I am wondering if anyone has any FIRST HAND experience with the stock tires in the snow?

I have read numerous replies from Gord96BRG about how they are so bad, and that his new winter tires are so good that he can drive circles around stranded SUVs. I sort of feel his opinions are a little over-exaggerated...

While I have no doubt that winter tires are better than the stock ones, does anyone know if they are really THAT bad? I am really not into owning 2 sets of rims and tires.

 

:D Actually, I haven't posted my opinions, just my real experiences, and they're not exaggerated at all! What I said about SUVs was that I was able to pull away from or had to drive around SUVs in 2WD (with stock all-season tires) that were spinning their rear wheels on slick packed snow at intersections and could hardly move. That said, there's actually been several posts from people about driving on their winter tires, as well as several posts from other people about how bad their stock tires are in snow. Those experiences posted are consistent with mine!

I take it that you've never tried to drive high performance summer tires on snow before? You seem sceptical that they can actually be as bad as people are saying... (me and others).

Here's one thread from the Canada forum where a couple of people report on their attempts to drive the 8 on stock tires on snow; here's another thread where one of those people now reports on his winter tires' performance.

I know I post a bunch about winter tires when people ask about driving in winter on the OEM summer tires; I know what it will be like, and I am just trying to spread the word in advance that the problems they WILL encounter aren't the RX-8's fault, it's the tires. I'd rather not see the car get a reputation as being useless in winter, when it does just fine appropriate tires!

Regards,
Gordon

 

Yeah, I was just curious what others had said, to see if your experiences were consistent with other drivers.

Thanks for the input!

 

Saw a (US) magazine test online which teste identical cars but 2WD and 4WD versions, with standard and winter tyres.

The winter tyres made a huge difference, the 4WD car variants were, under all but 1 test WORSE than the 2WD version - mainly due to the extra weight of the 4WD system.

One test 4WD did come out on top of was 20degree incline test.

(cars tested were 2wd/4wd audi etc).

 

I've driven in the snow with the factory tires and they are absolutely terrible. With less than an inch of snow on the ground, I could barely move. I got stuck in a flat parking lot.

The summer tires are OK for about the first five minutes (when I leave my heated garage) - but once the rubber gets cold, and the treads fill with snow - you really can't move.

I've since ordered Blizzak's for my car, and below is the upate I posted on the Canadian RX8 boards:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Everyone,

OK - I have a 6 speed RX8 - and decided to go with the 225/45R18 BridgeStone Blizzak snow tires. They are the exact same size as the original summer tire, therefore can be mounted on the original rims.

I've had these on for nearly 10 days now, and it finally snowed today.

After driving my '8 with the orignal summer tires throughout the first snowfall, I was quite worried that this car would be undrivable in winter.

Today, we had 5cm of snow fall throughout the day, and the streets were not plowed. The tempature was about -5 C.

The car got me to work and back without any real scares. I couldn't drive as fast as the rest of the traffic, but I wasn't far behind. I felt the rear end slide with any sudden accelaration, but the car straightened out quickly. I could turn at a reasonable speed without much sliding, and breaking was surprisingly excellent.

Again, the streets werent plowed at all, so it was thick slushy snow on all streets. I was driving about 35km/hr while the rest of the traffic was probably doing about 40km/hr ...

I'm not going to say it's as good as previous front wheel drive cars that I've had ... but it can definately get you front point A to point B safely (within a city, I wouldn't go on the highway).

In Winnipeg, we have a very good snow removal system, so I expect dry pavement again within 48hrs.

As an aside, I prefer drving with my winter tires. They seem to have more flex. I used to have to fight with the steering wheel on major streets that tend to have deep ruts. The 18" wheels are too thick for the grooves in the road, and tend to want to jump out of them.

The softer winter tires seem to follow the grooves in the road, and make steering much easier ...

I'll give you an update on Blizzak's on hard packed snow in a few days (residental streets don't usually get plowed) ...

Hope this helps ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

This last weekend we had our first snowfall in Minnesota (6+ inches of heavy slippery stuff). I installed a set of 17" wheels with Blizzak WS-50's on my wife's RX-8. We then went out to test.

The combination of these tires and this car is spectacular! Outrunning a SUV with all-season tires is not an exageration. It is similar to running my old supercharged MR2 in the snow, I suspect because of the excellent front/rear balance in both.

Having always owned sports cars on which I put ultra high performance tires (my current toy car is a modified Corvette Z06) I can verify that you never want to try to drive a car with even moderately good summer performance tires in snow. While the RX-8 isn't a sports car, its stock tires are tuned enough towards performance that you will want real snow tires.

I suggest getting a nice set of 17" wheels and as aggresive a snow tire as you can live with (I like the WS-50's as we have a driveway that is a quarter mile long, uphill with switchbacks with a steep ravine on one side; traction and control are good things). An extra set of wheels makes it easy to swap over the wheels/tires when you need them.

I wouldn't pay the extra money for 18" wheels and snow tires as they are only for ego, not performance, and the lack of selection and extra money is simply not worth it.

 

I have driven in the snow, and I am not GORD96.

It was not in my 8 though



My Gsx was ok in the snow, not wonderful though.

My mustang with gatorbacks was not drivable!!
I took it out twice in snow, and never again.

Car would spin no matter what I did, and could not recover.

Now my firebird with all season tires was far better.

 

Assuming we are driving in the winter without winter tires, are chains something that makes sense as a fall-back? My plan is to not drive in bad weather this first season, but I worry that I'll get caught off guard. If so, I've not used chains before... any suggestions, experiences?

 

We had a winter storm blow down from Lake Superior to top end here on east side Lake Huron. There were snow squall warnings and when we came out of "Master & Commander" cinema, the warnings proved very real. My FRD 06 (17") & Toyo Garits
did an amazing job getting us through 45 minutes of white-outs with many stranding themselves along the side of the road.

This was part of a group buy (something like 18 x RX-8's in total).