I knew the RSAs were bad, but wow!!!

[Mayhem]

I nearly became a statistic tonight. Heck, I\'ve been driving so far and it\'s been fine with the tires. Tonight however, I was doing friggin 15 kph coming to a hill behind my house. I hit the brakes, the damn car became a sled. ZERO traction. I was able to avoid two cars coming towards me, but as the car picked up speed sliding down the hill, I hit a curb and scratched the wheel. Now my alignment is shot to hell. I seem to recall this happened to super_vixen to. I feel your pain now, I\'m taking the car in for a checkup tomorrow, I hope it\'s not too expensive to fix. There doesn\'t appear to be any damage other than the alignment, but I know that\'s probably wishful thinking on my part. I\'ll be praying tonight for sure. Oh well, shit happens I guess, but I\'ll be getting at least two snow tires as soon as I can afford to. I should have before, but I had ZERO extra cash after purchasing the car 3 months ago and the salesman assured me that the tires were fine for winter driving. Slush no problem, but powder appears to be another story. I can\'t believe Mazda would sell the car with these tires in Canada. Also, how can they be called All-season. Wow......oh well, enough ranting for now. Not much I can do. Thanks to anyone who read this for listening to my sob story.

l8r:(

[Zaku_4]

wow that sucks. ive only had 1 really really terrifying experoiance on my rs-a. i was at school driving some friends home for lunch, when i was coming to a stop sign, the heavy snow just fell, and lets just say instead of stopping at the stop sign i was forced to make a right turn into the intersections street.

it was crazy. my w300\'s were a very good investment, to bad winters almost over =/.

[Mayhem]

I wish I had the extra funds at the time to purchase some. Hindsight is 20/20 i guess. Ya, I can see a lot of scares happening with these tires. I\'ll see what I can scrape together for some winter rubber. What\'s sad is that about 2 minutes before this happened, I was actually thinking \"these tires aren\'t all that bad.\" Boy was I wrong.:sarc

[MajesticBlueNTO]

sorry to hear about what happened to your car.

if you do only get 2 snow tires for now, put them on the back.

[teambedlam]

why the back. Wouldn\'t you want them on your drive wheels?

[MajesticBlueNTO]

Originally posted by teambedlam


why the back. Wouldn\'t you want them on your drive wheels?

you want them on the back because, if your back tires have less traction than the front, there is a greater risk of the back end breaking loose resulting in the car spinning around.

[majic]

glad you\'re ok and lets hope not too much damage (but be prepared for 1000 just in case) assume the worst and hope for the best.

wrt the tires. wouldn\'t you want the fronts to have more traction 1) for starting off the line 2) for braking (where most braking is done with the fronts)?

how about you put them on opposite corners? :p

Mayhem, after the accident and with cash being tight, you might want to wait it out a bit and get winters when teh prices come down. at the same time i would get them asap, you can never predict the weather and the winter, albeit mild, ain\'t over yet. maybe just get the \'no name\' ones from crappy tire/walmart. i think they were having some deals on the icetrack or graspics. winter tire is a winter tire, much better than all season. I mean i wanted the dunlop M3s but i didn\'t wnat to pay 1k for tires so maybe the less expensive CT/W-M tires are abetter solution for the time being. all the best

[Mayhem]

I\'ll check crappy tire and see. I have an appointment for tomorrow morning. Hopefully it\'s just an alignment issue since I hit the curb at a 45 degree angle and bounced off. I\'ll be keeping my fingers crossed.

[MajesticBlueNTO]

Originally posted by majic

wrt the tires. wouldn\'t you want the fronts to have more traction 1) for starting off the line 2) for braking (where most braking is done with the fronts)?



in winter, if you\'re gonna mix winter tires with no-season tires, you actually want the back to have more traction.

in any case, this is a non-ideal situation. if you\'re gonna buy 2 winter tires, you might as well buy all 4 as handling characteristics are severely impacted with just 2 winter tires only.

