Primacy HP tires in "winter-lite"??

[Leonardo]

I got stuck in 1" of snow/slush on my stock wheels and tires. In fact: I couldn't even make it out of my driveway.


So, I put studded Hankook ipike tires on my car. IMO, they drive terrible. Sold them immediately. (this was 6 years ago) Then got a new set of Michelin A/S+ tires. I loved these tires! (The AS/3 replaced the A/S+)






Anyway, I know you can drive on the Primacys in the cold.


OP, I hope that you have more good experiences with them.

[churchx]

I too once was stuck in just 1" of snow slush on completely flat parking lot (normally i time switch to winter tires well, but this year was kept back too long with long queues at tire shops by all those wanting to change tires and very busy period at work). And it's perfectly understandable. Yes, i did drove from home to that parking lot at work, had to be very careful, had to go in several places by inertia .. but it's downright nerve wrecking & dangerous not having safety margin and high chance of stucking. I did drove, but i'll never name that "it's possible to drive".

[motrek]

Originally Posted by churchx

What? Tire shop guy, that tells that all-seasons won't be better then summer tires in cold? Who hired him?
As for aggressiveness .. there is a bit that one has to drive just fast enough to drive with the flow. For others to not need extra overtakes, to be able to merge in traffic and such.
And then there is driving culture, that may differ. Eg. keeping due lacking grip long enough intervals between cars will mean someone will try to cut in all the time.
And then bit of "unexpected". Some mistake or willing breaking of rules done by others, something you couldn't expect/plan out before due simply not seeing that due blind corner, hard to notice patch of black ice, critters, pets, kids .. and yes, including skidding out or not able to brake others still on summer tires . There is always need for some safety margin, if unexpected need for emergency braking/maneuvering arise.

Yeah the claim that some particular summer tires might be as good as a particular set of all-seasons in cold weather does seem ridiculous, but it occurred to me that I can't really argue otherwise. According to my understanding, there's no actual standard for naming/categorizing tires, and there doesn't seem to be any published data about glass transition temperatures for any tires that I could find, so who knows???

As for a margin of safety re: maneuverability, sure, that sounds good, but it's pretty arbitrary. What are the absolute numbers that you would consider safe, in terms of skidpad Gs and stopping distances? If conditions reduce your tires' grip from 0.9 Gs on the skidpad to 0.7 Gs, does that mean they're unsafe? Then how can minivans be legal to drive when they only pull 0.7 Gs under ideal conditions?

[churchx]

0.7? Forget about it on snow/ice, even with proper tires.
Eg. here, on snow, "snow tires pull 0.30 lateral g, the all-seasons manage 0.28g and the summer tires produce a pitiful 0.15g". Guess where primacies here would go, even more so that imho for our car weight on ice/snow 215 width of stock size is simply too wide, with tire "snow-planing". Even less side-Gs on ice vs numbers above on snow. (ignoring for now existence of non street legal long-studded sport tires nicknamed "saws", which in some cases may provide more grip then summer tires on dry tarmac).
Hence my own preference is to never skimp on tires in winter and scratch out every slightest bit of extra grip possible. I can give up some, when it's plentiful. Prefering to get all i can when grip is scarce. Even if it's just for 5% of all driven mileage/time, that portion can be exactly that where one totals car, injures/kills someone (including self).

[motrek]

Originally Posted by churchx

0.7? Forget about it on snow/ice, even with proper tires.
Eg. here, on snow, "snow tires pull 0.30 lateral g, the all-seasons manage 0.28g and the summer tires produce a pitiful 0.15g". Guess where primacies here would go, even more so that imho for our car weight on ice/snow 215 width of stock size is simply too wide, with tire "snow-planing". Even less side-Gs on ice vs numbers above on snow. (ignoring for now existence of non street legal long-studded sport tires nicknamed "saws", which in some cases may provide more grip then summer tires on dry tarmac).
Hence my own preference is to never skimp on tires in winter and scratch out every slightest bit of extra grip possible. I can give up some, when it's plentiful. Prefering to get all i can when grip is scarce. Even if it's just for 5% of all driven mileage/time, that portion can be exactly that where one totals car, injures/kills someone (including self).

I guess you missed the entire point of this thread, which is that in the PNW we hardly ever get any snow or ice on the road.

I'm perfectly fine just staying at home when there's snow or ice on the road, or Ubering to wherever I have to go.

