Summer’s done. Over. Finished. 終わった. Yeah, it’s finally starting to get cold in my neck of the woods, as evidenced by the last week or so of 40° F mornings I’ve had to deal with. The days are actually still pretty comfy, but those mornings, yeah . . . . , they mean it’s tire swappin’ time. In case you weren’t aware, most summer performance tires can’t deal with temps below about 40° F and start to get really sketchy to drive on. Even worse, the rubber can get so hard and brittle that you literally can crack and damage the tires by driving on them. Even storing them in cold temps can have adverse effects, so best to keep them somewhere reasonably warm, which in my case is my basement.
Now, before when I had my WRXs, because they were leases, I just took them to the dealer to have the tires swapped on the stock rims because I didn’t want to shell out any more cash for rims that I might not keep for more than a few years. It used run me about $200 a year because I had to do that both in the spring and fall of each year. Once I bought the BRZ though, that changed. I went and bought a set of cheap cast wheels to use and I swap my wheels myself now. Since I didn’t have most of the tools I needed, I had to drop about $400 to get everything, plus another $300 for a TPMS tool to do the TPMS relearning with each swap, I won’t won’t make my money back until after about three and a half years, but that’s OK. It’s OK because I have other vehicles I can use them on as well and I also plan on holding on to the BRZ for significantly longer than three and a half years, so it’s all good. In any case, yeah, summer’s done.