1) starting off the line - you\'ll eventually get off the line with no-seasons on the front and winters on the back. in that time, you want the back end to be as stable and planted as possible. you can control the direction of the front with the steering wheel, you can\'t necessarily control the direction the back goes.

2) this is the big part of why you want winters on the back ...yes, the fronts do most of the braking, but, if there were winters on the front and no-seasons on the back, the front will slow down much faster than the rear (better traction in the front). in fact, the rear might lock up, or ABS might kick in too early. in either case, the rear will lose traction and this is where it could spin around. you\'ll end up more out of control than running 4 no-season tires. in low traction situations, turning a corner with winters in the front and no-seasons in the rear would be akin to pulling your e-brake up at every turn with 4 no-season tires (in this instance, you\'re deliberately making the rear lose traction).

this issue with losing control of the rear is also why stock cars are designed to understeer. people tend to panic when the rear goes out of control, so the cars are designed for the fronts to lose traction first.

[majic]

http://www.msprotege.com/vbb225/images/smilies/bowdown.gif :D :D you win.. umm just get 4 tires and you won\'t have to worry about this

[majic]

Mayhem,

these are the tires i was talking about earlier:

go to crappy tire (www.canadiantire.com)
and search by product code:
04-1769-8 for Nordic Ice Trac
03-1565-4 for Nordic Winter Trac

or get in tocuh with E-Spec or Tires23 but i think their prices will be a bit higher (due to more \'name brand\' tire selection and low inventory)

both sell for about 100/tire and midnightfxgt seems to be happy with them (http://torontomazda3.com/forum/read.php?TID=1479&page=2#20498)

[mikespike]

sorry to hear about that. like i said, \"some people have the money to spare\". :zzz

[Mayhem]

Well, got the verdict back. The only damage is to the rim and the tire. Thank God for that. The bad news is that with the alignment and the rim, I\'m looking at 750 after taxes.

[jon_jai]

dat\'s a lot..................

[majic]

yeah it seems much.. is the rim bent? or just scratched?

if it\'s bent i would say screw it and buy steelies and winters (600-700 bux for those) + 80-100 for alignment and you\'re good (no?)

i have a feeling teh stealership is trying to take advantage of you :(

this way you can wait it out and buy a wheel off ebay when it\'s available (i don\'t see anything now) :(

[///M]

The wheel should cost around $350 max. from the dealer. Not sure about the tire though.

[FLIPDADY]

Sorry to hear about your car.

If there are any tire related issues please contact Goodyear Canada direct. Maybe if enough of us complain they can do something for us.

[Mayhem]

k....I ended up getting winter tires instead....it was a little more expensive, but I don\'t want to risk another mishap. Tires and Rims were $777 for Nordic IceTracks from Cdn Tire and the install + alignment was 180. All that is after taxes. So in total I paid 960, but I think it\'s worth it cause those goodyears have me really spooked for winter driving. Crappy, but oh well. Ya, these tires are awful...I honestly can\'t believe they\'re listed as all-season....awful.

Well, what\'s done is done. Good to see you on the thread Joe....now I can put a voice to the userid (remember I called and asked your opinion about the tire needing to be replaced with the rim)


Well, later everyone....thanks for the support. I love this site
:D

[majic]

good for you!!! good choice.. in the summer you can get 2 nice summer tires and a mazda rim and u\'ll be set and all much less expensive than getting it all now..

so ho are the tires, wanna give us some feedback :D (in the appropriate thread of course ;)

[Mayhem]

They\'re much better than stock. I don\'t feel out of control and I can predict what the car is going to do. I\'ll update again once we get a major snowfall

[AskClaudio.com]

Sorry to hear what happened to you. Mazda stock wheels are garbage, I always find whenever it rains whenever I come to a complete stop and move my car has trouble gripping to the asphalt of the road. I guess it’s because I like pushing my car whenever I see a hot girl beside me driving a sick car in Vaughn. But yeah I ain’t driving winter wheels and so far so good, (knock on wood), nothing bad has happen, just driving with a lot of extra awareness on the roads nowadays, not pushing the car at all.


http://www.geocities.com/gary1081/mazdagirl.gif
Zoom Zoom

[sw0rdfish]

Hey...

