Hello and a question about Prius touring

You might buy a second set of wheels (standard size) and mount your winter tires on them then you only have to change wheels with the seasons.

 

195x55x16's snow tires (e.g. X-Ice and Nikion WRG2) are special orders out of Denver every where I've asked in Albuquerque. You might want to start the process of getting winter tires even though part of the winter season is gone. Reading in the forum, it would appear that BRAND NEW OEM Touring Tires are probably OK in the snow but you wouldn't want to plan on using them beyond the remainder of the current winter season. Next snow I am going to take mine out and see if they are usable in their current state (3,000 miles).

 

I don't have a Touring, but from what I've read on this forum (and I believe I've read every thread and almost every post about the Touring), I know of no one who carries around a full size spare in the Touring OEM size of 195/55/16. Everyone just lives with the donut spare. But because there are very few non-runflat tires available in the OEM size, when Touring owners want a complete new set of tires -- be they all season, snow or other tires -- I've seen a lot of Touring owners go with the very popular and standard 205/55/16 size, in which there are A LOT of different tires available.

One thing I would suggest is to get a can of the current formulation of Fix-A-Flat. It's now been formulated to be safe to use with cars or wheels, like those on the Prius, that have a tire pressure monitoring sensor/system.

 

did you try tirerack? i see a dunlop sp winter sport 3d run on flat tire in stock for 109 a tire.. i thought they had more winter tires but now i just see that one.

sears has the winter sport m3 for 131. i do not know if thats the same tire

i used to see like 3 or so winter tires for that size. i wonder if they still make winter tires in that size

 

The touring can use the standard 15" wheels without a problem. I ordered standard 15" steel wheels with Blizzak tires from Tirerack.com Except for not having the air pressure sensors on them (which causes the low air pressure light to be on) it works fine. In general it's actually better to have skinnier tires in snow and ice anyway, so skinnier 15" wheels with non-touring sized tires is a good plan for snow. Plus it means that you don't need a tire shop to unmount and remount your tires every winter.

 

yeah that would be a good suggestion

 

Tried Tire Rack?

Dunlop SP Winter Sport 3D ROF