Snow tires...wow...

[Evil Jesus]

Winter tires! Wooooooooooooo!

[OrbitalEllipses]

Originally Posted by utekineir

Why are you guys still arguing in a second thread over the same thing with a guy that advocates mounting tires two extra times a year as a way to save money.

Clearly he operates on a level far different than everyone else.

I'm a sucker that loves to read his own words.

[utekineir]

Originally Posted by OrbitalEllipses

I'm a sucker that loves to read his own words.

Me too man, me too

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by utekineir

Why are you guys still arguing in a second thread over the same thing with a guy that advocates mounting tires two extra times a year as a way to save money.

Clearly he operates on a level far different than everyone else.

You should do the math. Don't forget the charges to bolt on bolt off your second set of wheels. Even if you do it yourself you need to compare apples to apples.

If you buy cheap second wheels then of course the payback is shorter, but you're still not comparing apples to apples. Steelies are fugly.

And you're right, I do operate on a level far different from you, but you can't tell just how far...or you'd be close.

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by OrbitalEllipses

Still trolling. "Let me talk about cars that have more weight over the real axle and thus have no traction issues." Dude. Seriously? Perhaps your problem is that you don't know what the dynamics of FMR layout vehicles are like and you abuse inputs in inclement weather with tires never meant for "DAT GRIP YO."

Before you respond that you know FMR dynamics, you brought up the rear weight biased Porsches (without specifying any front-engine model codes), so don't even...

Er, actually it was you who first raised the rear and mid engined comparo. Only Porsche makes a model with each of those setups. And they drive quite similarly, with the Cayman obviously superior in its handling to both its big brother and any version of the BRZ or FRS, whether modified or stock.

I simply responded to your query.

Perhaps you may like to read your own words but it is difficult to understand why you don't know what you've just written.

Oh, wait a sec, that is easy to understand, just not for you.

[OrbitalEllipses]

Originally Posted by Suberman

Er, actually it was you who first raised the rear and mid engined comparo. Only Porsche makes a model with each of those setups. And they drive quite similarly, with the Cayman obviously superior in its handling to both its big brother and any version of the BRZ or FRS, whether modified or stock.

I simply responded to your query.

Perhaps you may like to read your own words but it is difficult to understand why you don't know what you've just written.

Oh, wait a sec, that is easy to understand, just not for you.

You're claiming snap oversteer is an issue in a FMR layout vehicle that has 200hp, but not an issue in higher powered RMR and RR layout vehicles you've driven? Then challenge my intelligence - over the internet I might add.Okay. Yup. *mic drop*

Originally Posted by Suberman

You need to know this if you intend to drive this car at high speeds on very wet roads, snow or ice.

Think we found our issue. Peace guys, enjoy winter.

[utekineir]

Originally Posted by Suberman

You should do the math. Don't forget the charges to bolt on bolt off your second set of wheels. Even if you do it yourself you need to compare apples to apples.

If you buy cheap second wheels then of course the payback is shorter, but you're still not comparing apples to apples. Steelies are fugly.

And you're right, I do operate on a level far different from you, but you can't tell just how far...or you'd be close.

1) I'm not 80, I have a good jack, impact tools and compressor, it takes me far less time and hassle to change over tires at home than to load up the car, drive to a shop and wait a half hour or so for some $7 an hour asshole to screw something up.

Few years ago I bought my forester to a place with 2 sets of 17" wheels in the back end, one set with mounted tires one set without. The instructions were to switch the tires over to the bare set. He had to reach over the mounted wheels to get to the ones without tires. The instructions were clear, the only things to be messed with were in the back of the car, nothing was to be done with the vehicle itself.

An hour later I came back to find the car up in the air with no wheels, the 16" wheels i drove in on naked in a pile and the dipshit tech trying to put 16" tires onto the bare 17" wheels from the back of the car.

I shit you not.

No thanks,

2) You neglect to assign resale value to the wheels purchased, they do have a value when you are done with them, if you didn't pay too much new half may be possible, if you didn't pay too much used there may be no loss, or even a profit. This is assuming you don't curb or bend them.

3) I'm comfortable enough with myself that i could give a fuck how ugly steel wheels are. In a way i find them kind of rugged and sexy like the brawny man in assess chaps and a hard hat. and regardless when the car gets covered in salt a day after every wash, nitpicking over pretty wheels is putting the cart before the horse.

4) In the real world apples to apples is called net dollars spent, your plan for net dollars spent sucks.

[Suberman]

What if you earn $450 per hour. Still do the same math do you?


Resale value on the extra wheels? You are kidding....aren't you?

Rofl.

[utekineir]

Originally Posted by Suberman

What if you earn $450 per hour. Still do the same math do you?


Resale value on the extra wheels? You are kidding....aren't you?

Rofl.

