Winter Tire questions.

[97SHOgt]

Well winter is coming and I'm debating on whether to go out and find a nice high mileage Grand Cherokee or look into winter tires which I have no experience with. I currently have nearly new Bridgestones Potenza 960 all-seasons on my car now and they have been great thus far and are supposed to be decent in the snow. However, I was recalling last year when we were hit by a bad storm and I could not make it up the small drive to my apratment parking lot. Well I have since moved and now the road up to my new apartment is a half-mile climb that I don't see me making it up in a snow storm.

So my options are see what happens with my all-seasons, buy winter tires, or look into a 4x4. Any opinions?

Also, I have a few questions about winter tires in general. When do you mount them. If it isn't snowing all the time do they were really fast? I live in Cincinnati and we usually get hit with moderate snowfall in the winter and a storm or two. Any opinions would be great.

A couple tires I was looking at are

Bridgestone Blizzak WS-50
and
Dunlop SP Winter Sport 3D

Any experience with either? Thanks!

 

[Mr Anonymous]

For the most part, all season tires are a joke. They are a number of compromises blended into one tire that really doesn't stand out at anything.

Better to have a good set of summer tires to run from April to October, and a good set of winter tires to run from November to March.

I've run Blizzaks on three of my SHO's and they are a great tire for the money.

 

[Funmart6]

So happy I live in the South!!!! What about "Uniroyal Tiger Paw Ice and Snow", are they any good?

 

[stephen newberg]

So my options are see what happens with my all-seasons, buy winter tires, or look into a 4x4. Any opinions?

The best option is to pick up the 4x4 with good winter tires on it. If you decide to go with winter tires, the Blizzaks are pretty good and will help a lot, but will still never put you or your SHO in the safety level of the 4x4 option. The one thing not to do is try running in snow and ice in all-seasons. Most are biased way toward summer/spring/fall use and in winter they really are not a safe option for you or your car.

pax, smn

 

[wuzzzer]

My Blizzaks have never let me down in the 5 winters I've had them.
They are incredibly soft and squiggly handling tires, be very careful at speeds over 60mph.

If you don't take turns at high speeds and be careful not to spin them on dry pavement (they don't really squeal since the tread's so soft so sometimes you might not realize you're spinning them) they'll last quite a while.