Oh goody. More snow.

[dreamshark]

You would probably assume that is sarcasm, and mostly it is. But there is a small part of me that wanted a chance to test my expensive new Michelin tires on snow before I forgot what the old ones felt like. Yay!  They DO have better traction than either of the crappy brands I had before.  Noticeably better, especially compared to the Kumho Ecstas (hands down the worst tire I have ever owned. And I bought them TWICE because I just wasn't paying attention and it was all they had at the Goodyear place. Boo, Goodyear.)

Okay, Mother Nature, that's enough now.  Can we get back to "spring," please?

Comments

tires

[tagwn.livejournal.com]

We ended up getting new tires on the front due to potholes. I forget what brand. We had already gotten new tires on the back late last fall.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

It may depend on your car. After a little research I realized that my basic mistake was buying a car that requires "low profile" tires. This is a tire with a short sidewall. I have a Mazda Protege5 with a very low profile tire (aspect ratio 50). Turns out that this type of tire tends to perform poorly on snow, wears out quickly and provides a noisy and less comfortable ride. On the plus side, they supposedly handle better. It's a sports car thing, apparently (not that the Protege is much of a sports car, but they have pretensions in that direction).

Not only does this type of tire have certain generic shortcomings, there are only a few tires made in this size. Most places that sell tires will have at most one in this size. Both Kumhos and Felkens lasted about 20,000 miles, which sucks, and neither is very good on snow. But the Kumhos had noticeably worse traction than the Felkens. And the Kumho's "wearing out" mode was for pieces of the tread to start peeling off at about 20K miles! This, to my mind, was even worse than the Felken I just replaced, which had developed a large bulge on the sidewall.

This time I did some research online and the only tire for this car that got even middling user reviews was the Michelin. Even though I followed a link from the Michelin site claiming that this tire was available at a nearby NTB, I still had to special order the tires. So I am glad to find that they really do seem to perform better. I just hope they survive until the potholes are patched. I have hit a couple in the last few days that made me really fearful that I had destroyed my new tire.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

My VW GTI had that kind of low-profile tire. Yeah, not good on snow AT ALL! (I'm not sure the "low profile" is directly at issue; but that kind of tire is made of rubber and provided with tread aimed at performance on dry roads, and THAT sure doesn't help. Also they're often wider, which is good on dry roads and bad on snow.)

I've never actually owned a snow tire. I keep wondering on various cars whether it would be worth it. In theory, swapping wheels isn't hard. In practice, I'm 99.9% sure I'd never get around to doing it myself. I hear in Germany the people who swap your tires also store them for you; that I could deal with.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I paid extra for the Fancy Tires (tm) on my '99 Protogé. I think they are the "low profile" you talk about. Great in the summer, tend to blow apart when the temp is 0° or below. In 48,000 miles, I've replace five tires (at least) including one twice, plus two flats that I managed to fix in time.

Fortunately, cavandal's car is built for winter.