Are Front-Wheel Drive and All-Season Tires Enough for Winter Driving?

Yea ice can melt in hell for all I care... Especially black ice..
 
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Common sight... the wheels are all locked up! Once you lock em' the tires can't grip and you can actually start sliding faster since you have completely broken "traction." Let off a little and I bet some of em woulda made it.

Tire only has 100% of it's traction available at any one time split up to brake, turn, or accelerate. If you split it between cornering and braking sometimes you can do niether. Ive found it helpful sometimes to completely let off the brake and just try to steer. I dunno maybe im crazy but works for me.

I almost can't wait for it to snow to get some good cams. I see some retarded stuff in the white.
 
I've seen people slow down, then try to turn while coasting. At that point, the gas pedal must be used to get the drive wheels to pull the car in the direction you want.
 
Yup! That's exactly it... im always on the gas to try and get some force in the direction I want to go.
 
We had a nasty "snow event" Tuesday night, and of course I hadn't put the snows on yet... whoops! Got them put on this morning, and it's supposed to snow again tonight, so we'll see. The stock wheels/tires tracked straight and stopped great, but I couldn't take off for anything... No matter how careful I was, I kept having the traction control engaging. People were leaving me in the dust at stop lights. The Blizzaks should be better. :) Sad part now is that the TPMS system is having a nervous breakdown. I've got two idiot lights and the i-MID blinking at me. Joy. I did get the sensors installed, and the shop that put on the wheels for me tried to initialize them for me but couldn't (they could only do up to 2010). Anyone got any idea of what this is going to cost me? I guess I could always put duct tape over the display. Heh.
 
I've seen some people on 8th say dealerships charged them up to 100 dollars to program the 4. If the shop could do 2010's, I don't see why he couldn't do yours. They're supposed to be the same tpms as the previous civic according to collegehillshonda?
 
The guy hooked a little handheld computer up to it and tried. I never said anything about it to them, and I think he just expected he was going to be able to do it. When he asked what year mine is, I told him it's a '12, then he said they only have up to the 2010s in the handheld. I assume eventually they'll be able to. He also mentioned that some cars can just "learn" the new sensors. Tire Rack already told me I'd have to have it done at the dealership, and I did some research into it that pretty much revealed that the TPMS system that Honda and Toyota (and some other foreign cars) use pretty much has to be initialized by the dealer. I was hoping the i-MID would just let me disable the warnings, but NOOO. :) I have an appt for Thursday. We'll see if I make it until then without putting duct tape over all the idiot lights.

The local dealership is doing it for me for $50, which is still ridiculous, but better than $100. My oil life is at 30% (with 8500 miles), so I need to get that changed, anyway.

They keep predicting more snow, but it hasn't snowed again since I put the new wheels/tires on, so I haven't really gotten to try them out yet. I will say the car already seems more stable with them on it. I think I'll look for new tires to replace the OEM Contis once spring rolls around. I looked at reviews of them, and they're pretty mixed. A lot of people really hate them.
 
I can't comment on the contis, but other oem tires from honda I've had in the past have been horrible. Wet traction and tire life... a joke
glad to hear they're at least doing your tpms a lot cheaper than I've seen posted in the past :thumbsup:
 
I believe HOA gets all their tires from TireRack. If you need an OEM replacement they order from them. Weird eh?
 
Just for the record, our predicted "horrible winter" hasn't happened so far. I'm convinced it's because I put snow tires on. :) In any case, we did have two days of significant snow fall last week. The Blizzaks are SO much better than the OEMs... Traction is significantly improved (I can actually step on the gas to pull away from a light without having the tires spin - I pretty much had to idle away from intersections before), cornering is very impressive, and I've had no problems stopping. I do drive very conservatively in the snow, but I feel much safer with the Blizzaks.
 
Yeah seriously where is the snow! I think we would probably be fine with high perf summers with the way things are going. Geez... im grinding my snows into dust.
 
ski resorts have to be hating life right now. We had some snow earlier in the week, but it was short lived and melted. :(
 
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