Snow tires thread
 

Ok since al lot of you have been posting and asking questions about what are the best snow tires or all season tires for the ralliart, I though we should make a dedicated thread about this.. I am moving soon to a state that gets snow as well and I wanna be safe..


*Please post below what YOU think from experience are the best snow/all season tires.

Please post a name brand/size/price/link where bought ( if Possible )

I will combine all the posts into one when we get few of them.

i dont really think snow tires are car specific but I can tell you of the two different versions i have run what I think:

1) Firestone Winterforce tires - cheap snow tires from tire rack - ride quality sucks, noise - sucks, handling sucks - snow traction - INSANE. I would get teased because these tires look like the knobbies that come on atv's. They are incredible snow tires. A true god like snow experience is quite easy. But they have soft sidewalls so they roll, there is delay in transitions, and well have you ever driven an atv on the street ? its just like that. Also they dont where, with what looks like 1/2 depth (even on the sidewalls!) these tires showed very little wear in 3 seasons.

2) Blizzak lm25's. I bought mine with a season on them but still: handling - awesome, noise - ok, snow traction fair, you just cant beat the winterforce knobbies.

Can't comment on what I think the best snow tires are, but I can comment on the Michelin X-Ice Xi2's I'm using now:

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....dClar=Ralliart

Dry (no snow) handling: I wouldn't rate them as high as the reviewers on TireRack. They are a very soft compound with plenty of flex and it makes the steering response kind of spongy. The ride quality is much softer and quieter than the stock Advans.

Light (2-3" snow) handling: So far so good - traction is not a problem. I have to deliberately step on the throttle or swing the back end around to break the tires loose. I've only felt ABS kick in under hard braking.

Heavy (4"+ snow) handling: coming soon.

Ice handling: coming soon.

I'm loving the hankook ipikes. I got them in 225/45/17 for $103 ea from discount tire. I grabbed a pair of their 17x8 MB weapon gunmetal aluminum wheels too for $135 ea since my only other wheels are 17x9. I didn't feel like dealing with anything that wide for winter and now I don't have to re-mount and balance twice a year.

Got them mounted and balanced prior to shipping. They came with lugs, gorilla locking nuts, and hub centric spacers all included. Picked them up, bolted them on, drove by the local rip off tire store and waved.

They definitely feel loose at high speed. Like the previous poster was saying. If you're going 60 and move the wheel a little back and forth you can feel the sidewall swim a little. That's just the nature of the beast with a real winter tire from what I hear. You can't really have pinpoint handling at 100mph if you want snow and ice traction.

Their performance on the slippery stuff is top notch though. I'm looking forward to a challenge. The few inches of snow we've got so far and the icy roads haven't even been a match for them yet. One thing that really did surprise me is how good the braking is on pure ice compared to other tires I've driven.

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...4/IMG_9188.jpg