot point roberts would be quite cost effective, and would last you probably 4 winters.

a quick search shows there are quite a few used sets on craiglist too
http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/se...inAsk=&maxAsk= which would be a good option too.

[primetime]

I saw a posting on Craigslist for used Lincoln LS wheels. The bolt pattern matches, I'm just worried about the offset of 60mm.

The offset I found for the Focus is about 55mm. And even the people that posted it aren't sure. Would it be ok to mount wheels with a higher offset?

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[thenorm]

short answer, yes.

long answer:
you can always use spacers on a wheel with too high offset. a 5mm spacer will bring you exactly back to 55mm total offset
and depending on the width of tire (and width) of wheel, u likely wont have to do anything to make it fit.

[primetime]

Thanks for all the help, the norm!

I'm happy to report that I was able to secure a set of 16" steelies with 2 season old winter tires from Craigslist. The set was from an old Volvo that the guy sold and luckily for me, the tires didn't fit the mini van that he replaced the Volvo with.

$360! I had to get them rebalanced, but they work great. About 20% wear on the tires so they should last me a season or two.

Thanks again to all the people that helped me out.

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[JayDeZ]

2 seasons with snow tires and only 20% wear? Either that guy didn't drive very much or they are way past 20%. A good set of snow tires will last you about 4 seasons of average driving until they become no better than all season tires.

[rambleon84]

Originally Posted by JayDeZ

2 seasons with snow tires and only 20% wear? Either that guy didn't drive very much or they are way past 20%. A good set of snow tires will last you about 4 seasons of average driving until they become no better than all season tires.

I agree, some people dont realize that most snow tires are done once they get to 6/32 and most have wear indicators built in to show you. Once past that and they lose their edge in cutting through and gripping on snow/ice.

http://blog.tirerack.com/blog/colint...inter-traction
http://www.tirerack.com/winter/tech/...sp?techid=116&