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[7/8]

Seems like a fitting topic for a road forum. What's your winter and summer tire/wheel setups? When do you switch your tires (assuming you do)? Do you change your tires yourself, or have a shop do it?

I got my 2016 VW GTI in November 2019. It came with the stock 18" Continental ProContact All-Seasons and "Austin" wheels (with scratch marks). Since it was November, I soon bought a set of 17" Espia EPZ II winter tires with Fast FC04 titanium-colour wheels.


This spring, I bought new wheels for the all-seasons: 18" Motegi MR148 in matte bronze. I love that it adds some colour to my car.


I run my winters from about mid to late-November to mid-April, so that's almost half the year. I find by mid-November, there's a risk of snow, and temperatures start to consistently fall below 7 C, the recommended threshold for running winters. I take them to a tire shop to get them changed.

[1995hoo]

We use all-season tires and we don't change them out, in part because we don't have space to store multiple sets unless I stop parking in the garage and in part because the DC-area winters just aren't what they were even 25 years ago.

[Max Rockatansky]

I just use all season tires on my Impreza.  I’m not required to carry chains until R2 controls in California given I have AWD, but I have them in my trunk anyways.  Usually Caltrans closed roads rather than call for the R3 controls that would require I chain up.  Really if I think there is a chance of a weather related snow closure I’m generally not going to a make a trip.

[Takumi]

The only car I change the wheels on during the winter is the Aristo. The winter tires are all-seasons that the importer put on the car when it arrived in the US. Were it my money, I would have gotten a set of Continental DWS06s, and will do so when these tires are ready to be replaced.


I have dedicated summers on the car most of the year, which are Falken Azenis FK510s. It still does occasionally get cold enough where driving on summers could be an issue, and I have some fitment work to do on these wheels before I put them back on.


My other cars, I just run high-end all seasons. Doesn’t snow enough for dedicated winters here.

[gonealookin]

2012 Toyota RAV4 with AWD, Goodyear Assurance tires for the warmer weather and Bridgestone Blizzaks for the winter.  I bought the Blizzaks and their (very basic) wheels as well as the Goodyears all at Discount Tire so they do the swap for free.  The usual dates are around the last week of October and early to mid April, although I may vary it a little bit if I'm taking a fairly long trip in November or March; the Blizzaks only last maybe 20,000 miles or so, so I'd rather not put extra miles on them unnecessarily.  I do carry chains but have never put them on out of necessity, only to test for fit.

In Nevada "chains or snow tires" is always legal except on certain roads around Tahoe, where that's modified to "chains or 4WD/AWD with snow tires".  The latter is almost always good in California as well; as Max says, California rarely imposes the "chains required without exception" R3.  The only recent time I can recall an R3, there was a big snowstorm in the San Bernardino Mountains on Thanksgiving weekend a couple years ago and Caltrans put up the R3 to avoid a calamity due to the lowlanders heading up to play in the snow.

[JayhawkCO]

I just use heavy snow rated BF Goodrich KO2s on my 2019 Wrangler.  Great off road, great on road, great in snow.  If I lived in the mountains, I would get Blizzaks.

[Scott5114]

When it snows here, I just don't go outside.

[7/8]

When it snows here, I just don't go outside.

I thought you'd be making snow angels on the lawn. Consider me disappointed.

[hbelkins]

I had a 1979 Old Cutlass years ago. They came with standard wheels and pie pan hubcaps. I saved the money from a summer job between my freshman and sophomore years of college to buy a set of Cragar chrome wheels off a friend. It was an annual ritual for me to change out the Cragars for the stock wheels (with studded mudgrips on the rear) over Thanksgiving break and then to put the Cragars back on during spring break.

When my dad sold that old car, we had the old wheels on it. I kept the Cragars in an outbuilding and sold them for $300 a few years ago. They looked pretty good considering they were first installed in the late 1970s.

[Scott5114]

When it snows here, I just don't go outside.

I thought you'd be making snow angels on the lawn. Consider me disappointed.

Heh, I'd consider it, although often the amount of snow we get isn't even enough to fully cover the grass, so it'd be a pretty disappointing snow angel. Also, I think I've only made one snowman in my whole life. We only got one snow that was big enough for that my whole childhood. We've since had two really big snows, but those were in December 2009 and February 2021. By then, I wasn't motivated enough to build one that I wanted to spend the time outside to do so, especially considering that I don't really have water-resistant clothing suitable for tromping around in snow.

In February, during the huge storm that knocked out the Texas power grid, I did go outside after midnight and stood in my front yard for about 15 minutes to fully experience a negative °F temperature for the first time in my life. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, although it was noticeably colder than the usual "really cold" we get, in the same sort of way that while you don't really feel worse when it's 110° than you do at 100°, but it's noticeably more intense.

[wxfree]

I use only all-season tires.  I live in the DFW region, so winter weather isn't too much of a problem.  My area is flat enough that I can get around in the most slippery wet ice conditions, although maybe at at not much more than a walking speed.  A few times I've had to back roll back from a stop sign at a slight uphill grade and get a running start to get through the intersection, but I've never been unable to get to the store and back home with all-season tires.  Last winter was a little different than others.  We had an extended freeze with conditions cold enough for dry snow, which is rare here, and we even got below zero.  Snowpack was around for days, which is rare.  I got everywhere I needed to go, which was just around town, and I went to places I probably shouldn't have gone to for fun, but I made it through.  I was, however, a little slow.  At one point I was accelerating from a stop up a slight hill, as fast as I could without spinning out, and someone in a more capable vehicle passed me in the left-turn lane (which was covered with snow, but all the locals know it's a three lane road).  In the most extreme conditions we get, I could just stay home through the worst of it, but my town is so flat I've never needed to.