Hakka dis, hakka dat...

[Brett Dikeman]

At 1:01 PM -0500 1/31/02, Dan Simoes wrote:
>Too late now, but the 1 is a better deep snow tire, the Q is a better
>ice tire.  The 1 is stiffer, the Q softer.  I was once told that if you
>are going to stud them, get the 1s, otherwise get the Qs.


First off, thanks to everyone for tolerating yet another dumb snow
tire question thread.

Hakka Q's in 195/65/15s are now on the car.  They're absolutely
amazing(though I've never driven with snows before, hence half my
amazement.)  Anyone in lower NH/upper MA right now knows weather's
quite nasty at the moment; I had no troubles returning from Nashua to
Wayland with excellent speed on all roads.  In Nashua quite a bit was
building on the roads, yet control was excellent.

   I specifically sought out some back country roads around here in
Lincoln and the like, none of which had been plowed/sanded/salted and
had a nice layer of fresh snow+slush.  Whee!  Did a lot of braking
and hard acceleration to get an idea of the tire's capabilities, even
tried some short stops w/avoidance; sure, ABS came on, but actually
did what it was supposed to, kept the car under control :-)  It was
VERY hard to break a tire loose in 2nd or 3rd straight line; that's
impressive in a chipped 200q20v in bad weather :-)

They are fidgety, however, just like several of you said.  It will
take a bit to get used to, especially since I was using really nice
low profile summer tires; I'll just have to be much more relaxed and
not thrash the car around as per usual :-)  They are not noisy at
all(or at least, not what I would consider noisy.)  One of the
interior door panels is off at the moment(speaker repair) and so I
can hear tire noise quite well, and it's not bad at all.

The guys at the shop were totally bowled over by the UFOs.  I had to
convince them the dust shield wasn't really a dust shield, and they
thought it was really wild, kept looking it over etc.  One of the
mechanics told me later that a friend had bought a V8q and has since
added nitrous to it(interesting) and "that thing <censored> SMOKES!"

Next on the list, finishing up my speaker repairs and figuring out
this ground loop problem...grrrr!

Brett
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