Tire choices for winter rims...Opinions please!
 

Well I put my stock rims & tires back on early for winter this year because I had a bubble on the sidewall of one of my front tires. It's looking like I'm going to end up buying a set of tires for my stock rims before winter anyways. The crappy oem goodyears are just not going to get me through.

Basically what I'm looking for is a descent "all season" tire. I don't care if I'm not going to hook with these on dry days my main concern is just getting a descent set of shoes that will get me through some snow.

So far I'm looking at the following:
Continental ContiExtremeContact $106 each
Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Position $150 each
Goodyear Eagle F1 All Season $155 each

Fuzion HRi $78 each

I'm kind of leaning toward the fuzions because of price obviously and I had a friend with these and he said they were descent. I'm not broke price doesn't matter too much but I don't want to spend $500+ if I can get a set that will do me good through winter for $350.

If you've had any experience with any of these tires I'd like to hear your input. Especially if you have to drive in occassional snow.

Thanks!

none of those tires will help you in the snow.

you need a winter specific tire. The rubber compound is different...its softer...and wont get hard in cold weather like a normal tire would. The tread of a winter specific tire is necessary as well...there a thousands of little "sipes" that grab on ice and snow.

I live in st louis we don't get a ton of snow so I am not looking at snow tires specifically. I just need something that will get me through occassional light snow. If there is ice or heavy snow I can work from home. Not to mention if I was going to get winter tires I would probably go out an buy some ugly arse 16 inch v6 wheels.

I'm sure that those tires would be better than sumis htrz II's that I had on my 18s which I put on a bit too early this year and it snowed while I was at work. It was scary but I made it home with hardly any problems.

zigzagg is 100% correct. an all-season tire will do you absolutely no good in the snow with a mustang, or any rwd that has any amount of power for that matter. youll be throwing snow all over the place and going nowhere. if you do manage to get the car rolling, you wont be able to stop it.

i use dunlop grispec tires in the winter, theyre pretty good, i think i paid like 440 shipped from tire rack, something around there. id recommend 'em.

I know exatly what you talkin bout redfire! I live in the Memphis area and it seems our winters are similar. I got a friend with mustang JUST like mine that I work with. The first set of tires he got for his car was the Conti's. Im pretty sure dems da ones he got. I know he got em from Wal-Mart for pretty cheap and they had a NON directional tread pattern. Well I rode in his car with those a couple times and they seemed to ride better than the Goodyears I still had and the Toyos I ended up buying. I dont know how the traction was in the ice and snow but Im sure it done better than most any sport tire.

In short my vote is for the Continental!

Yeah the oem goodyears are terrible. On tirerack they are listed as "ultra high performance summer"...yea right, not to mention they want $186 each for them! :eek:

Thanks for the response on the contis, I figured just about anything has got to be better than the oem goodyears.

i bought some goodyear F1 all seasons back in july for my WRX and they are great. since i drive on the autobahn sometimes they howl pretty bad at 130+. WRX's have sh!tty sound deading material as well. no one has wrote a review for snow because good year started selling them in may-june of this year. so they are new i only have 1500-2k miles on my tires and on a heavy rainy day there is no feeling that the tires ever loose traction (could be because of AWD). its starting to dip into the 30's and 20's out here so ice is going to be my next obstacle. they are built for light snow i would say it can handle slush and maybe 2"-3". they way i drive in the corners with this car i dont think the tires will last to long.

if you have a second set of rims i wouldnt pay the money for these.

I would get the Conti's or Kuhmo ASX's (I think that is what they called).

Thanks for the input on the f1's. I would imagine that most average tires are going to howl at 130+! I was trying to stay away from these because they were a bit more than I wanted to spend considering they will only be on my car for a few months a year.




Have you run these on your car before? I never really looked at the kuhmo's but they seem to have good reviews. They are about $10 cheaper than the contis.