Tire reviews
 

Where do you guys go for reviews on new tires? I am trying to find a review on snows (can't find anything on the toyo g2s's) before I buy em. The other set I want but don't want to spend the money are the xice set. This is where I go for tire reviews:

http://www.consumersearch.com/snow-tires
http://www.Tirerack.com

I have a hard time listening to what the guy at the tire shops tell me about tires because when I ask about specific tires they try to steer me to something else and usually will tell me that are using those tires on their car (the guy told me he had 3 different snows on his civic throughout the conversation) and they are all awesome.

Wheel & Tire forum? We have one you know.



Unless you have a friend or someone you trust working at a tire shop, they're always going to push for the sale of a tire that they want to sell....not always what you're looking for. TR's reviews can be vague and outright dumb sometimes,

ex: "I bought these and the car handles like its on rails and would recommend to everyonezzz!!11!1!1!!

car- 1994 Geo Storm ; Driving habits- spirited"

Yeah...I'd buy tires based on reviews like that. But some of the other reviews are worth of reading. Your other best bet will be to do a Google search containing the tire you're looking at and "reviews". See if you can find any forum discussions for that tire and see what people have to say. I've done this with a few tires.

Clubroadster.

You can take a good look at a T-Bone steak by sticking your head up a butchers ass..........wait it's gotta be your bull.

The review on tire rack can be good refernces but you have to sort through all the crap. Once you do it a little though you can tell the difference pretty easily.

Tirerack doesn't carry toyo's :( I don't think most of the kids on cr would spend the money on snow tires. They gravitate towards pretty/ugly things, not functional.

if you don't want to spend the money on the x-ice, get the bridgestone blizzaks. I've been running the same set of blizzaks for 2 winters now, look almost unused, and still have great amount of tread on them. You're definitely *NOT* running on rails on ANY snow tire - it's not about having a tire that doesn't slip - they all slip to some extent. It's about having a tire with the best linear traction to help you stop faster in a straight line, drive up a hill from a stoplight without worries, and when it does slip, it gives you extremely good feel and predictable slip. If you get a directional tire (like the x-ice that I just put on my montero sport, and have yet to try in snow) it will help in wet and slush conditions to push water off of the contact patch, but in my opinion and experience, the non-directional blizzaks do not suffer from hydroplaning. You might also want to consider a thinner tire vs. a summer tire.

In theory, I wouldn't recommend trying to size snow tires to fit your 15x8 6ULs - instead, get some 185/195/205 tires and put them on your OE wheels. The thinner tires will offer a smaller contact patch and thus more PSI on that contact patch, they'll be more likely to dig-in when you need that extra bit of traction instead of *floating over* that patch of black ice.

With regard to side-to-side traction, in any car, it is all about inertia management.

I was contemplating the blizzaks but am not positive I want to go with them. From what I have read they seem to be an average snow tire but moreso designed to be good on the cold pavement and such whereas the xice and other similar tires are made for going through blizzards and crazy snow conditions daily. Snow tires are indeed not going to be running on rails but they are designed with snow, ice, sluch, and cold pavement in mind which makes them superior in every way to all seasons.

Also these are going on my a6 battlewagon (which weighs about 2 tons) so no need to worry about digging in ;)

I'm going into my 4th winter with Hankook W409's on my Accord DD. They look like they have plenty of tread left, and I'm pretty happy with their performance in snow - never had a problem going or stopping, even on hills. They were pretty cheap, too. From Discount Tire Direct.

Tread looks the same as the Generals at Tire Rack.

I've had the opportunity to have both the WS60 and X-ice on the same car, and they pretty much have the same performance in snow. Just don't drive stupid in the snow, and you'll be fine. If you want something that has awesome traction, get studs.

Honestly for how fast the compound wears, next time I'm just going to get cheap snow tires at Firestone or Discount.

I don't know where you got your review from on the blizzaks - They've never been a problem for me as long as the body of the car clears the snow. (4 or 5") Actually, all season's are probably better than snow tires on simply "cold roads" - I find snow tires to be relatively uninspiring on dry roads at any temperature, performance simply decreases much much slower in snow or ice than all seasons.

Well thanks for the input everybody. Guess I should start considering the blizzaks or stop being a jew and but the xice's...fooger, when is it going to snow in Ohio? I am curious what your opinion of the two tires is.

unfortunately, I'll be at fort leonard wood, missouri until the 18th. I am going to make an early and unfair assumption that I will like the blizzaks on the miata more than the x-ice on the montero. The miata is a torsen differential, and when slowing down to a stop, the car is generally in neutral. The montero has an open differential and poor brake bias when braking in low traction due to the autotragic continuing to try to spin the tires when braking. Last year, and stupidly on 3-season tires, there were occasions when I would try to stop the montero quicker than it wanted to. I found that if i shifted the transmission into neutral, the truck stopped significantly faster - i'm quite sure I need to examine/adjust the rear brakes, as they are significantly underbraking (or possibly not at all :eek:)under low brake pressure.
We had about an inch and a half the night before I left Ohio, and on unplowed/unsalted/unbrined/unprepared roads, the blizzaks still did quite fine/predictably.