Are those tires s**t or am I crazy?
 

So I got two new winter tires that I put on rear wheels (front were still good for one season). I got Pirelli Sottozero 3 xl 225x45x18. My front tires are 225x40x18. After I put those tires on, the car just drives horribly. Whenever I accelerate or decelerate, car pulls to either side. When driving on a highway at 75, I constantly have to steer left or right, as car wouldn't just go straight, it slowly pulls to either side. And traction control kicks in at even slow speeds around bends. In simple terms, the car just feels wobbly. My last winter tire was Sottozero 2 that I was pretty happy with. But the new model is just undrivable. Is it because it is a taller tire (45 vs. 40) or because they are just really bad tires? Any ideas?

Has it gotten cold enough around PA?
When I put my winters on and the weather was above 40 they would feel like jello and I would start to burn out on even 2k rpm starts lol. And Trac was on quite a lot.

Car pulling to one side on accel and/or decel can be a symptom of low pressure on one of the rears, so check that. Also could be that one of the new rears is bad (internal defect).

FWIW, I just put my winter tires on the S2000. Dunlop WinterSport 3D in taller sizes: 205/60-16 and 225/55-16 (not available in OEM sizes). Anyway, these winter tires actually give decently responsive handling, even with the taller sidewalls.

I find those tires wide and very low profiled for winter. I never ran with that kind of size, but maybe the softness of the rubber with the width and profile make it follow the road grooves more? I`ve always dropped to the smallest sized rim for winter to get extra sidewall and compliance.

Soft treadblocks make for a tough time going in a straight line.

I had Federal WS-2 on my BMW 135i last year and I couldnt even tickle the throttle at highway speeds even, just traction control and nothing else. I parked the car and sold it 2 days later.

I fucking hate winter tires.

unequal pressures


unbalanced wheels


whacked alignment

This.

Are you saying that you've mixed tire models (i.e., 3s and 2s) - if so, are the tread patterns identical? Not saying if this is the case that it necessarily has anything to do with it, but it would make me wonder if it might.

Another thing that comes to mind, you've now got front tires and rear tires with different rolling circumferences, right? I wonder if this car expects them to be more or less equal; that is, within a margin that yours are exceeding. Nannies kicking in when they shouldn't made me think of this.

Thanks everyone for your input! Some great points were raised!



Alignment is ok.



Tire pressure is ok. (it was set by tire place at 35, but since it is an extra load tire, I tired increasing it to 45. Same results)



Wheels are balanced.



I had them on in temperatures as low as mid 20s - car still feels like jello.



The other day I was going over a long stretch turn on a highway at 75mph and traction control kicked in (at 33 Fahrenheit).



I agree that the fact that traction control kicks in can have something to do with different sizes of front and back tires but it doesn't change the fact that car drives like crap! I paid almost $400 for those two tires and I feel like I'm driving a school bus. It completely ruins the driving experience. I'll be calling Tire Rack and demanding a refund tomorrow.

I'll have a matched set of these today or tomorrow... Will be extra curious about the performance now, but ratings on the tire suggest it isn't at fault.

Have you tried disabling traction control?

I don't know how precisely our traction controls are set, and it's different from car to car. But the way the system works is to detect and respond to a difference in the rotational speed of one or more wheels, because a tire that's not fully engaged with the road (i.e. skidding, slipping etc) will be turning at a different rate from one that's fully engaged with the road surface. A driven wheel with an open diff will be spinning faster if it loses traction. A non-driven wheel (fronts, in our case) or a driven wheel with a locked diff will be turning slower if it's sliding than if it's gripping the road.

Different rolling radius tires turn at different RPMs at the same road speed. This confuses electronic traction and stability controls, which are programmed for a specific ratio of front to rear tire diameter. If the difference in rolling radius between the front and rear tires is great enough (or different enough from the one programmed in to function properly with different F & R tire sizes) to trigger the electronic sensors, the result can be rapid cycling of tiny amounts of "correction" because the computer thinks that one or more wheels is spinning too fast and the car "must" be skidding.

This could be the cause of your handling woes, although Tire Rack is pretty knowledgeable and very careful about advising customers against problematic changes in tire size from OEM.

Spent almost 8 hours on my new Sottozero 3 today on dry, wet, and snow covered pavement, really nice tires. Unless there's a bum tire (it happens) I'm suspecting the size difference even more strongly now.