Miata as a winter beater?

Late to the party, but 10 years of winter driving the 1990. The actual driving could be a lot of fun because its such a great drifitng car. Much better than the Twins in that respect.

I never bought a hardtop. On a nice winter day it was nice to drop the top and get some vitamin D with the heater blasting. Your really stay warm in the bubble behind the windshield.

The small cabin space made for a car that was warm inside very quickly and the windshield stayed defrosted. When I replaced the top, I went with the Robins glass window version.

As for tires. Blizzacks were mu main choice, although I did try others and they go me around without any issues.

Winter will eventually rot the sills since ice is going to damn the drains. Once you get water in the sills of a Miata, it is game over unless you were to flood them with WD 40 afterwards.

Mine works in snow pretty durn well, even with an open diff.

Rust does start in the rear rockers though.

Dang! Tirerack has 2x $50 prepaid cards on a set of 4 Altimax Arctics- which means that (before shipping and mounting) a set of 4 for a Miata would be just $150! One question regarding them (and any other snow/ice tire- I've generally gotten by with just good all-seasons...), how well do they hold up driving in non-inclement weather?

I'll probably try giving the seller of the beat-up '92 a call over lunch and get more info on it- SWMBO works pretty late tonight, so I might be able to go down and take a look at it after work (though unfortunately that will mean driving the DeLorean to look at it- something I hate doing since people WAAAAAY overestimate what it's worth and it makes it more difficult to get the price down...). I'd love the blue one with the hardtop, but it will be several weeks before I'd be able to get up there to even look at it since it's 2 1/2 hours away- and if I can get the local one for a bit cheaper and make some basic fixes (like the rusted sill) I might actually make a bit on it if I sell it down the line.

Been running mine for several years now, I usually dont take them off until the first autocross of the year. I cant tell you how they would hold up in the height of summer, but they are fine into spring and fall.

They do squirm quite a bit, plus I am running narrower than stock on mine.

Can't comment on Miata snow driving in particular(just Miata-sized tires on my Mazda2, 185/55R15), but I am driving on Continental snow tires right now(yes middle of summer) because I moved to VA Beach the season after I bought snow tires in Dayton, OH and can't sell them for decent money(factoring cost to dismount too), so I'm just burning through them on my 100mi daily commute.

Holding up surprisingly well, around 5K miles so far for summer driving.

They squirm but you get used to it. Bonus is it softens the hell out of my commute on the E36 M3ty roads around here with 550/450lb springs.

Snow tire rubber compounds really are made ideally for cold temperatures, in addition to the accompanying inclement weather. So in addition to the general squirminess from the softer sidewall and tall soft tread blocks with lots of void area, they'll also wear faster the warmer the temperatures get. But nothing catastrophic.

Ashyukun wrote: Dang! Tirerack has 2x $50 prepaid cards on a set of 4 Altimax Arctics- which means that (before shipping and mounting) a set of 4 for a Miata would be just $150! One question regarding them (and any other snow/ice tire- I've generally gotten by with just good all-seasons...), how well do they hold up driving in non-inclement weather?

I can answer this question!

About two weeks ago, I put those exact same tires on my Miata temporarily as I swapped some other wheels and tires around. Temps here were in the 80's and I probably drove less than 10 easy miles on them, but you could smell them when I parked. They are awesome in the snow, but they won't last long when it's warm and dry.

Was busy all through lunch and didn't get the chance to call about the nearby one, will see what happens after work if I think I'll have time to make it down to look at it- the weather may make it less than ideal to do so. I am contacting the seller of the one with the hard top to see if they'd be willing to meet up somewhere in-between- ironically that one would likely be an easier sell to SWMBO because of the color alone :P (I don't need her approval- but her liking the car makes things much easier...)

I'd almost certainly be picking up a second set of wheels to put the winter tires on and swapping them around as needed so I wasn't driving around on the winter tires when they're not necessary.

I pretty much run the Altimax Artics from when the sub 40 degree cold wet roads start to be a thing, until they stop being a thing. So, November through mid April roughly. City, highway, wet, dry, snow, ice, whatever. I have two seasons on them now and still have 10/32s remaining (started at 12). Remember, these are proper northern Europe snow tires, a previous generation Nokian competitor (Gislaved Nordfrost) with a different sidewall mold.

Snow tires tend to last much better in dry conditions than ice tires do.

I love driving my miata in the snow with snow tires. Not sure why all the discussion about the tops, mine is always down. Only issues are with deep snow with a low car and worrying about getting hit by people in SUVs and pickups that think they are invincible.

The weather and things I needed to do around the house kept me from trying to look at the local one- but SWMBO rather liked the blue hardtop one up in Dayton when I showed the listing to her. All told, it's probably the better one for my purposes: I'd prefer something that I really don't have to do a lot of work on to be reliable and usable since I have the Elky in the garage and the DeLorean could use a ton of little things fixed if it weren't, and I'd like to be able to enjoy driving with the top down as much as I can while the weather is nice. Factoring in needed repairs & parts for the nearby one and the inclusion of the hard top with the blue one, if I can get a bit off the price the blue one would fit the bill better IMO.

Anyone up in the Dayton area familiar with NA's and interested in checking it out for me?

Ashyukun wrote: Another question that SWMBO brought up- she was concerned about the soft top getting snowed on a lot. Would it be worth the extra of getting one with a hard top, like this one (though it’s a long haul to get there…) http://dayton.craigslist.org/cto/5173631445.html ?

I plan to have a tarp that covers the whole car. As long as it is cold the snow and ice just slide off the you fold it up and put it back on when you are forced to park outside again.

irish44j wrote: As someone whose family is from Rochester (and whose father drove a Triumph GT6 through many a Rochester winter), I agree with you. That's not how it is here. At all. Between the soccer moms in Suburbans and all the bro's in their lifted mall-crawlers (every Jeep with Mud Terrains seems intent on proving they can do the speed limit on even the iciest roads), I've had many, many close calls at getting nailed by people who were going too fast and slid off a corner or couldn't stop in time. But we only get 5-10 days of snow on the road around here, so people don't have the experience to know better. And this area is full of transplants from the South and all over, who have no idea what they're doing (in general) In upstate NY, people (in theory) are much more experienced in snowy conditions. So that's probably the difference.

Here the first few storms are like that and you have to be super careful but after they run off the road they drive very slow for the next few months. I typically see 2 or 3 snowy days a week.

Even up in the snow belt of Syracuse they so the exact same thing. I was up there for the first snow of the year and there was probably 50 cars off the road. It is like they forget how to drive in the summer.

I personally love to drive in the snow, and the best and safest car that I own in my Mustang. When I retire it a Miata is the only thing I can think of that will do just as good. Plus I can autocross it in the summer. I would never take the 4 wheel drive truck out in the snow. It is just a pig that can't get out of its own way.

Still trying to work out getting the hard-top one up in Dayton, but am getting increasingly frustrated with the seller's communication (or lack thereof).

I ran the General Altimax Arctics on my Volvo wagon year round for 2 years and they still had lots of tread when I sold it.