Winter Driving: Put new Winter Tires on existing wheels, or get new wheels with new tires?

jorus

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Driving a 19 EX Sedan. I've never bought winter wheels/winter tires before and would really appreciate some pointers.

I figured it would be cheapest to keep the existing wheels (the 17inch oem alloys), and get winter tires for them... but is it? I've read that smaller and narrower tires are generally the better way to go. Does it make that much of a difference? What do people reccomend?

tirerack.com suggests The X-Ice X134 or the Blizzak WS90 - from what I've seen on here the Blizzak is more popular...?

Thanks in advance for any comments/answers. :)
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SDAlexander8

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It’s nice to have two sets of wheels so you don't have to pay a tire shop to take off and mount every time. Also, it may not be necessary to use them all winter when you know it’s not going to snow. You can swap back and forth as you please. (Assuming you know how to put wheels on yourself)

Find some 16” wheels is my suggestion. Tires are generally cheaper in 16” as well
 
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IronFusion

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:agree:

What you'd pay for having the tires mounted and balanced back and forth isn't worth it.

If you have 17" stock wheels and don't mind the sight you can even go down to 15's. I have the x-ice3 and chose them because of the tread warranty. I hold off on putting that set on until it is consistently below 40 or there's winter weather.
This is my coupe with 15x6.5 wheels wrapped with 205/65r15. The result is more tire but as you pointed out slimmer width.
Honda Civic 10th gen Winter Driving: Put new Winter Tires on existing wheels, or get new wheels with new tires? 20191118_223136


Plenty of folks enjoy getting steel wheels or inexpensive alloy wheels at -1" their stock size. If you put your model in the winter tire package search on tirerack you can get some prescribed ideas. That's when I decided to go -2... More cushion for pot holes and everything is less expensive.
 

arsh88

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It's generally advised to have 2 sets of wheels so that you're not constantly removing and remounting a tire. It won't damage it if you do it once or twice but the more you remove it from a wheel the higher chance there is of it breaking. That said, then wheels depend on what you want to do. I personally found the EX wheels UGLY so those are now winter wheels for my SO who drives a sport touring. I'm looking at getting a cheap set of Konigs for myself.
 
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jorus

jorus

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It's generally advised to have 2 sets of wheels so that you're not constantly removing and remounting a tire. It won't damage it if you do it once or twice but the more you remove it from a wheel the higher chance there is of it breaking. That said, then wheels depend on what you want to do. I personally found the EX wheels UGLY so those are now winter wheels for my SO who drives a sport touring. I'm looking at getting a cheap set of Konigs for myself.
I agree with your opinion about the EX wheels, I was actually thinking about eventually putting 18in SI wheels on my car... I think they look so much better!

Is the width of the EX wheels a problem if I do put snow tires on them?
 


arsh88

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I agree with your opinion about the EX wheels, I was actually thinking about eventually putting 18in SI wheels on my car... I think they look so much better!

Is the width of the EX wheels a problem if I do put snow tires on them?
no. we're running 215/50/17 winters and they've done fine in the little bit of snow we've gotten so far. Usually you just want a narrower tire but 215 is narrower than the 235's that the 18's would be. I'm personally running 17's in the summer instead of 18's because the roads up here suck and i wanted the extra sidewall. I'll never knock 18's but in being able to compare 18's to 17's side by side on the daily, i like the 17's more personally. Visually there's not much of a difference, but there's less of a chance of curb rash, which already happened to the sport touring on a wheel just from driving through a construction zone.
 

latole

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I alway have 2 sets on our both cars in the family.

All our wheels are cheap steel one.
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