Studless "ice" and snow

I've been having a great old time tossing the tail around on my Tribeca, with these studless tires. Of course, I'm making lemonade from lemons here. I shouldn't be able to toss the tail around at all with winter tires! But here I am increasing my experience at rally driving techniques: I can control the tail with throttle modulation and left-foot braking.

Yousuf Khan

When studs are illegal,you need something - and I've found the Dunlop Graspic and the Bridgestone Blizzak a pretty good substitute. Wish they were available back in the seventies when studs were first outlawed in southern Ontario. Matzlers were way too expensive for me back then - as were Haks. Winter Rallying with regular snows was challenging.

Blizzak covers a wide variety of models.

I like Cooper Weather-Master.

Greg

ok, I should've been more explicit: studless are absolutely useless when you are trying to climb out of an icy parallel ruts: the car just slides back in.

the studs would have bit into the ice and let me climb out of it.

outside the realm of the parking lot crawl through the ice I can live with them.

Yesterday, I slid into the side of an off-ramp wall as I was going around it. The wall was covered with snow all of the way up, and it was a very glancing, soft blow so fortunately no damage, but I was thinking it could have been a lot worse. Come on Ontario, legalize studs!!! I'm sure I could've made it without even a tiny slide if these tires had studs on them.

Yousuf Khan

We had legal studs for years - and idiots who didn't know how to drive spun those studded tires, tearing up the pavement and shooting studs out behind the car.

Yes, in the hands of reasonable drivers, studded tires were an advantage over non-studded snow tires of the day - but today's studless snow and ice tires are virtually as good as the old studded tires. I've driven with all 3 - old studless, old studded, and today's studless.. Today's tires with studs WOULD be better - but with drivers who do not know enough to drive according to road conditions, they would not improve road safety one bit.

Learn to drive in snow, and put 4 high quality studless snow tires on your car. You will NOT see studded tires re-introduced on Ontario roads - you can count on it.

Would you have felt better if I called it a "4 wheel drive vehicle with a single wheel receiving all power in slippery conditions" ? (I nearly got a carpal just typing that)

I could hardly care less when you breezing along a freeway at 65 and both wheels are receiving power. It's when you spin a single wheel going nowhere, that where it counts. No?

So? You family members and you were not spoiled by FHI with a license to park in each pile of snow you find "vacant".

Unless you have city services that are insistent on cleaning up 2 lanes of a 4 lane street you could not possibly relate.

I'm happy that you can drive with a handicap of no center and drive axle diff but I am in a different predicament.

Play with the tire models on each car. The top performers break and regain traction less abruptly than others. It's more important on PT. Same with summer tires on wet&dry, not just winter categories.

Where are you driving that you "need" 4 wheel traction? Limited slip differentials, in my experience, have limited advantages.I'd rather have a manually controlled locker. The advantage of posi when you need it without the instability of Posi when you don't.

Years ago I had a Dodge Ramcharger Full-Time 4 wheel drive - with selectable interaxle diff lock. No posi. Snow Plow. Got stuck ONCE when I drove off the end of a parking lot I was plowing.

And getting back to the subject of studs. They are ONLY good on ice or extremely hard hard-pack. They don't help one bit in deep semi-hard snow, or worse yet, in wet snow.

I'd say it's a lot more important on a high-powered six than on a gutless 4 cyl. The Mystique duratech 2.5 and the Taurus 3.0 Duratech can torture the tires and challenge their traction limits with MUCH more authority than the gutless 2.4 PT Cruiser. And although the Ranger 4.0 Colone V6 is no tire-burner it also puts a LOT more torque to the road than the PT.

The Eagle GTs I had on the cruiser were better than "just fine" on both wet and dry pavement. A whole lot better than theTigerPaw Tourings that were on it when I got it.

Yes. But they don't hurt much in those conditions either. Studded tires suck on dry asphalt, but if I cared much about that aspect I would have went with studless (or "performance" winter) tires

From late december onwards after a few thaw refreeze cycles there is lots of ice and hardpack here and there and that's what I would prefer to optimize for.

In fact, finances permitting, I'd get another set of rims and go with studless when temps drop below 40F and reshoe midwinter after ice and hardpack starts to get on my nerves.

Should help with durability of both sets and stud retention though this would require going from 2 reshoes a year to 3-4 until tread is completely gone on studless in a season or three.

I disagree. 2.0 liter on 323 (us market protege) surprising had enough torque to spin Ecsta MX (a semi slick on a budget, sadly no longer made) on dry asphalt. hot or not

I'm not surprised cruiser came with the prius grade tires. Even my A4 with sport package came with ContiProContacts (the jack of all trades, master of none)

The 323 isn't a PT cruiser!!! It is a light "high performance" small car.The PT cruiser is a heavy "mini-van"

They were not "prius grade" and they were not the factory tires. They were actually pretty darn good on dry pavement - but less than stellar in wet pavement situations, or even cold and damp - which is why I replaced them even though they still had almost 3/4 tread and were only 2 years old.

Useless tires on a not much better vehicle, in my opinion.

gotcha, would've been strange if something named "tiger paw" was OEM.

Yep, you typically tradeoff one thing for another. which is why there is one model called King of Dry and a sister model called King of Dry & Wet ;-)

Well, I need torsen to navigate piles of snow around here. And I like it quite a bit: it does not understeer for once and does not roll much in turns.

I would not call ContiPro useless, they are appropriate for their category but the all season category as a whole is expectedly underperforming in most conditions.

Btw, I did not want to offend you. Sorry if something that I said rubbed the wrong way.

As a mechanic, my take on Audi, BMW, and Mercedes is "anyone who thinks they are somebody needs to own one (of each)" and "if you need to ask how much, you can't afford it" and an "all season" tire is really a "no season" tire. The Conti tires that were supplied as standard equipment on some of the Ford mini-suvs were pitiful.

American perspective on Audi cost of ownership noted. Thanks. Yes, I keep track of my records (kept for over a year). And yes, even here with cheaper labor it runs about 45-50 cents a mile(!!!). Gas is about what it coast in kaulifornia.

I think they are fine midseason in 5C-20C range just fine. I'm not rich enough to keep midseason tires but given that what the car was shot when it arrived here I intend to wear them out in april-later october intervals before I buy proper summers. And finding proper summer tires here is a nightmare if you are looking for good value. Not a problem in the land of tirerack.com I suppose

Where are you located that getting SUMMER tires is a problem????

te:

Well, there are plenty of summer tires here. But they are mostly underperforming. Budget oriented semi slicks from kumho are unobtanium. Potenza RE-01 (branded Potenza Adrenaline around here) cost and arm and leg in 235 45 R17. I'll probably switch to 15" steel rims for summer once continental is gone for good.

You still have not said where you are located.

te:

(mostly) white russia, though it's getting blacker every day