Snow Driving...Who's done it so far?

spearfish25

So far I'm dodging this storm by borrowing my in-law's Jeep. A neighbor with a Porsche C4S just said 'forget all-seasons, you need snow tires'. That put a damper on my master plan of all-seasons all year long. Looks like I'll have to get myself some rims, bilzzaks, and a nice torque wrench for all the tire changes I'll be doing. In the late fall and early spring, I don't know if I can really keep the snow tires on the car as the temperatures and conditions vary quite a bit here. Ideally I'd have three sets of rims/tires...summer, a-s for fall and spring, and then snow tires for the dark months of winter. Better buy some lotto tickets...

I suppose the other option is to sell the summer tires that came with the car and replace them with all-seasons. Then I still get a set of snow rims/tires making those two my alternating pair which better covers the spectrum in Chicago.

In the end money is an issue, and I think I'll just have to cope with all-season tires...the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus tires seem to get good reviews and work OK in some snow. That should cover me most days and for the severe snowfalls, I'll either cab it to work and back or make the wifey get me in the Altima .

Ricochet48

I'm also in Chicago too. The OEM wheels on my RSX got stolen 2 years ago, so I opted for 2 sets of wheels. I have 1 set of PZero Nero M+S's (on Volk GT-U's) which I use during the summer. They are arguably some of the best "all season" tires around, but are not really designed for snow. My roommate runs them all year long, and said they are worse than the stock all seasons, but bearable.

I also got a dedicated set of straight up SNOW tires for the winter on a cheap set of ADR wheels. I'm totally fine in the snow with them. I know I'm FWD, but I'd like to think that a good driver could handle the Z in Chicago snow on a set of snow tires.

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citycat

I put some Kumho all-season high perf tires on my BMW and they were HORRIBLE in the snow. Dedicated snow tires kicked butt, though, and I had less trouble than a lot of the pickups and SUVs around here in Detroit.

Spend the bucks on the rims and snow tires. Running snows in warmer weather won't do more than wear them down faster, so you might only get 3 seasons out of them instead of 4. Not a huge deal and not *so* bad, especially if you don't drive like a maniac with them on. I ran my snows from late November to early/mid-April and got 3 seasons out of the Blizzaks. Ditched the BMW before I even put 2000 miles on the Hankooks so I can't comment on wear there.

If you can survive this storm, it's probably close to the last bit of snow we'll see in the Midwest that amounts to anything this year. You've got all summer to save up for Rims&Tires in the fall.

Just my $0.02, FWIW.

wstar

Snow? What's snow? I think I saw that on TV once

FWIW, I've found that the stock tires work excellently in wet conditions. As with any car, you're in trouble if you try to skim any deeper water at speed in normal tires - but for solidly "wet" pavement in light to normal rain, the car stuck to the road like glue (unlike my last car, where highway + rain meant I was the slowest guy on the road out of fear of a sudden loss of grip).

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Akirasoft

were they ecsta ASX's? The ASX's were ok on my evo in teh snow but horrible on the wife's GTI. GTI was better with Dunlop SP Wintersport 3D's.

Just took delivery of my Z today and managed to drive home this evening with the temp at around 34-36. Was uneventful but I wouldn't make a habit of it. Summer tires are hockey pucks at that temp.

citycat

I'm pretty sure they were ASXs, yeah. I got a lot of spin on them with any snow at all. In wet weather, they were fantastic, and I liked them a lot for dry summer weather.

Blizzaks were great in the snow. Hankooks I didn't have long enough to make a solid judgement.

Akirasoft

yeah, for an allseason they were a pretty decent midwestern 3 season tire. just horrible in the snow in the size on the gti. WAY too wide for a fwd car with an open diff.