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5%! I'd kill to only be paying $60/mo for our insurance. It's closer to 1.7% for our household. While the policy itself is ambiguous, I did double check with our broker, and they said the insurer stipulates the tires be winter-specific and changed seasonally, not used year-round. Apparently different insurers have different definitions. Regardless, even if it's a grey area, I'll happily spend $3/mo to eliminate having to fight a claim denial.
I drove to Florida last Feb so I put cc2s on before the drive and never bothered switching back as there wasn't much more snow. On days where there was snow and ice, there was no contest. Well worn xice blew the new cc2's out of the water. Especially on ice. If you lived in Toronto and/or could pick when and where you drove, the cc2s are probably good enough but I will be putting snows on again soon.
I'll report back after this winter. Living in Hamilton, it's pretty rare that we drive on unplowed roads in temps below -10C, so I'll be curious if we notice. I had a set of all-weather tires in BC on my Tacoma, and while they performed well in the snow, it was usually in the -5 range, not -20. Per the extensive testing over at Tyre reviews, tests and ratings - Tyre reviews and ratings , the CrossClimate 2's offer a pretty jack-of-all-trades performance, especially with excellent snow performance in and around the -10 envelope, and is at or near the top for lowest rolling resistance. I'd have loved to try the Pirelli Cinturato SF3, but it seems to be a Euro-only model, and the one all-weather tire Pirelli does sell here doesn't come in a size to fit my rims.
Steel is often more durable. It also rarely breaks. If you slide and nail a curb, you can often still drive home even if the ride is a little lumpy. The other upside to crappy steels is some people paint them ridiculous colours every year. Fun activity for the kids. No affect on resale value of vehicle.
Thankfully my car uses indirect tire pressure. Makes life easy.
Don’t think I want to worry about keeping tread depth the same on four tires myself.
That doesn't matter. You set the pressure with an external trusted gauge and tell the car that it has been set. Car uses abs sensor data at that point to store baseline. If one or more wheels differs from baseline, it alerts. Conceivably you could have grossly different tire sizes at baseline and it would still work fine. I've never tried it though.
I just read an article that made it sound like more of a pita than the old system:
While that may be best practice, ime, it can be a great system with few issues or hassles (I have never used the honda implementation though). When I put a spare on or change tires, I tell it that pressures are set properly and it just works. I've never had a situation where it freaked out about too much difference when setting baseline.
Ah…so that’s why my GTI asks me whether the pressures are all set to the spec…
Everything is a compromise. You give some here, you get some there. Yes, its probably slightly better to use proper performance summer tires and top quality winter tires, especially if you live somewhere with super cold winters and drive on a lot of unplowed roads, but when you live in the GTHA, roads are very rarely unplowed, and truly cold daytime temps are pretty uncommon now all year long, then it becomes a lot less critical. And when you add the convenience factor, then it makes more sense.
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