Blizzak WS70 Snow Tires FTW
 

Another storm as hit and I am so glad I have snow tires this time.

I was worried about leaving work and going home in this weather, but the snow tires handled the conditions like a champ!

I felt like I was in complete control for the whole 15-mile drive home. The only time I slipped a little was on a turn on the last intersection before I got home.

Stock tires - 5% confidence
Snow tires - 80% confidence

http://i.imgur.com/IEqnqcT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mpTSfPr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/nAbXXrI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9khQdDB.jpg

With the right tires, some ballast in the trunk, and proper throttle/clutch/brake/steering input this car does beautifully in the snow.

:confused0068:Damn, that is some serious Winter Wonderland stuff right there!

What's the best snow tires to get for the brz?

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I really like my blizzaks. I feel so much more safe when driving with them. But honestly, any snow tires would be a huge improvement over the stock summers.


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If you don't mind me asking, how much are these bad boys?

I have the Blizzak WS70's as well and man they are amazing tires. Not perfect in dry conditions but they shine when the snow and ice hits the ground. Haven't gotten stuck even once so far in the Canadian winter I've been experiencing, and it's the worst snow we've had in years.
I completely agree, you feel so confident in them, and you actually have to PUSH the car even in icy conditions to get it to slide around. I love them.
And @PursuitOfPerfection, I got a good deal on mine and got them for $800 in stock tire size for the stock wheels. You can probably find them cheaper since Canadian prices are always jacked up compared to US prices.

I got mine for 16 inch wheels for $476.00 at tire rack. They didn't have steel rims in stock at the time so I got the cheapest alloy rims for $356, so total of $832.

I think the same tires for 17 inch wheels would've costed about $700-$800 (for just tires). And then you consider the cost of getting them mounted and dismounted onto your stock rims, etc, it'll come out to be just about the same.

Besides, I read that 16 inch wheels are narrower and better at cutting through the snow.

Can you please explain what you mean by they are not perfect in dry conditions? Does it drive different?

They feel a little floaty at higher speed or when accelerating quickly in dry condition. But realistically, you shouldn't really be driving that fast in the winter anyway. In everyday driving, that are completely fine.

I have them as well in stock size (have a dedicated 2nd set of OEM rims). Awesome tires, but as others have mentioned, not so great when dry (mainly at higher speeds). Harder for the car to track perfectly straight at highway speeds, and the car floats around. Still, a balanced trade-off for their intended use...snow/ice.

I paid $750 for mine.

Yeah, they kinda feel like you are floating on the road, especially when you first make the transition from summer tires to these tires. You get used to it, even the lighter feeling steering wheel, but that's to be expected with the softer winter tires anyway.

They tend to break traction easily on dry roads if you try to corner too hard or fast, so you definitely can't throw it into corners as easily as you could on even the stock summer tires.

It was just a strange feeling when I first drove home after getting the tires mounted, but I've honestly forgotten what the summer tires even felt like. These just feel "stock" now. You lose a bit of dry road performance, but you gain a tremendous amount of snow/ice performance.

Thanks! Can't wait to get mine for next winter.

How much snow are you getting in Cali? lol

If it's just a bit, assuming you're in NorCal, I would look at the LM series rather than the WS's. Better dry performance, still decent snow performance...perfect compromise IMO.

By the way, what size should I get?

No I live in Chicago haha. Lots of snow.

Ah that makes sense! WS70's it is then :)

My ws70 were $400 on cl spotlessly new (old woman traded her legacy) on steelies.

First impressions were that the car felt like a swishy paintbrush compared to it on summer tires.


The car making it through the worst of every storm so far this winter without an issue has been well worth it

Lol thanks. Good look out by the way! Do you know what sizes to get?

I went with stock size, only because I was able to pick-up a set of OEM rims pretty cheap. I also like not having a steel wheel or aftermarket wheel for 4-6 months of the year (no offence to those that run these).

Suberman post yet?

