[Lost in the 60's]

My HHR had Blizzaks on it when I bought it and they have been good tires. I ran them summers too and they got quite low on tread and down to the harder compound this fall. I discovered they don't hold the road very well in the rain anymore a couple weeks ago...:noway:

The replacement price was a tad more than I was willing to pay, so I ordered some cheap Champiro tires. Never heard of them, but they have a lots of good reviews on the web. They arrived last week via UPS.

Yesterday was install time.





I've had problems with bead leaks due to corrosion in the beads, so I cleaned them really well and applied "No rim Rust" on the tires before install. This always stopped corrosion on the Alcoa wheels on my Pete.



These 50 series tires have very stiff sidewalls and are difficult to mount/dismount from the wheels. I use plenty of Ruglyde to help and to prevent damage to the TPM sensors.



I read the manual for the balancer again and finally figured out how to set it up to place the stick on weights behind the spokes. The manual is in 6 different languages and relies mostly on pics for instruction. Once I had the set up correct, it was easy to get the wheels to balance the first time.





All ready for the snow.

 

[Big Dave]

And I am still dealing with high eighties to low nineties with seventy nine percent relative humidity every day this month. Only thing keeping the temps down below high nineties is the lower angle of the sun shortens the number of day light hours.

Those old tires don't look that bad as far as wear. They should be holding better as far as tread design goes. What was wear rating on those tires?

Big Dave

 

[Lost in the 60's]

We've had a very mild fall with temps 15-20° above average. I'm liking it..
We're back closer to average today. Woke up to 39°, going to a high of 53°.

Last year the jet stream dipped down out of central Canada the first week of November and we stayed frozen for the next 6 months. By this day last year, we had a foot of frost in the ground. Yesterday I did the final leaf clean up and then mowed the yard.

Alaska was warmer than us last November because the jet stream was above them and then came straight down over the Rockies. That's the ONLY time in recent history that I considered going there...

 

[Big Dave]

Alaska is a beautiful state, (I think I have driven up and down just about every paved road while on vacation), but I foresee a real problem with moving there; and it has everything to do with global warming. The first twenty five foot or so of soil in Alaska is frozen solid year round. If that ever thaws, any house built on top of it would sink into the resulting mud, and possibly flow down hill onto your neighbors property unless you bought a couple of hundred acres. Of course the other draw back to living in Alaska that I no longer worry about, is the lack of a job. As a retiree it makes no difference were I live now; as I don't need no stinkn' jobs.

Big Dave

 

[6366]

I run winter tires on my wife's and two daughters car. Two sets Firestone winter force and one set of Blizzaks. I have these mounted on separate rims so I can change these out without remounting tires. Winter tires really help with the softer compound, they don't get hard and turn into a skating hockey puck when it get cold. Would love to live where you don't need them but that comes with challenges too.

 

[Lost in the 60's]

I run winter tires on my wife's and two daughters car. Two sets Firestone winter force and one set of Blizzaks. I have these mounted on separate rims so I can change these out without remounting tires. Winter tires really help with the softer compound, they don't get hard and turn into a skating hockey puck when it get cold. Would love to live where you don't need them but that comes with challenges too.

I have been looking for a set of nice original wheels for the summer tires I have because these are so difficult to swap, but there aren't many HHR's getting aftermarket wheels anymore.

The Nitto snow tires I have for the wife's TSX are on a decent set of Accord wheels and it's really nice to spend 15 minutes swapping tires and be done.