WOW

I had the exact same thing happen to me. Cost me 800 bucks for the tires, and 106 for allignment thanks to my buddy at Brampton Mazda. They even put in a new Fule Pump for me :hoho

I crunched my rim pretty bad too, but I\'m going to be buying ROHs in the summer I think, so before you replace your Rim, check with me, I may be selling mine off one by one. ( and a cheap 4th since it\'s scratched to hell )

I picked up Hankook W300s.... ESpec left something to be desired. I understand his prime time is gone, but communications sucked, and the tires I ordered from him ( and the reason I chose him ) ended up beinf defective, and since he already had the Steelies I bought, I had no choice but to take what he had left... My fault for procrastinating, but his fault for not checking the stock he\'s selling.

After looking around, the W300 isn\'t that bad, it\'s a performance, which isn\'t what I was looking for, but it\'ll do.

Glad your 3 ( and you of course ) are ok... I\'ll admit it freaked me out too.

My door is still rattling though :(

[Mayhem]

Hey swordfish......sorry to hear about your accident and the door still rattling. I got sooooo lucky, it could easily have been way worse. I\'m really glad I got the winter rubber, it makes such a difference. Anyhoo....I\'d definitely like to buy a rim off you. How\'s the tire tread on your tires, cause I wouldn\'t mind just buying the whole thing (rim + tire) off of you.

[black305]

sorry to hear about your rims guys and i must say i agree that the rsa\'s suck in the winter. i\'ve read a lot about it but today was my first real experience on snow covered roads. the tires were spinning all over the place and the worst was when trying to start from a standstill/stop. on one side street (which has about a 5 degree incline, definitely not more than 10 degrees), i couldn\'t even drive forward after the car was stopped. i had to back all the way out to the end of the street.
the abs also activated a few times and i wasn\'t even moving quickly. luckily i got home without incident. i know snow tires are a good idea but i don\'t have $$ for them so i just won\'t take my car out on bad days. i wish the best of luck to everyone else brave enough to drive in the winter on the stock no season tires.

[kl7402001]

Sorry about ur cars ... i got lucky with those RS tires .. knock on wood nothing bad yet ... only one time i was coming home from work on Matheson on the hill beside Iceland arena .. i was stuck on that hill and backed up traffic for 30mins .. thanks to some nice ppl pushed me over the hill or else CAA...that was the first snow storm .. dame tires suck!!!

About the winters tires should be in the back ... he is absolutly correct they should be in the back ... My mom\'s car had a flat and got new tires for the front(all 4 seasons) ... after the first snow storm i spun out 3 times .. the back end had old tires is always loose ... plus on the highway or at certain speeds .. since the tires have diff traction they want to rotate at diff rates .. so the steering wheel shook ... we ended up changing the back too .... now imagine how bad it would be with snow tires in the front instead of new all seasons!!

[kl7402001]

Sorry i dont know if i should ask this here ... but hey Mayhem in ur signiture it says throttlebody mod ... what mod did u do exactly ...and is it a good mod?

[Mayhem]

I grounded my throttlebody to the negative battery terminal. It\'s supposed to increase throttle response, but to be honest I haven\'t noticed that much of a difference, but I did it 2 days after I bought the car, so maybe it does do something. There\'s several threads about it discussing whether it actually works or not.

[super_vixen]

Awww..that sucks, but I feel your pain. Glad your damage wasn\'t to bad and that you were able to get some winter tires.

Its surprising how fast the repair costs add up. Mine was $1200 to fix, and then I forked over another $720 for 4 winter tires the next week. Insane..but at least I feel safer now.

The joys of being a car owner :)