Extra rims for snows?

I bought a set of 4 tires mounted on 15" steel wheels for my Prius from Tirerack.com. I've dealt with them for years, good company.

You can use 15s even if you have a touring, and for snows the narrower the better. I'd strongly suggest getting matching snows all around, otherwise you may find the back of your car trying to come around on you while cornering on slick ice.

 

No matter where you get them from, save yourself some money both in up-front costs and annual expense and do not get wheels with the TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) sensors. Your car can only store codes for 4 sensors, so every time you change you'd have to go to the dealer and pay them to reprogram the computer for the change in wheels (it's not something you can do without Toyota's specific computer interface unit).

You may notice after a while the 'low tire pressure' warning light comes on, a piece of black tape will cover it up if it annoys you.

 

We bought the cheepest steel wheels that Big 'O' sells for a set of Big 'O' studded snow tires. Hey, shloggin' thru the slushy muddy muck & ice & snow, who cares about style when the skum covers up what ever is underneith anyway.

 

All this talk of snow makes me sad. I'm the Anti-snow. Where-ever I've been in the last ten years it's not snowed. I go on vacation and immediately it starts snowing at home. I've even spent two Christmases in the states and still no snow when they normally had loads!

Invite me over and I am absolutely sure you'll never have to worry about even buying snow tires.

 

Look for someone who replaced their stock rims. I found a used set of Prius rims on this site for way less than dealer cost (I bought all 4 for the price of 1 at dealer-thank you kind PC member) and put on Nokian Hakkapeliitta RSi's (highly recommend). You are guaranteed to have them fit and they weigh less than steels. I agree, don't buy the TPMS sensors, my car didn't even realize they were gone until one long road trip, probably because my regular set was nearby in the garage.

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-m...view-nokian-hakkapeliitta-rsi.html#post525025

 

From Pennsylvania originally and don't understand the narrower the better advise. Are you going for traction or MPG?
BTW, that's what I had. I actually had 2 extra sets on rims. This is back when the steel studs were legal under certain conditions. I was a Customer Service Rep wiith IBM and had to get around in all weather. Had my regular tires, non-studded snowtires for winter, and studded for forecasts of severe conditions. Had a floor jack, star wrench, could change tires in 15-20min.

 

Narrower tires in snow perform better as they "slice" or "split" the snow and reach the pavement.

With wider tires, snow is stuck under the tire, can't evacuate on the sides and you're driving on a cushion of slippery snow.

When I had my WRX, I was in a Subaru club owner... we got together and rented the Mecaglisse winter racing track and hired a private winter rally pilot for lessons.
race car driving school – summer and winter quebec, Canada

The Pilot instructor did confirm that narrower tires are better for winter driving.

 

For low traction situations, narrow tires are always better as long as there is a better road surface under the low traction material. Dune buggies and such use wide tires to float on the surface of the sand, but you aren't going to be able to do this on snow with a normal car. There just isn't enough room for the tractor tires you would need for all of the weight. It's the same reason tracked vehicles exist. A track distributes the weight over a large surface area.

With narrow snow tires, you cut down through the snow and grip the underlying road. You get better traction, and less rolling resistance, since you plow less snow with the tires.

Tom

 

I agree that if the snow conditions are such that the tires can cut through the snow to the road surface and the roads are fairly level a narrow tire would work, but then you wouldn't need a snow tread either, if the tire was on the road surface. I'm used to conditions in rural Pennsylvania, not recently in these mild winters, when it could be days or weeks before you would see a road surface except on the major arteries. Snow banks on both sides of the road higher than the car. All weather were O.K. from spring to fall, or occasional snowfall; but you really needed a good knobby wide tread to get around the back roads, up and down the hills. Still a number of dirt roads in Pennsylvania countryside. I remember a number of times that you weren't allowed on the on the road w/o chains. Couple hundred pounds on sand in the back didn't hurt either. I know, not today with front wheel drive. I realize you don't want to run knobby snow yires on a front wheel drive unless it's a mud buggy, but wider is more traction. Whether on the snow or on the road surface, the more rubber that makes contact the better contact. I don't see where the small window in which a slight difference in the width of the tire would make the difference between the tire penetrating the snow to the road surface or not, could possibly outweigh the benefit of the additional traction. Two of my cars were VW beetles in the '60's, trust me the wider snowtreads got me around much better than the narrow regular ones. I know, because somethimes I put off changing to the snowtreads too long in the fall. I don't know who your expect was, but he obiously is not experienced with driving in a good PA winter, were you can be on anything from dirt, to mud, to ice, to snow, to ice under dnow, to, oh! yea!, the road surface, or is it black ice?​

 

Look, I really mean no disrespect, But I cannot help get the feeling that you don't have much experience driving on different types of snow conditions. You are correct in that a narrow snow tire should give you better MPG, but not better traction. Once you cut though the snow you still have to deal with the tire to road traction, and wider means more traction. BTW, snow tires actually have less traction on a road surface than regular tires. The larger grooves means less rubber on the road. That's why they use slicks when racing on road surfaces. No tread means more rubber on the road, thus better traction. The snowtread works on snow by trapping snow in the wide groves and compressing it on the hard packed snow on the road surface, actually forming a brief bond between the snow in the treads and the hard packed snow or ice on the surface. Did you ever built a snowman or make a snowball. Packing the snow will make it stick together. You're not driving on the surface like a snowcat or on the actual road surface. If you have, in fact, penetrated to the acutal road surface, the snow tire actually has less traction than a regular tire tread. To be honest, I don't know what I would pick for a happy medium if we moved back to PA. Our Avalon is FWD also. Probably look for a Touring size in a good FWD snow/all-weather. It's a personal preference. I choose to favor handling, stopping, stability, traction and safety over a few extra mpg. I'm going with the Prius for mpg. I still want a car that I feel safe driving.

