Yesterday was the first time I've driven the Subie in any significant snow. It was a scary experience. The tires on the car are Yokohama all seasons and they're less than a year old. They're way fun on the twisties when it's dry but I might as well have been on ice skates. I think at one point I slid for 50 yards. The Subie also has anti-lock brakes and I'm not a fan of them. I do think the problem was compounded by the fact that the tires weren't gripping and it was causing the anti-lock to kick in when it wasn't really needed. I almost put it in several ditches on the mile trip home. I called around for snow tires as soon as I got home.

You can spend a lot of dough on snow tires. Continental has some really nice stuff but they're about 120 a pop. The Blizzack is a really nice tire as well. However, a few years ago, I found a super nice snow tire that sells for anywhere from 70-85 a piece for a 16". It's made by Firestone and it's called the Winterforce. I put these same tires on the Vanagon last year. They're great in the snow. They look good and you can get studs for them as well (although I think you really only need that if you're way up in the frozen tundra).

I was supposed to go down tonight and have 4 of them installed but a co-worker was having issues with her vehicle and I suspected it was a bad alternator. So I drove it home and told her I'd look it over. The battery was showing 11.3 volts when I got it home. I decided to install a new alternator and then the reading jumped to 14.6 so I was happy. I'll go down tomorrow and get my new tires. I really do not like people I don't know/trust getting behind the wheel of any of my cars. Even if it's just to drive it into the bay to install tires. It's a whole process for me. I'll spend all day tomorrow cringing until it's done. I am the EXACT same way with my computer at work. If I take a day off, I take the mouse and hide it and also unplug a few chords.