If I made $450 an hour I wouldn't be on a 25k car forum, neither would you.

Everything has resale value. Some things next to none some things retain it decently. Wheels despite what you think actually do have a value on the used market. Please check the wheel and tire section classified section of every auto forum in existence or even just craigslist for proof of this.

If you want to debate nothing at least try coming up with decent points.

[crash.1340]

I saw the title of this post and immediately though of the Doge meme

Snow tires.
Wow.
So traction.
Much cold.
Such tread squirm.
Very sidewall flex.
Wow.

But in all seriousness, I have a set of General Altimax Arctic tires on the front of my Prelude and I absolutely love them. The same cannot be said about the Altimax HPs on the back. They were free, granted, but they've sent my car swapping ends into a ditch three times now. I mean, I know my car oversteers like mad but damn, tires! You scary!

[HunterGreene]

Originally Posted by Suberman

You should do the math. Don't forget the charges to bolt on bolt off your second set of wheels. Even if you do it yourself you need to compare apples to apples.

If you buy cheap second wheels then of course the payback is shorter, but you're still not comparing apples to apples. Steelies are fugly.

Just can't resist feeding the troll sometimes.

The shop I bought my tires from does the swaps back and forth free of charge. Maybe the shops in your area just love to bend you over the tire balancer (whatever its called).

And I for one like the way my steelies look on my car. Your point about them being ugly is completely unrelated to this thread. Consider how applicable the topic is before including worthless crap to your posts.

Originally Posted by Suberman

The BRZ suffers from severe and abrupt oversteer in conditions where it should not do so. You need to know this if you intend to drive this car at high speeds on very wet roads, snow or ice.

That failure may kill you someday.

If you are driving fast enough to induce this "severe and abrupt oversteer," please hand in your driver's license. I don't know anyone who plans on driving this car at speed in crappy winter (let alone summer) conditions. Those acts are limited to morons, idiots, and trolls like yourself. If the conditions are crappy, I'm driving slow and carefully, no exceptions. There will be plenty of time to thrash this car around corners when its warmer and dry.

[ZDan]

Originally Posted by Suberman

My BRZ is basically undrivable on the icy roads we have at the moment.

However, it isn't tire grip because it stops just fine.

You always have the entire weight of the car on the braked wheels. Stopping power is just the weight of the car multiplied by the effective coefficient of friction available. If coefficient of friction on an icy road is 0.2, you can stop at ~0.2g (6.4 ft/s^2). From 30mph (44 ft/s), it would take 6.8 seconds and 150 feet to stop.

Accelerating in low-grip conditions, you only have about 46-48% of the weight of the car on the drive wheels. You'll spin the tires as soon as you try to accelerate quicker than about 0.1g or 3.2 ft/s^2. At that rate, it would take you 13.6 seconds and a football field's length to accelerate to 30mph!
And that's with ideal suspension alignment. Even a little bit of toe at the rear will make it worse.

Steering is nice and quick which allows you to catch the drift immediately but oh my goodness did Subaru ever screw up the back axle on this car. And they did this on purpose, apparently.

In low low grip conditions, the rear suspension is barely moving, so it isn't anything to do with any wonky geometry change with bump.

Do you know what your alignment settings are? You might try setting rear toe to the lowest end of the adjustment range, or even to zero.

Hope somebody aftermarket designs a fix for this soon. I suspect the Torsen is a tad too tight and something odd is happening under squat.

A regular torsen shouldn't be "tight" at very low torque levels you'll have in icy conditions. As soon as one tire tries to spin, however, it will act to lock up a bit. A MUCH better situation than an open diff which will just spin one wheel, giving you only a little more than half the drive.

And again, in very low grip conditions, there can't be a lot of squat.

Since the car is more predictable and easier to drive, sort of, with the traction control off then I suspect it is the rear suspension which is to blame. The Torsen just makes it even twitchier.
No wonder you can drop clutch drift this car on dry pavement with only 150 lb ft of torque to kick the ass end out. On ice you can do this if you sneeze.

Check your alignment.

Originally Posted by Suberman

40 + years of winter driving. It's not the tires. It's the rear axle. Adding weight to the trunk (a Mickey Mouse solution anyway) will not correct this fault because the tires grip just fine under braking.

See comments above. In low grip conditions in this car, you're going to have twice the braking grip as drive grip. Adding weight to the trunk will help a little bit, improving static distribution from 54/46 to 52/48. That's 4% more grip, not bad... I would carry a few 25 lb. boxes of kitty litter in the back of the 240SX (similar weight distribution issues and no LSD), then if I did get hung up I had plenty of "traction compound"!

Originally Posted by Suberman

The handling problems of this car in low friction situations are very well documented. The car oversteers too easily and too abruptly when grip goes down. This would also happen in the warm and dry if the car had enough power.

