I'm about to replace my all weather tires with winter tires. My car is a 2001 Mercury cougar w/sports package(which apparently makes a difference in tire size). Factory recommended, my car should have v rated tires. They do not make my factory size v rated tires for winter. So the all weathers are 205/55/16, which is what I will be getting for winter tires too. The all weathers that I have now are H rated. Does it really matter what speed rating the tire has if they will be used in winter and I will obviously be going no faster than 50mph, and thats if I feel the roads are ok? The tires I'm interested in are the Winterforce tires with the speed rating of 90S. Factory reccomends 89V for me car. Will the winterforce be ok? Also these tires are called Winterforce 90S BSW. What does the BSW mean?
ok first your buying tires made to driv ein snow and wet right are you planing on driving faster? most likely wil be driving slower than your speed rating anyways and really one or more under or over wil be fine
Drive it off a cliff maybe? Seriously, there's not a lot you can do to one of these little guys. You can upgrade to a performance chip and probably put less restrictive exhaust on it, which might gain you 50 HP or so. I would advise against driving one of these things 140 MPH even if you could get it to go that fast, though.
Winter tires should have Q ratings if they're true winter tread (ie dunlop graspics, blizzaks, etc.). Q rating is up to 99 mph which means everything but highway (for me at least). You don't want anything lower than Q rated. I recommend the graspics because I've used them judiciously in the past (and they are without a doubt awesome in the snow with a supercharged 4 banger) but in the cheaper brands I wouldn't go with anything not made by cooper or general tire. Those are firestone tires but the rating isn't good; you want a studless snow tire for winter; those are all weather rated to 112mph. With a studless snow tire you won't be limited to going out when it's not snowing and going uphill. BSW means BLACK SIDE WALL (from what I gather)...just means the sidewall doesn't have a white, red, or yellow stripe like some tires. The snowflake rated tires are performance winter tires for drivers that don't want to dull the performance of their car in winter and want actual tread. The price matches the performance as they are very expensive.
