With sweaty palms, I gingerly put the car back where it was and told my wife that under no circumstance could we ever drive the Lexus even at the remotest hint of bad winter weather. She then told me that even when it's wet, she found the car skids and the rear wheels spin out. Great.
To complicate matters, last summer I sold our four-wheel-drive Tahoe and replaced it with, of all things, a Mitsubishi Eclipse GTS Spyder. Then my wife got a promotion at the Cleveland Clinic to a position that required her to be "on campus" full-time, no more working remotely. That left her with one of two options if she wanted to get to work when its snowy - she either takes my 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS to work, I continue to have some flexibility to work from home, or on days when I'm in the office, we carpool. Either way we still have a huge hockey puck stuck in the garage.
It was her idea for us to look into getting "snows" for the Lexus, meaning snow tires. We had bought Bridgestone Blizzaks for the 1996 Camaro's both of our boys had and our older son bought them for his 2017 Camaro the first winter he had it.
Snow tires are a commitment and they're not for the faint of heart. There's not only the expense of the tires but, if you so choose, finding a spare set of rims for them and then there's storage of the tires that are not being used. You could swap out the tires using one set of rims but it's a hassle to haul the tires twice a year back and forth to wherever you bought them. Keep in mind - most tire shops will not swap tires they did not sell you. Small shops? Big maybe. Find out ahead of time. Costco, where we bought our tires right before Thanksgiving, charges some $80 to do the swap. Each time. They can also sell you set of snazzy rims but they're twice the cost of the tires. What to do?
Find a set of rims at the old Pull-A-Part that would fit, that's what you do. I did the research and I found that the rims from this 1993 Lexus LS400 have the same bolt pattern as our car does. Same size rim too. They're not pretty but being $800 less expensive than a full set of new rims from Costco, I think they're beautiful. I got lucky finding these rims as quick as I did. One rim was missing off the car but god bless Lexus, the full-size spare used the same rim, and it was nestled in the trunk. Be patient. You'll find what you need too.
I opted to put them on our car right away since Costco was backed up more than two weeks for installation. For mounting tires they've got all the time in the world but for putting them on the car you have to wait. Then a prolonged warm spell hit and we had another problem; what makes snow tires so great in bad weather makes them liabilities in warmer weather. They stay soft when it gets cold out unlike "regular" tires that get hard; it's what's referred to as the "glass transition temperature". That along with a special tread pattern is what makes them so effective in bad weather. You drive on "snows" when it's above forty-five degrees and you run the risk of ruining them. You could probably get away with driving on them when it's around fifty-degrees but anything more than that and you're really pushing it. Snow tires do come with warranties because people misuse them and ruin them.
This week we finally got hit with some cold weather and we got a good sugar coating as well not unlike that dusting we got last winter. The morning it snowed my wife was going to take the Monte Carlo to work instead of the Lexus because we were unsure how the Lexus would do. I took it for a spin around the neighborhood just to see how the Blizzaks would perform, and I wasn't disappointed. They were nothing short of sensational. My wife took her beloved little Lexus to work and was blown away by them too. What was once a liability is now a solid winter workhorse.
That said, is it spring yet?
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