evo_soul

~~~ Preamble
After many days and weeks and yes even month of procrastination, i finally got off my @ss and decided to buy some tires and get them installed for the right price.

After looking at the marked up packages offered by Mitsubishi, I decided to look elsewhere. My efforts to work something out with them didnt go anywhere, best they could do was knock the price down 50 dollars for a 899 Blizzak deal. Thats about 1000 bucks after tax here in canada.

I looked online and really did want to order from Tire Rack the Winterforce tires which were priced just right at 63 bucks a tire. But I was terrified of UPS Duties / Brokerages charges, which leaves me feeling violated after past experiences.

~~~ THE LOCAL HUNT

I was able to work something with another car manufacturer dealer that has a close spec tire size. They were able to find me the 205 60 16 size i was looking for. The price they would normally charge for WinterForce Tires was 175 per tire. After looking over at their cost price, we were able to work out 90 dollars a tire. plus 16" steelies for another 150 plus 70 dollars for labour. I came out to a fair deal of just under 600 dollars.

~~~ The first driving

Well since procrastinated getting the tires right up until the first snow day (the day of install) I big feeling of releif came over me as I drove away. ***Looking in my rear view mirror looking at the stock tires in the back seat.

There was about 4 to 5 cm of snow on the ground fresh and in some areas still no salt from the local gov plows. The ride handling out of 10 on those conditions was about 8 out of ten. Under moderate accelerations the wheels never peeled out and caused the car to slide over to the curb as you get with the stock tires. Only under hard acceleration will you get that. Stopping power was highly effective when using the ABS.

Taking the car into a huge semi empty Walmart parking lot for some controlled hard turns, it was pretty difficult to get the car to spin out and lose control.so long as you didnt lock up the wheels moving sideways. Simply put comparing this to the stock tires, the Winterforce Firestone tire is very effective in light winter conditions. This testing was not able to include deep snow or ice conditions so i will add to this post when i get a chance to test it out.


~~~ TIRE DRAW BACKs,

After hearing from the guys in the shop who use this tire and one other under the name Viking. They found that this tire will eat it self alive in warm or hot conditions, the compound doesnt take well to early fall or late spring removal. As soon as Dec. Hits, get these on, March First get them off. if you want to get a few good winters out of them.

Second thing on this list is the road noise. Because its a tire composed of many tread segments I wasnt entirely expecting a semi quiet ride. But the noice at moderate city speeds and on highway speeds it was higher then I expected. Not to excessive levels but it is there. make no mistake, you will hear it. But I didnt detect much vibration, the tires made solid contact with the road.


~~~ END NOTE
If your adding more performance parts to your ride even turbo, dont even think about driving it in winter without proper winter tires, its very easy to get going down the road at a fast speed but when you need to stop, Your tires will make all the difference. This is exactly what they say about normal summer time driving. But in that case its your tires and your brakes are key.


I highly recommend the Winterforce tires if you can secure them for a good price. If your in the states, then you should grab them from tire rack for the cheap low price. If your in Canada, beware of the tax man lol which you should already be good at, and be ware of high UPS Levy brokrages charges. Order over the border should be well planned out. I beleive there are some Nafta rules that apply to tires that are made in canada should be able to return to canada untaxed. But i have also heard rumors that all tires made in North America maybe exempt from Duties. So if UPS is holding your tires hostage, make sure they are not charging you Duties unfairly. They can charge you brokerage fees though, as does any Mafia operation.

Enjoy and drive one friends

nj_08_gts

iTrader: (1)

Wow....great review. Thanks!

Blacksheepdj

iTrader: (88)

Great review, and after using them last Winter, I totally agree - great tires!

Karan

Man that is one grippy looking deep tread! On snow/ice anyway.

I wonder how it compares with the Blizzak WS60's which I've found to be very good on dry roads but havent tested properly on winter roads.

evo_soul

tire rack has a great viewing image of all the tires they sell, so long as the tire is made with the right compound and has a good solid pattern and deep tread, it will perform way better then the best All Seasons, and of course our Dry performance Stock GTS tire

WhiteGTS18

yeah I just got my 225/45/18 Michelin X-Ice put on the other day. I haven't gone crazy and have yet to use them on snow but the dry and wet handling is great with them and I have yet to break them loose without trying to. I would definitely recommend them and they also have a real nice look to them too. I will post back in a while after a storm and some more time on the road.

gill2k

Hello everyone, I'm a proud owner of a new 5-spd Rally Red Lancer GTS. Got it last Wednesday and decided to join the community here.

Those "all-season" tires that come with our car do indeed suck! I've spun out twice already on my fiancé's street and I was only doing 20 km/h. One of those spin outs resulted in me getting stuck in the snow (almost hit a tree too) for about an hour. Thank god for Roadside Assistance!!!

Anyway, the dealership who sold me my car has this tire in a package right now for $760 CDN (mounted, balanced, installed, plus taxes). I immediately jumped on it after this adventurous weekend and I'm getting them installed on Thursday. Glad to see this review up plus the ones on tirerack.com! Can't wait to finally tackle that darn cursed street with these on!

Also, how annoying is the TPMS sensor? Does it beep all the time or do I just hold the Info button down and it goes away?

Blacksheepdj

iTrader: (88)

When you start the car and whenever you open the door. Otherwise, you just have the little light on the dash (not the whole info screen).

Blacksheepdj

iTrader: (88)

FWIW, this kinda covers all Winter tires. The rubber compound is MADE to work around 30-degrees F and below (think 0 and below for the Celsius folks). As evo_soul said, snowtires should generally only be on your car during the freezing days.

evo_soul

So Blacksheep, how you liking those winterforces? did you at least have your "i think i am going to die, ohhh no everything is ok, i survived that one" moment yet?

These tires are beautiful great on acceleration too

saved my butt i think 3 times already

Blacksheepdj

iTrader: (88)

Honestly, they've been a huge waste. I could have gotten All-Seasons. We've barely had any snow.

Now, I'd normally consider a warm Winter a good thing, but I'm still trying to justify (to myself) all the money I spent on the Winterforce. And there's only been one or two days where there was any real snow to deal with. They've been nice to have, but I kinda regret it since it also lead to a disagreement on the homefront.

All in all, they're great tires... if you get snow.

evo_soul

there you have, someone who actually wants snow. ya winter has been pretty blah here, its been sure cold and windy, but there hasnt been much snow on the ground the most we got was about 20 to 30 cm of the stuff once, December was really warm and kind. and next month, the winter tires come off. I didnt really notice much wear on them, so hopefully they will be good for about 3 winters or so The stock tires, I am not to sure about. the tread design is pretty thin to begin with


Oh well, for the winter its better to be safe then sorry

gill2k

I've been putting my Winterforce through its paces this winter. Had lots of snow since October, and even had fresh ones today. So far it's been ridiculously amazing compared to the stock Dunlops.

djkmod83

Hey guys,

This is my first post and wanted to thank you guys for the info about the winterforce tire. Went to Sears and they are ordering the tires for me so it looks like this time next week i will have them installed. I decided it was time to do something when i took a turn at 5-10 mph and slid right into the curb snapping my front wheel off. $3000 dollars later it is fixed but the allignment is still off and when i turn the car to the left it doesn't auto correct like it did. Anyway hoping to have everything fixed soon with the new snow tires installed. This thread really helped my decision, thanks again!