Just wondering what all you STi owners are planning to do with your rims and tires once the snow starts falling. If you live in an area without snow please disregard this post. Thanks.

 

Good Topic. I also am looking for a solution for Winter. I am tring to find wheels that will go over the brembos'

 

what about some bridgestone snow tires. i know michelins snow tires are $$$$, but bridgestones arent that bad. You can also always go with some off market brand. (caliente,visa,champiro,road king)

 

Need winter rim's. Tire rack has a few tire choices. But the rims are what I need.

Blue

 

Dunlop Winter Sport M2 - Size 225/45HR17
From the
http://www.tirerack.com

Many sports cars, coupes and sedans come from the factory equipped with low profile tires mounted on the large diameter alloy wheels needed to clear their big brakes. The Dunlop SP Winter Sport M2 was developed so the drivers of these cars could retain their vehicle's original wheel diameters while blending dry road performance with snow traction. The SP Winter Sport M2 is Porsche-approved for 100% of their current vehicles' winter tire needs, and factory-recommended for use on the sport models from Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz Volkswagen and others. The SP Winter Sport M2 is engineered to deliver performance and traction whether the road is ice & snow covered or not.

The SP Winter Sport M2 features a directional tread design to help maintain good traction on wet and slush covered roads while its high-density lateral zig-zag sipes and independent tread blocks provide the edges to help bite through snow. The SP Sport is a tire for the performance car drivers who need snow and ice traction and want to retain as much dry road responsiveness and handling as possible.

The Dunlop SP Winter Sport M2 winter radial meets the industry's severe snow service requirements. They feature blackwall styling and are available in 65-, 60-, 55-, 45-, 40 and 35-series, T-, H-, and V-speed rated sizes for 15" to 17" wheel diameters.

Do not mix radial snow tires with tires of other construction, size, ply rating, or pattern type. Dunlop highly recommends fitment of four snow tires of the same type and rating for optimum mud & snow traction and maintenance of vehicle handling characteristics.

Dunlop Winter Sport M2 - Size 225/45HR17

 

I’m planning on keeping my gold BBS wheels as my summer rims. My criteria for winter wheels are to be not too expensive, easy to clean and still relatively light (and of course being able to fit over the Brembos). I found this site www.wheelweights.net, which lists several wheels with their size and weights. The guy that assembled this list did an amazing job and deserves every tuner’s gratitude. I then went to tirerack.com to see what they offered for the 2003 WRX to get some ideas as to what might fit (I know the Sti is a whole other animal). From what I saw at tirerack.com the ASA FR-1 seems to fit my criteria. Not too expensive, $239 for 17x7, fairly light and forged (16.5lbs. for 17x7) and easy to clean. I currently have a set of ASA JS5’s 16x8 on my 1983 Thunderbird TurboCoupe and have been pleased with their appearance and quality. BBS licenses their manufacturing techniques to ASA. As far as winter tires go I am very fond of the Yokohama Guardex 600 but I’m not sure if they are making them any longer. They are good in the snow but are also very good in the rain. I had Bridgestone Blizzaks several years ago on a Nissan NX2000. They were exceptional in the snow but only fair in the rain and at highway speeds they exhibited a fair amount of thread squirm, plus they wore out quickly. The squirming and wear issue on the Blizzak’s was due to their multi-cell compound, which was only about half the thread depth. When that layer wore off the tire was like a standard snow tire. Yokohama got around the multi-cell wear and stability problems by running small fibers through the thread. These threads also acted like little studs on ice. If Bridgestone has addressed the wear and squirm issues I’ll probably go back with them otherwise I’m open to suggestions.

 

I was probably going to use my BBS wheels with a new tire (all season or winter) for my winter setup, although the car will not be driven to much in the winter since I have a '95 Civic for my daily grind. I'll probably take the tires off the BBS and buy a new wheel, something all black or black with a polished lip. Who knows though, we'll just see. That is what I would like to do though.

 

I looked at the same ASA rims as those pictured above but I'm not sure they will fit over the Brembo brakes either.