The roads were pretty hairy this morning, 1-2" of powder and plenty of tractor trailers on the interstate, my "crappy" turanzas got through it just fine. I still havent bought winter tires (I wanted to get an extra set of rims, but its at least $140 to ship them from tire rack! I've been spoiled by free shipping on amazon, haha)

 

Amazon's got rims too, but they index them for search as "Wheels".

 

I tried to get away without snow tires because we don't get a lot of snow but I had to change my plans. I installed Cooper snows last week after not being able to get home with the Michelin tires that come with the car. Going up the same hill is no problem now. My mileage seems to be ok still. Cost was $1100 for Cooper Wheathermaster ST2 tires on 4 new aluminum rims including installation and taxes.

 

none of em are 16" boo amazon!!

 

No one seems to mention whether the snow tires they got are rated as LRR (Low Rolling resistance) same as the Michelin all-weather tires that came on my TCH.

On Tirerack the specifications don't mention the rolling resistance.

I would like to get snow tires but not lose too much in mileage.

 

The Cooper tires I have installed are not low rolling resistance that I know of but my mileage hasn't changed much. I have about 40psi in them.

 

There isn't a lot of up-to-date RR information out there. In fact, there's more data available for bicycle tires. The RR of snow tires can probably be improved to a certain extent.

As you may have noticed, there are two categories of snow tires: studless and winter performance. Depending on how long stays on the ground where you live, you could go with winter performance as they would probably have lower RR.

 

I don't think you will find that rating - or speed rating for snow tires. When I did my research, snow tires were not classified like this - perhaps because they assume you will not be speeding or expecting great mileage in snowy conditions.

We have been having a bit of a whopper of a December here in south-central Maine. Ironically, it started two days after I had my Tiger Paws All-Weather tires put on and it sorta hasn't stopped. In fact it is snowing right now and there is a total of about two feet of snow on the ground. That said, I have been driving through a number of snow (and some ice) conditions for the past month and think the Tiger Paws are performing admirably.

My personal opinion is that unless you live on back roads where the plows get to late, or live on a steep hill with a long driveway that you have to plow yourself, most times you will not be driving in deep snow where snow tires are essential. The worse I have driven in in the last few weeks is maybe 3 inches of slush and there are no tires or automobiles that handle those conditions real well.

So save your money and just keep all-weather tires on the car and continue to get better gas mileage, performance and handling. It just might be that if the snow is that deep, you might as well stay put and wait for the conditions to improve. Remember that more times than not you will be on dry pavement, even in the dead of winter.

Happy Holidays!

~j

 

The snow tires I bought for my HCH claim to be low rolling resistance:

http://www.nokiantyres.com/tyre?id=1...kapeliitta+RSi

I feel as though I'm getting lower mpg on my current tank, but it could be from a number of factors that occurred simultaneously: cold weather, snow tires, snow & freezing rain, or my 30,000 mile scheduled maintenance procedures. My gut reaction is that it's the cold weather that's responsible.

 

do you love them?