Thankfully he's banned :D

With my Blizzaks, the steering wheel is more of a suggestion than a command. And I have the LM series Blizzaks, the sportier version, so I can only imagine how the WSs feel. I picked them up second hand, so a pretty good discount. They have paid for themselves many times over this winter.

i'm in love with my blizzaks this car actually has done really good in the snow for me so far with a fresh set of blizzaks. and that's coming from owning two subarus lol

I went with stock size because going down to 16's doesn't actually provide much more ability to "cut" through the snow as some suggest.
Also, I knew eventually I'd get new wheels for the summer so I plastidipped the stock wheels and decided that I would save some money for new wheels in the summer instead of spending a bit of it on steelies for the winter. That way, I wouldn't end up with 3 sets of wheels when I buy new summer ones. Plus I don't like the look of steelies lol.

Maybe I should have gone with these over the LM-60's. Really unimpressed with their performance, any kind of incline and I feel like I may as well be on summer tires.

I saw the LM's were supposed to be great for areas that don't see a ton of snow and thought they'd be great for the tri-state region...then this winter hit and was like, "nope, fuck that plan."

Huh, you know the ballast thing completely escaped me. I helped my buddy load sandbags in his old Ford Ranger for the same reason a few years back in Philly, and the idea of adding weight on the BRZ for snow just didn't translate over for some stupid reason. I'm sure growing up in SoCal didn't help.

When I just got back after a month of training in the Mojave, my battery was dead and there was 2-3 inches on the ground/poorly plowed roads. Made it home safe after a jump, but I stalled out just trying to get up my driveway and couldn't re-start it, having to waste another 30 minutes at 2:30 in the morning using my Outback to jump my car. That was fun.

Here let me fill in for him:

"This car was designed wrong from the factory and ~*obscure suspension metric*~ makes it so that if you try to drive these cars when it's snowing somewhere on planet earth then you will spin off the road, hit a fuel station and explode. Worst winter car I've ever driven!"

I agree, at first it felt like riding on pillows which didn't feel that great but once the snow and wet kicks in, you really feel the difference.

Curious, what psi does everyone have their tires set at?? I know the max is 44psi. When I first got mine, they were set to 40 each wheel by the shop that mounted them for me. Should the rear wheels be less or more psi or should they all be balanced? (Noob question, first car)

Suberman was an asshole, but he was more my kind of asshole. At least he normally had a metric ton of information to back up his points, but a lot of times I was left wondering, "what's the point?"

Whatever they are set at, they should all be the same PSI.

It's amazing what snow tires and a little bit of weight can do. I used to DD my mustang in the snow and never once had a problem.

With my STi and snow tires the point at which I can't go any further is when thick snow is coming up the hood over the windshield and my wipers aren't strong enough to clear it for me to see.

ROFL. Gatdam! Even I'm not banned. Yet. Well, not permanently anyway.

I rock mine between 36-38PSI to help with the soft sidewalls.

As someone else already said, it's mostly due to softer sidewalls.

I often take snow tires up to Mammoth, and for 80% of the drive up the 14/395 a car with snow tires would feel like a lifted truck with massive tires.

On a car like ours with precise steering, it's very apparent... almost like bad tires at first.

-alex

I agree-- I didn't mind him that much. I wouldn't have banned him, that's for sure. Every time he started talking about oversteer I had to giggle a bit and wonder what he was smoking, though. It was like the dude had never driven a RWD car before and just kept trying to describe his first experience with oversteer over and over. GUYS WHEN I MASH THE THROTTLE THE BACK END KICKS OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS CAR?!?!

Why'd they ban him though? At least his posts always got me thinking about suspension setup before remembering that suspension setup is pretty irrelevant when there's just no grip to be had.

He was banned because he started making new posts about the same topic, just to stir shit up. He also began insulting members for not conforming to his ideas.

I have WS70's on my BRZ as well. I told my wife that the car is a honey badger with them on. Snow, ice, whatever. Honey badger don't care, honey badger's a badass. It's been a wild winter here in Iowa, I'm really happy I put them on. I drove the car at the end of winter last year on the stock tires and it sucked.