Tuesday, January 20, 2009

My Yaris: Winter Mode

Summer vs. Winter Wheels - Subcompact Culture
After experiencing "Arctic Blast 2008" (as the local news called it), I decided to take off the Falken Ziex 912 tires and orange Maxxim Assualt wheels and slap on the stock Bridgestones Potenza RE92s all seasons with stock steel wheels. While the Falkens offer quite a bit more grip than the stock Bridgestone Potenza RE92s on the pavement, they're not very good in the snow. Plus, when it does snow/ice here in Portland, they lay down a lot of gravel that can pit my orange Maxxim alloy wheels. Rather than risk crap-tastic snow traction and added gravel pitting, I just decided to suck it up and run on black steel wheels--no matter how "blah" they look. Eventually, I'd like to get some snow tires.

4 comments:

nlpnt said...

I'm not a fan of the Yaris' stock plastic wheel covers and am considering painting the steel wheels silver- it would look good with a slight drop, I think.

Andy Lilienthal said...

Funny; I was thinking about painting mine silver, too.

ank said...

I've seen your car on vwvortex.

Do you ever auto-x? I hear the yaris is prone to heavy oversteer for some reason.

Anyways i'm starting my own small cars site too! Small Cars only

Andy Lilienthal said...

ank -- yes, I autocross the Yaris. I've only run it twice, I believe. It's a lot of fun. I'm not really "in it to win it," though. I just do it for fun. I'd need to buy some much sticker tires to be really competitive; something like the Falken Azenis (basically a street-legal race tire type tire). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend most of the autocrosses last year. Hopefully I'll get to more of them in 2009! Good luck with your Web site, too!