Now's the best time to buy them becuase its not the season. Anyone have any good recommendations? Tire rack has blizzak lm-25 and lm-60. Is there any difference?

Also did anyone go through winter with the stock summer tires? I live in Chicago, btw.

 

The LM-60s are new so no one will have experience with them. I expect they will be better in snow than the LM-25s but not as good on dry pavement (V vs H rating). I found the LM-25s to be a good compromise for me last winter.

IMO, you absolutely CANNOT go through a northern winter with the summers. Even on dry pavement the summers have horrible traction in freezing temps.

 

Man stay away from Blizzacks. they Suck. I had pilot alpins on my 08 before I crashed it. Not snow related. ANd when I got my 09 I got ZBlizzacks from the dealer as part of the sale. Well I will be selling them only have like 4000km on them and I will not drive another winter with them. Flat out not good. Both me and my wife noticed the differance. Please please do not get them. But if you must I'll sell you mine for the cost of shipping them and getting my new pilots mounted. If not I am putting a knife through tem and into the bin they go.

 

That's interesting. I live in the city so everything gets plowed pronto but like a day or two after it snows so for that day or two I need reliability. I have actually heard good things about Blizzak's from a few other people.

 

i'll take the blizzacks at shipping cost

 

Shumby... what size were your Blizzaks? The reason I ask is that the Alpins don't come in sizes to fit the stock rims so you must have been running 18" rims for winter. That alone (narrower winter tire in the rear) would help some for sure.

Having said that, I do agree that the Blizzaks (LM-25) are very much set up for dry winter road performance and suffer in the snow. My understanding from talking to the guys at TireRack is that the LM-60s are optimized for snow more than the last generation LM-25s.

I have used the non-performance Blizzaks in the past on other cars and they have been outstanding. The LM-25s, IMO, are too geared towards dry pavement performance. If you didn't get a lot of snow but had a lot of cold winter temps, they would be great.

 

18" blizacks as well as 18" alpins. so i am comparing apples to apples. 225 on all 4 corners

 

The LM line has been out for quite some time and has gone through a few phases. The LM25 was designed as a sport winter tire for light/moderate snow use. Good downtown Chicago tire where you don't see a lot of accumulation. However, they didn't do super in ice and deeper snow. I ran the 25's on my IS350 and liked them on the open road and packed stuff, but anthing more than that I needed more bite. They are solving that with the LM60.

They haven't hit the nasty weather just yet, but I highly doubt they would replace an already successful model with a lesser performer. Every generation of Blizzak has been better than its processor and I expect the same here. Blizzaks continue to be our best performing line of snow tires.