Quick Winter Job

In order to go grocery shopping today, I needed to take care of a task I'd sort of been putting off.  Because the garage isn't heated, it can reach near freezing temperatures overnight--not good for The Tick's summer tires.  Fortunately, my buddy Chad had a worn-out set of old Blizzak snow tires that he had used last winter that I could mount on the car so that there'd at least be something round and black on it.  Now, these Blizzaks are somewhat special because they have been on, to my knowledge, 3 different cars.  Back in November 2004, I bought them used from a Miata club member to mount on Junior, my old car.  They did pretty well, helping the car to contend with some rather deep snow:

While the snow wasn't deep in this spot of the driveway, the car had navigated 6"+ of snow going up and downhill out of downtown Cincinnati earlier in the day!

After a winter, I gave them to Chad, who ran them on his Miata for a year or two.  In the meantime I switched to a different set of Blizzaks mounted on a set of 90-93 "daisy" alloy wheels.  Thus getting those old beat-up Blizzaks on even more beat up (and mismatched) steel wheels was  an interesting homecoming of sorts.

Sooooooo...finally to the point of this story!

The operation itself isn't so difficult, just time consuming.  Just loosen the lugs, lift up one side, remove the summer wheels/tires, labeling each as you go, replace the winter wheels/tires, tighten the lugs, lower the car, finish tightening, and then torque.

Here's what the car looked like when I was done...decidedly not bling!

Finally, proof that The Tick does not have Sport Package brakes: because the steelies are 14" in diameter, a car with the larger Sport Package brakes (standard from '03-05, but an option on my car) will not be able to fit 14" wheels over the brake calipers.  I was a little scared that I'd gone to all this trouble just to have 4 wheels that didn't fit, but I was relieved to see that they fit just fine!

The only remaining task was to manhandle the wheels downstairs.  I promised Christy that I'd keep them out of the way, and so I tucked them back behind where I'd stuck the luggage and the Christmas tree.  

I'll still need to get them in some garbage bags, but that can wait until I get back from the store, now that I have an open trunk! 

EDIT: Chad was good enough to point out that the Blizzaks had been the temporary rolling stock for our friend Rose's first Miata after it went sunny-side down and was being parted out.  Chad actually got them back after we found something else for  it to roll on and used them as winter tires for the subsequent 2 winters.  Thus, those same Blizzaks and mismatched steelies have been on 4 different cars!