Tires Maintenance and What Tires are the Best.
 

Hello everybody!

I own 2003 Accord EX coupe (automatic trans) This is my first car I bought it about half a year ago, and it had new tires on it. Well winter is coming soon so I'm thinking about if I really need new tires or mine are still good. I don't know anything about tires yet, so I want some general information about it.
Here are exact questions I seek answer for:
1) What tires are BEST for my car? I want my car to maintain performance as well as safety and comfort (less noise).
2) Is there should be different sets of tires for winter and summer?
3) What types of tires exist? What is the difference between them?
4) I heart there are some kind of quite tires, what are those?
5) Usually factory (stock) parts considered the best, is it the same for tires?

Maybe someone can give a good link or just share their experience. I will be very grateful! :D

Thank YOU!

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WheelBrokerAng :)
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1) There's a whole ton of tires that might be "best" for one aspect or another. You can change the character of the car by changing tires. Your stock tires would've probably been worn out and replaced by now, so tell us what kind of tires are on there now.

2) Where are you located? Do you get snow? Cold? If you want tires that are more sporty or performance-oriented, they'll be worse in the snow. In that case you can get winter tires so you don't really have to worry about snow-traction on your 3-season tires.

3, 4, 5) There's ALL KINDS of different tires. Use TireRack's website to list all the types of tires that come in your size. Look at the descriptions and the reviews. Most of all, decide what's more important TO YOU.
- quiet smooth tire?
- good performance? (sportiness or hard cornering)
- long life? (tread-wear)
- good snow-traction so you don't need a set of winter tires?
You won't find ALL of the above things in one tire, so you need to choose.

I'm inclined to choose more performance-oriented tires, and I don't mind if they're a bit more noisy. So I probably wouldn't pick the same tires as you would.

Actually, check out this link. Go through the descriptions of performance categories, decide which kind you want.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/types/tiretype.jsp

Then go here to put in your car's information & see what's what.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/dg/MenuServlet?search=tdg

Thank you both guys for your reply I will go through this info.

Cincinnati, OH. Well I live here for 3 years... first 2 we got tons of snow but last year it was NO SNOW at all. I'm from Russia so I don't really think that it is cold, here people don't use that type of tires with metal things sticking out of it that we do.:D

You can get studded tires, but they're not very common around here. More popular in northern plains states (North Dakota, Minnesota, etc).

If you choose to get wide, high-performance summer tires, then I'd get a set of "winter" tires. Those can be less-agressive 4-season tires, in a narrower size like the stock tires on an Accord DX or LX. But actual winter tires are far better in snow than 4-season tires.

Some versions of Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires are good on ice. Seems like maybe you get more ice down in Cincy compared to deep snow that we get farther north.

But really, if you are interested in all-season "grand-touring" type of tires, smooth & quiet, many of those are OK in light snow.

I change over to winter tires in northeast Ohio; but there's far more people around here that just use 4-season tires. I'm lucky enough to have room in the garage to store a couple stacks of tires.

By the way do I have to get actual wheels with the new tires? How do I remove a tire from the wheel?

Most people (myself included) can't remove the tire from the wheel. So I keep my winter tires mounted on their own set of wheels. That makes it easy to swap them whenever I feel like it. Say if it snows suddenly before I expected it.

But no, if you're buying a new set of tires to replace a worn-out set, then the tire store will mount them on your wheels.

I'm just gonna stick with my current tires for a while, thanks to you people for your help!!! :)

And I do The Same...
 

:) I do as Jim does on all 3 cars..hence the name WheelBrokerAng :D