I want to get new snow tires but I am having a hard time finding the size 225/60/17. I live in VT and have a subaru 2011- and am in a rural area. I always have had studded snow tires. Any suggestions?
Tire Rack has six different winter tires in your size. Have them shipped to your mechanic and have them installed. Better yet, have The Tire Rack install them on a set of steel wheels and then have them shipped to you. Tire and wheel packages come to you fully balanced including a “road force balance” that is superior to spin balancing.
I don’t know how “rural” you are, but now that bloody_knuckles has identified six available tires for you, contact an independent tire store. They should be able to obtain any of those six tires within a day or two.
TireRack is a great site for becoming educated on what kind of tires you want. I prefer to use that information to help me select the tires to buy locally. And the local independent tire stores I’ve found meet or beat TireRack’s prices.
Great- I have ben researching a bunch of sites and of course find conflicting info. I really want to get Nokian tires but I am having a hard time finding them as well. One place has Nokian R’s but they are not studded… I have always had studded tires. I had cooper weathermasters which were studded and thought they were decent but apparently there are a lot of bad reviews about them.
JoeMario - I have tried locally to find competitive tire pricing since I like to support local business but, for me, I find it hard to beat Tire Racks pricing, even after paying my dealer $50 to mount and balance my tires.
An example would be the Hankook tires I just bought for my van. My dealer quoted me $550 installed if I bought the tires from him with no rebate available. I bought the same tires from Tire Rack (shipped to his door) for $370 with $100 rebate. Including installation my net cost was $320. That was a savings of $230. Since I do so much other work at my dealer he doesn’t mind that I buy my tires independently.
Decent studless(Nokian, Blizzack, Michelin) design winter tires offer equivalent performance on ice as studded tires with studs installed. Ice is the only strong suit of studded tires.
I would definitely talk to tirerack.com and you likely can get a winter package likely on 16" or 15" new rims with much broader choices. They offer studded tires also.
Nokian tires are great but the downfall is limited distribution so they are sold at near retail prices.
Thanks!