Handling in dry/warm conditions on sticky tires will be very different, and much more dependent on suspension dynamics. In very low-grip conditions, it's pretty much all down to:
1. weight distribution (only 46% on the drive wheels)
2. coefficient of friction (need GOOD winter tires, or VERY-good-in-snow/ice all-seasons)
3. static toe settings (any toe and you're already slipping some amount any time you're moving, even with zero input torque in a straight line)


FWIW, I've driven only rwd cars through New England winters since 1998.
'85 535i, '90 RX-7 convertible, '91 240SX, '95 240SX, '95 Z28, '01 S2000, '94 RX-7 (w/ 500+hp LS2!). Up until ~2005 or so I did it on summer tires (dumb!). None of the cars I've done this with gave me the kind of issues you seem to have with the BRZ. With proper tires, they get around OK in snow/ice. Without them, not so much...

I can't help but think that there's either something up with your particular car, or you just haven't driven a front-weight-biased rwd car in snow/ice before. There are inherent limitations here!

Originally Posted by Suberman

You should do the math. Don't forget the charges to bolt on bolt off your second set of wheels.

Already mentioned by someone else, I have my summer/winter tire changeovers done for free at the shop down the street, and they store my off-season wheels/tires for me.

[Suberman]

This post just before mine is very useful. Thanks for the thoughtful and well reasoned analysis.

I agree that geometry should be less important or, in very low grip pretty much irrelevant, to this sudden oversteer issue.

It is hard to differentiate clutch effects from geometry effects in a straight line.

It cannot be a squat issue and this car doesn't squat much (or dive for that matter) at all.

The suggestion about toe settings is a good one. Rear toe can have a big effect on turn in and this car turns in beautifully, maybe too well in low grip!

By tight for the Torsen I meant the bias ratio, reputed to be 4:1 which is right up there. Normal range for street torsen sis 2.5 to about 4.5. The max usable bias ratio is thought to be around 6:1. Bias ratio isn't changed by grip. You can certainly feel and hear those rear tires grinding away in tight low speed turns in the dry.

I understand the drive wheels have only half the grip of all four and that weight transfer effects are minimal in low grip conditions. Allowing for that the rear axle is still deficient in getting the power down. This is true over the entire grip range from hot dry pavement to minus 30C icy pavement. The lack of rear grip is noticeable. Pre 90's BMW share this trait and that was due to the trail angle and camber of the semi trailing arm rear suspension. It was more or less fixed when BMW switched to multi link in 1990. Braking will always be better than accelerating in any two wheel drive vehicle. So much so that I consider awd to be dangerous in the hands of inexperienced winter drivers and many accidents result from awd's inherent characteristics in transient maneuvers.

Also, many people seem to assume the problems I describe result because I can't drive this car in winter (or summer according to some) but of course I can. I've driven for over 40 years and in winter every year. I learned to drive in winter in an old British car with bias ply summer tires, three on the tree and four wheel drum brakes. I learned to heel and toe, double clutch and counter steer in that car, with maybe 55 bhp....my most powerful car (so far, and torque actually) was a chipped and Stasis coilovered 2001 Audi S4 which monstered snow but oversteered wildly with ESP switched off, rear roll rate was set deliberately far too high to get rid of some of Audi's infamous push in the dry. On the slippery stuff it was....exhilarating. My jaguar awd (X Type and now XF V6 SC) are much better handling cars than any Audi I've driven. My new Jag isn't far off in power either at 340 bhp, it has the new F Type engine.

Looking at the Subie multi link rear I see a very odd angle and travel arc for the upper leading arm, the adjustable toe link. I'm also suspicious that the suspension bushings may be tuned to affect toe angle change rates. And I fault the clutch for much of the initial traction problems as starting off in second gear produces much more grip no doubt due to the clutch slip and higher ratio softening the initial starting of the wheels, essential in very low mu conditions. One reason taller ratio tires work better in winter is sidewall flex especially when acceleration or braking is initiated, or turn in is demanded. The softer flex in the taller sidewall helps the contact patch stay stuck as the maneuver is begun. The trade off is the contact patch peels off more easily as grip levels get higher. No free lunch for tire designers.

[cagster]

Ok, for the dummies in this crowd (me) , I am going to ask a question very opinionated probably. Live in the snowbelt of MA, Fitchburg, and since I just got home from business trip and now there is 14 inches of snow on the ground, what type of winter tires do you prefer for the FRS. Are they studless or with studs. I drove last winter with the stock summer tires and wasnt too bad as long as the roads had already been plowed and free of ice however getting up to my house was always a challenge.

What do you suggest?

Need some suggestions quickly before I have to go back to work.....lol. Oh yes, right now I am planning on mounting them on stock weels, any thoughts on that??

Since this is my first car or truck with TPMS, if I mount the winter tires on the stock wheels do I need to replace the TPMS??

Thanks