 

Last winter we had a total accumulation of about 40 feet of snow. I never thought I'd discuss snow tires with someone in Georgia...​

Anyways, I'm always open to different opinions, as I may have been wrong. So a bit of googling (I avoided discussion forums quotes):​

Snow Tires, Winter Tires, Studded Snow Tires​

PREPARE YOUR CAR AND YOURSELF FOR WINTER DRIVING​

Winter driving - Wikitravel​

Narrow vs. Wide In Tire Safety - New York Times​

How To Buy New Tires​

Transports Québec : Ten Myths... About Winter Driving !​

http://www.motortrend.com/features/car_care/112_9903_tire_myths_and_reality/index.html​

 

By the way, if you need snow tires, you need four, not two. driving with different tires isn't recommended. Many of the links I listed above about "narrow vs wide" will also state that the old "use two winter tires on the motoring wheels" trick is a myth. You should use four winter tires.

 

I've lived in Central Vermont most of my life, in what you could call the "snow belt". Also plow the white stuff commercially. It's been my experience that narrower tires offer better traction in snow. You don't want all that float that the fat wide tires give you.
But I guess Stefx has that covered already.

 

Funny you call it the "snow belt". On a real cold day at -40 deg. C (-40F) it feels more like snow hell

I'm still looking for something that says "wider winter tires are better".

I still haven't found one, but I did find this however, which was expected:

Jeep Snow Driving Tips - JP Magazine

 

Well, I must concede and appreciate the responces. Hopefully, I'm proof that an old dog can learn new tricks. I believe! I believe! Although it may take me some time to accept that I could have gotten my 4000lb '67 Club Wagon, loaded with spare parts, the 2 miles up our dirt lane, in a couple of feet of new fallen snow, on top of the packed snow, with bicicle wheels on it. Please that's not meant to be smart. I'm just tying to say that there must be some point of diminishing return on the narrow is better concept. If I understand the logic, then if, running your tires @ factory specs, (3000lbs/4wheels)/(35 front/33 rear or 34 avgpsi) or roughly 22sq inches of rubber on each tire making contact with the road. I realize that the actually psi where the rubber meets the road would be roughly proportion to the tread design( rubber vs voids in the tread ). But for general purposes. Therefore if you don't change the weight of you car or the air pressure in your tires, your foot print would remain the same size in area. Ergo, wider=shorter, narrower=longer, but same area of contact with the road. Ergo same traction, but makes it easier for tire to slice through snow to solid surface, whether road or hardpacked snow. And possibly due to a difference in tread design allow more sharpe edges in the tread to lock inyo the hardpacked snow.
O.K., I'm sold. Thanks for all the patience. It just took a big enough 2X4.
BTW A side thought! In going though this exercise, it hit me, doesn't that mean that all the hypermilers that are running on double the psi are running on half the traction?

 

I plowed through snow above the bumper many a time with the afore mentioned wagon. Had wide oval "J"s on it and air shocks on the rear with an on-board compressor. Gauge and contol on dash. Chains in the back. Would lower the rear when driving through snow above axles. If I got stuck with packed snow under rear, I could raise the rear out of the snow and back out and try another run or another route. Didn't like getting out of the car with my 3 piece suit and 16lb wingtips, onder those conditions. Ret'd IBMer, territory was south-central PA.

 

On more aside! We moved to Marietta, Ga in Oct "77. My wife was the only nurse to make it into the hospital for night shift quite a few times in the winter months, that is, until the winters got milder. It was a '73 Gran Torino Broughm then. Radial snow tires & chains.
I new we were going to be in trouble when the new announced that it was going to be a heavy snow and that Atlanta had it snowplow ready. That's correct, not plural, singular. Hundred's were stranded on the interstates overnight. The hospital was right next to I-75. My wife said the police brought a lot of the stranded prople to the hospital for shelter.
Anyway, just ramling.

 

Agreed. I wouldn't go down 2-3 sizes. In the Prius case, I'd go for the touring tire size for the 3 warm seasons, and the 15" OEM size for the winter, not narrower than that.

 

Hmm, have you noticed that in your examples you had snow tires and CHAINS? I suspect they were responsible for the good traction, not the wider tires.

Stefx, you got any research to prove your point?

Not that I have any experience, but I hear Model Ts were quite good in snow and they had REALLY narrow tires. Why did they perform? Because they sank into the snow and didn't put out a wide 'face'. Not so good in the mud I suppose.