Hi,
Quick question for other G2 owners. I’m considering buying some winter tires off craigslist. They are 13" Civic winter tires at 185 / 70 / R13.
According to tire size calculators I’ve seen, these should match a stock DA’s diameter, but I’m not sure if the rims will clear the brake assembly. Anybody have experience with this sort of thing?
Thanks!
No they will not fit without grinding down your calipers lol, some 14 inch rims won’t even fit if the offset is to high
It’s my experience that a stock Honda steel 13" rim will not fit over the brake calipers on the front of the teg (they will fit on the back FWIW)
Folks, thanks for your responses. Onwards to 14" it is.
All this trouble just to get to Whistler…
Welcome to Whistler ! Good call on being prepared though, no snow on the roads yet but any day now.
Road blocks happen on a frequent basis and if you have inadequate tires you will not be allowed to proceed past the road block. Heaven help you if you have an incident that is attributed to inadequate tires because to add insult to injury they will fine you for not having proper winter tires. (on top of what it is going to cost to get your car towed out of a ditch and whatever damage you did to it putting it in there) Also make sure that your winter tires actually have a winter tire designation (usually a snowflake/mountain symbol on the sidewall of the tire) and not just an M & S designation or an all season rating, they just won’t cut it in the snow.
Good Luck
Look me up if you need any help car wise after you get here.
Thanks! Hope to get up there soon 
I appreciate the advice. People here seem to sell of lot of “pair’s” of tires. I prefer to buy a set of four. I found a guy selling 4 Michelin X-Ice’s for $575 with steelies and all. Pricey, but maybe the easiest option (next to buying new or driving to the states).
Thanks for the help, and the future help!
$575 for those kind of tires which BTW are great winter tires, already mounted on steelies is not that bad a price, depending on how much tread is left on them. Don’t put them on any sooner than you have to or leave them on any longer than you have to and if your camber settings are not too radical you should see multiple winter seasons out of them.
Thanks again for the info. I’m still thinking about those X-Ice tires. They have over 6mm of tread from the pic i’ve been sent.
I went to see a different set yesterday, but they were the wrong size. (As an aside, Volkswagon rims have larger centerbore than our std Honda/Acura centerbore).
I’ve also come across a set of Wintermark HT tires, for $200 less. They look fine as well, but the tread pattern looks like a truck pattern. Any experience with the Kal Tire brand?
The best retail pic I could find was this: http://ssl.delti.com/cgi-bin/rshop.pl?dsco=135&Cookie=Shopzilla&details=Ordern&typ=R-121028&ranzahl=4&nichtweiter=1
I’m not sure what the tread depth is on a new X-ice tire but the major difference between the two tires is that the Michelin has an abundance of siping for gripping ice or a frozen road and it doesn’t appear that the other tire does. While the Wintermark tires appear to have good voiding which helps expel the snow from the tread after you have driven over it those tires would not grip to the hard snow, ice or frozen road surface like the Michelin X-ice will do. The other diference may be in the rubber compounds the tire is constructed with. A truck winter tire which is what the Wintermark looks like to me and is likely constructed to carry a big heavy truck and the subsequent grip that weight can give and a rubber hardness that will withstand those demands. The X-ice is likely constructed for a passenger car type weight and will do a much better job under the situations you will likely find yourself driving in on a regular winter basis.
The issue with our smaller Acuras and Hondas is that they don’t have a lot of ground clearance for plowing through deep snow and they don’t have as much weight pushing down on each wheel which gives you some added traction so IMO a big void truck snow tire is not as good as a ice type winter tire for our cars.
How do I come up with these opinions, for all my life I have been driving between Whistler and Vancouver and for the last 20 years been ice racing Honda products and towing those products over the Duffey Lake Road to go ice racing(which if anyone knows is not a fun trip especially in the winter) so I think by trial and error I have learned enough to feel confident in my tire choices, but they are just my opinions, feel free to disagree.
Good Luck wherever you travel but be safe,
Paul
Great info - much appreciated. What you’ve said makes a lot of sense to me. (Except for the ice racing bit. Back in Ontario people used to have derby’s on frozen lakes, but I never imagined ice racing on/near Duffy Lake Rd…I thought they called that skiing?)
To my benefit, this discussion has digressed a bit from the original topic, so I’m going to throw down a few words so that when somebody searches for winter tires, this post comes up:
winter tire suggestions snow X-Ice tire size
Sorry to distract the topic. Just get too wordy. BTW I tow my 28’ car trailer over the Duffey to get to Ashcroft where we go ice racing on Barnes Lake. Come check it out sometime. carsonice.ca