I've put on around 52,000 miles in my 07 civic, and it's time to get some new tires. I live out in Seattle and regularly venture up into the mountains where it can snow quite a bit.

I'm looking for some tires that can handle snow well, but won't hinder my usual downtown/freeway driving.

Not looking to go too expensive.

Any recommendations?

from other thread.

the WS60 or the LM-60?

If I went w/ the LM-60's w/ shipping the thing comes to 620, minus installation (Can't do it myself). I wasn't planning on having new tires cost me ~800 bucks.

Anything cheaper?

Firestone Winterforce is what I went with. My stock size is 195/60/15. Cost was just short of $300 shipped.

this is usually not possible, snow tires have a much softer compound and do not handle anything like normal all seasons. and they wear out very fast on dry road. so only get these if over 50% of your driving is on snow\ice covered roads. alot of people get em here, even the studded ones, and i think theyre crazy. its already january and we only had one big snow that lasted for less than a week til the roads were cleared. and my cheap $50 garbage tires did just fine. slow down on snow and you will be safer and not need snow tires. not to mention all the hassles of going to a shop to get them mounted and balanced, and again in the summer to change them out.

This sounds a bit more reasonable. If I had to guess, I would say in a year I probably ride in snow about ~1-2 percent of the time. Not much at all.

So now the question is, What year-round tires are the biggest bang for the buck? (in the lower price category)

check tirerack reviews for snow traction. there are plenty of decent all season tires that cost around $100 and will last a long time.

Got an amazing deal from Firestone using their 35% off family and friends sales event. Check it out : http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1817261

Got some Bridgestone Potenza RE960A/S Pole Position. I'm absolutely loving them.

Side note: Firestone did a free alignment check and low and behold (surprise surprise), they found out I needed an alignment. The car has 46K miles on it. Here is what they say I'm at:

Camber for the front right: -.6 (range: -.5 to .5)
Toe for front right: -.13 (range: -0.08 to 0.08)

The car drives perfectly straight if I let the steering wheel go. I didn't notice any abnormal wear on the old tires. Think I need to actually get this done?

the toe may wear the tires faster. its better to just have it aligned and save the tires.

I got some uniroyals at walmart for $100 per tire with lifetime rotation and balance and warrantee. Prob gonna get flamed for buying tires at walmart but they worked great in the snow that i drove through so far this year. They are an 80k mile tire too. I will look when I get home at exactly what they are.