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Originally Posted by pancake
I'm trying to stay as low cost as possible without being too cheap to the point that I waste money buying a winter setup that doesn't work.
Would it be better/more cost effective to buy a separate change of rims for winter with winter tires on them, or to buy winter tires for the stock rims?
From my understanding, it would cost money twice a year to have to rebalance the tires before and after winter when exchanging the winters for year-round tires.
Also, is it a bad idea to put snow tires on the stock rims because the rims are relatively skinny? Would snow tires be very effective if they are on skinny rims like we get stock?
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Go to TireRack, and order a winter tire package. Mine cost about $650 delivered. Get four winter tires, mounted and balanced on a set of steelies. A lot of what you said is correct. By getting them on a separate set of wheels, you can swap them at whim, which means you save the cost (and potential damage) of having them remounted twice a year. Also means if there is a late freak storm and you really need to get somewhere (or an early summer day and you wanna have fun) you can swap them in 30 minutes.
Winter tires should be gotten on smaller, skinnier wheels. This affords you extra cushion and protection from winter hazards that you might not see in the snow, and thinner tires cut through the snow better than wider tires, which ride up onto the snow. The ones I ran were 205/55R16. If you Google photos of rally cars doing snow/ice stages, they look like they are running on apace savers... super skinny!
As far as brand, I had Blizzaks on my old Outback and my car was essentially an unstoppable tank (18" of snow? No problem!) I did an experiment this year and bought General Altimax Arctic winter tires because a.) I wanted to see if they were "half the price, 90% the performance" like people said, and b.) This being my first RWD car, and having just gotten it, I knew I wouldn't be able to resist some hooning, and didn't want to tear up the pricier Blizzaks.
Having been through a winter with the Generals, they aren't bad (any winter tire will be way better than an all-season) but my friend had Blizzaks on his FR-S and he had noticeably more grip, so when it comes time to get new tires in another year or so I'll probably go back to Blizzaks unless there is something better by then.