My concern from the outset has been how well the tires perform when it's simply chilly/cold outside, like 40 degrees. Are you saying the Primacies wouldn't be able to pull 0.7 Gs when it's 40 degrees outside on dry pavement?

[G-awesome]

Originally Posted by motrek

Quick update... I got so many mixed opinions about switching out the stock tires that I was 50-50 on it... I finally took the car to Discount Tire in late November and asked them to put on some all-seasons. The guy came out and looked at the Primacies and asked why in the world I would want to swap them, and was convinced that all-seasons wouldn't actually be any safer in the cold... now, I know that some 20 year old working at Discount Tire isn't necessarily an expert, but since I was already 50-50 on it, that was enough to sway me to keep the tires.

Since then it has been down in the high-30s, low-40s a bunch of times and the car drives just fine, wet or dry. I've tested the limits several times just to make sure, stepping the back out on purpose (when it's safe obviously), and it doesn't seem to take that much less effort than when the temperatures were in the 50s. I'm pretty sure I have at least as much traction as any "regular" car on the road at those temperatures. Probably more.

A week or two ago it snowed a bit (very lightly, for like 2 hours, at night). The temperature was ~33 degrees and it all turned to slush immediately. So with a very small amount of slush on the road, I waited until late at night and drove the car gingerly to a nearby empty parking lot to see if it was a rolling deathtrap in such conditions. I slid it around for a while and was frankly astonished by the amount of grip it had. Vastly more grip than my old BMW that was fitted with all-season tires (which WAS a rolling deathtrap in such conditions).

So I'm just going to keep the tires for this winter (and probably next winter) and avoid driving when there's any snow or ice on the road. For everybody who posted horror stories about the Primacies in the cold, I'm not sure how to explain our vastly different experiences. Maybe when the tires get worn down a bit more they will lose whatever cold-weather traction they have now. Or maybe you guys are much more aggressive drivers than I am? Dunno. But right now they tires seem actually pretty good to me.

Such an honest employee but he lost a good sale there for Discount tire! As for another PNW resident, my experience driving with the primacys are fine in cold/wet weather. But I mainly drive in the city where I'm never over 65ish km/h and basically going with the flow of traffic so I'm not aggressively ripping it through traffic lights and heavy traffic. Also, the car sits in underground parking at home so the tires aren't bone cold when overnight temps hits below 5 degrees celsius or freezing.

[Hreb]

Fellow BRZ owner in Seattle here. I ride Blizzak WS80s in the winter (still the OEM Primacies in the summer so far), but have switched over to the winter set as late as the beginning of January and back to the summers as early as the last week of February (depending on the weather and driving plans that year). So I have plenty of experience driving the Primacies in Seattle weather with the temps down into the 30s.


I agree that the Primacies are totally usable year-round in Seattle as long as you never touch snow or ice. Unlike more aggressive summer tire compounds, they don't get dangerously hard at low temperatures, or at least not Seattle winter temperatures. But as you've noted, on the rare Seattle day when there is even half an inch of snow on the ground, as will happen some years, your car needs to stay put. Though honestly half of Seattle doesn't know how to drive when there's snow on the ground so staying home isn't a bad idea regardless of your tire choice. And don't even think about going up to the mountains or across any of the passes on the Primacies.


Just for one data point, I've found that between the Primacies and the Blizzaks, the Blizzaks are *way* easier to break loose and spin on either dry or wet pavement. I don't have hard numbers for braking distance or hydroplane resistance but I suspect it's basically a wash between the two at these temperatures. I got the Blizzaks because I deal with snow and want to go to the mountain. If you don't care about that and just want better performance tires for Seattle city winters, I'd go with a high performance all season tire instead.

[atomicalex]

Talked to a Michelin rep at NAIAS today.

He lol‘d at tracking on the Primacys.

[motrek]

Originally Posted by atomicalex

Talked to a Michelin rep at NAIAS today.

He lol‘d at tracking on the Primacys.

Not sure why. I mean, I'm sure there are better tires for tracking, but the car still pulls 0.9 Gs on the stock tires. That's basically the same as a Miata and nobody LOLs at tracking a Miata. If you watch videos of pro drivers reviewing the car (e.g. Randy Pobst for Motor Trend, or whoever does the Lightning Laps for Car and Driver) they basically just comment on the lack of horsepower and I don't recall them saying anything about the tires. All of this complaining online about the performance of the stock tires seems like much ado about nothing to me. :/