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Although the car came with all season tires we get some heavy snows here in the Denver area so I looked into some real snow tires.
I'm a long term customer of Tire Rack and bought a set of Bridgestone Bilzzaks WS90 in 255/50-17 and a set of black steel wheels 17 x 6'5". The mounted and balanced tires arrived the next day as Tire Rack has a warehouse in the Denver area. Total cost was $1,124.
They came with bright colored tags on each tire specifying Driver or Passenger side. Turned out three were marked for the wrong side of the car. I always check the rotation markings on the tires so I got them on the correct sides of the car.
The 17" wheels cleared the Sport brake calipers by a little over 1/2" and the tire size comparison showed a 1% difference in diameter.
I weighed one of each set and found that the steel/snow tire combo weighed 51 lb and the OEM 19" wheels and tires weighed 60 lb.
The first thing I noticed on the first drive on dry pavement was that the snow tires were a whole lot quieter than the OEM tires. That really surprised Me.
I've had them out on some slick snow packed streets and was very happy with steering, braking and acceleration performance. The big test will be in a couple of days when we will get some big snow and below zero temps.
The wheels are butt ugly and I will be looking into some hubcaps to improve the looks. It was -1F the morning I planned to install them using the garage but decided to raise the Miata which is in the middle of a suspension change and change the tires in my heated shop. The slop on the side came when I drove it on the OEM tires in some melted streets with slush. The blue tag on the tire reads Passenger side. I informed Rudy at Tire Rack about the labels and he is looking into it.
I'm a long term customer of Tire Rack and bought a set of Bridgestone Bilzzaks WS90 in 255/50-17 and a set of black steel wheels 17 x 6'5". The mounted and balanced tires arrived the next day as Tire Rack has a warehouse in the Denver area. Total cost was $1,124.
They came with bright colored tags on each tire specifying Driver or Passenger side. Turned out three were marked for the wrong side of the car. I always check the rotation markings on the tires so I got them on the correct sides of the car.
The 17" wheels cleared the Sport brake calipers by a little over 1/2" and the tire size comparison showed a 1% difference in diameter.
I weighed one of each set and found that the steel/snow tire combo weighed 51 lb and the OEM 19" wheels and tires weighed 60 lb.
The first thing I noticed on the first drive on dry pavement was that the snow tires were a whole lot quieter than the OEM tires. That really surprised Me.
I've had them out on some slick snow packed streets and was very happy with steering, braking and acceleration performance. The big test will be in a couple of days when we will get some big snow and below zero temps.
The wheels are butt ugly and I will be looking into some hubcaps to improve the looks. It was -1F the morning I planned to install them using the garage but decided to raise the Miata which is in the middle of a suspension change and change the tires in my heated shop. The slop on the side came when I drove it on the OEM tires in some melted streets with slush. The blue tag on the tire reads Passenger side. I informed Rudy at Tire Rack about the labels and he is looking into it.