The season has started. Put the winters on and this is the result.

 

Oh how I hate that four letter word "S N O W", I figure i have about another 6 weeks before I have to put on he artic shoes for the winter

 

Tell me about it. It came out of nowhere. It is still illegal to drive on the tires with nails. Still one week to go, but I aint waiting. Rather want to pay a bill than repair the whole car.

 

Hey I agree with ya, if your snows save you one accident they have paid for themselves, , Like you I put them on all 4 wheels, Mine however are studless

 

Very Aggressive Looking! You look like you could climb walls with them, but where your at you need them.

 

Its Iceland baby. Lets hope they are worth the money.

 

Winter tires...? Never heard of them.

But then again, that's what happens when you're in SoCal

Winter set-up looks good by the way!

 

[quote=K5Cruiser;2891270]Winter tires...? Never heard of them.

But then again, that's what happens when you're in SoCal



Your Killing some of us with that one!!!!

 

I need to get some snow tires...KY gets pretty nasty at times. What kind of Goodyears are those? How much are they? Did you get seperate rims for them?

 

I would heavily, heavily advise you guys who go through really rough winters to get a second, winter-dedicated car because of the following reason:

I was looking at purchasing a set of snow tires/wheels for the M3, and the price was coming to over a grand for the set I wanted. Just kind of fooling around on craigslist one day during lunch break at my internship this summer, and stumbled across a 1997 Subaru Legacy 5MT with the 2.2L in it (the 2.2 is the one to get if you're looking for rock-solid reliability).

It was on my way home, so I called the guy up and test drove it. It was actually not that bad! Most importantly though it had nice narrow tires and AWD. Well, it looked good and I told the guy I would let him know, since I had some insurance investigation to do.
I called up that evening, and found some astonishing news. Compared to what I was paying (roughly $130/mo with full collision, comprehensive, everything), I could KEEP the M3 on the policy during the winter while ADDING the subaru, and my insurance premium would go DOWN to $93/mo. That means in 4.1 years the car's asking price would pay for itself. I didn't believe her at first and asked what the heck made that happen.
As it turns out, the multi-car discount I got for adding the Soob outweighed the price of insuring the damn thing (liability only, of course)! I bought the car the next day. I picked up some cheap snow tires for it from Tirerack for $45 bucks a pop, replaced the noisy drive axle it had for $100 (did the work myself in one night), and I'm having the time of my life with it! It's so nice to have a car to NOT care about. It also serves a great place to put all the stickers I wouldn't think of putting on the M. ALSO, when the M goes into storage for the winter in my friends garage, it will still be insured in case anything should happen!

Somebody else take advantage of this! I feel like it's a secret the insurance companies don't want you to know.

Plus, I don't know about where you guys live but salt damage does horrible things to cars up here in New England...

 

For those who run studded tires. What is the maximum speed you can safely take them up to once they are broken in? Do the studs make a noticeable difference in snow driving (aside from just looking badass)?

 

I feel your pain, but I got the Mini to be my daily and my BMW 850 sleeps all winter in the garage.

 

Break in the tires? never heard of that. I drive always 90-100 max. The noise is high. In snow they dont do ****, bud due to the fact that we have alot of ice on the road like fx. it rains and then it comes frost and whapaw, ICE. Then we have the situation that the read is salted and it is fx. snowing. The snow melts and the new snow goes over and the water under whapaw, ICE.

 

Those are Goodyear Ultragrip 500. I got them for 640$ all 4 (good to have friends) and the wheels for 200$ all 4. They are 16". Yes, i went for seperate rims. My summers are 17"

 

okay, thankyou.
One last question: Where did you get the tires and rims?
I want to find the best deal possible.

 

In Iceland and it were actually my friends who helped me

 

Man the mini is a great winter car. FWD rules. Had it in my Audi 100 and VW Gti mk4. Those are some badass winter wheels! good tires too. I'm just using my all season bridgestone potenzas. Should be better than my stock runflats I ran the past 2 winters. Had no problems.