lex831

I need to get new tires for the winter. Had a truck before so i'm not very experienced with what are good car tires.
I'm considering the G-FORCE COMP-2 A/S 215/55R17 Costco has them for just under a hundred a tire.
Some people say they are noisy which wouldn't bug me too much, however I also hear they will drop my mpg.
Any sugguestions?

Oro

A) Should not drop your mileage. If you are already +1" w/17" wheels (assuming you had 215/60-16 to start), then that is the correct +1 fitment and the odo, speedo will not be off and your mileage should be unaffected as the tread width and resulting tire footprint should be the same as stock.

B) A good place to get reviews of tires is tirerack.com, they have a large user review area. From a quick glance there, these seem like very good tires for AS use.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=BFGoodrich&tireModel=g-Force+COMP-2+A%2FS

The trick to getting the most out of those reviews is find ones where the user has had them lots of miles, on a similar car, and similar climate.

C) I find "noise" comments virtually useless. I don't think most people discriminate road surface and the inherent vehicle NVH characteristics before commenting on that. Where I live, a quiet tire in general can sound very loud because our roads are more pebbled on the surface than the country in general IME. Since you already have figured you aren't hung up on that point, I'd just go ahead and ignore it. I did not read many of those TR comments above, BUT - the few intelligent ones I did see made no mention of excessive noise and I saw some give it high marks in this area.

speedkar9

Your fuel economy will suffer with winter tires because of increased rolling resistance. That's something you can't avoid. If your vehicle is newer or you want to hang onto it longer, spend the extra $100 for a better quality set of tires that will last longer and ride smoother and quieter. Cheaping out on tires has a huge effect on the way the car rides and handles.

The title of this thread should be "new tires". Shoes are used on drum brakes which ES300's didn't have, unless your talking about the parking brake.

Oro

He is talking about "winter" as a buying timeline, not the tire type. The tires he is referencing are good quality BF Goodrich all-season, not something mediocre. There should be no milege penalty or reason to fret about quality from what I can see.