Utah Stingers

[MerlintheMad]

Going to the loop with a big group tomorrow should be fun if anyone wants to join

Damn, sounds like fun. I'm up in Bear Lake this weekend with my Stinger, I took Logan Canyon to get here which unfortunately had lots of traffic as always, but the parts there were openings were fun!

Which "loop", "My" loop? Or a different one?

Alpine

I lived with disappointment, because I expected nothing more than silence.
But, it's been a week (less a day). What, if anything, happened? Did the "swarm" and drive happen or not?

 

[Richie Rich]

Didnt happen sorry everyone fell off 1 by 1 but we did have a nice cruise to park city today that was fun group of 5 so not huge

 

[MerlintheMad]

Good. You got a "swarm". Five is very decent number. Any pics?

Didnt happen sorry everyone fell off 1 by 1 but we did have a nice cruise to park city today that was fun group of 5 so not huge

 

[Richie Rich]

I didnt take any but others did just waiting for posts

 

[Richie Rich]

 

[MerlintheMad]

Aurora Black in the center, or Panthera Metal? Look at all those carbon fiber hoods! Is this a Hill AFB "in" thing? Pretty cool lineup, you guys. How many are Stinger Forum members?

 

[Richie Rich]

Panthera in the middle

 

[MerlintheMad]

Panthera in the middle

With a carbon fiber hood, if my eyes do not deceive me? That looks like four out of five with carbon fiber hoods! Which car is yours?

 

[BlaydeX15]

Geez, scared shitless driving today. They're doing tons of construction on my commute, and I was on my way to lunch, passing a big ol 2 tank semi on an open 2 lane road. Semi on my right, construction worker (one of many) in the turning lane to my left.

Right before we got to the worker in the turning lane, the semi decided it wanted to split the lanes, and started to run me out of my lane into the turning lane, all wheels over the dotted line, and then some. I gave the guy as much room as I could, hugging close to the semi without hitting it, and was like 2 feet away from hitting the guy when I passed him. Thankfully I managed to avoid hitting the semi or the worker.

Scared me to death. If the semi had kept moving over, the obvious thing to do is let it hit you instead of running a person over, but if that had happened, I'm pretty sure the hit would have caused me to lose control and I would have hit the guy anyway. Scary hypothetical situation right there.

Close call for everyone, and my heart is still racing from it. Stopped by where it happened on my way back from lunch (couldn't eat much, lol), and talked to the guy to make sure he was OK, and to kinda explain what happened so nobody called the cops on me for attempted vehicular homicide. Guy was fine, saw what happened, and seemed pretty cool. Also complimented my car and asked how fast it was... Didn't want to admit to anything that amounted to reckless driving, cause I had almost hit the guy... Lol.

Cars are death traps, man.

 

[MerlintheMad]

My close call was last week, also involving a semi, in Nebraska, on the freeway, passing a semi in the right lane at speed (had come up on him to get there before he moved to the left to pass a slower semi), and the idiot moved over at the exact moment that I was alongside him!? Seriously did not look or he would have seen me. He came, all, the, way, over. All I could do was go onto the median shoulder: which, thank God, was as wide as a car at that point or I would have been off into the barrow pit. Closest call I've ever had with a semi in my whole life. I resolved to never come up on the rear of a semi in a curve to the right; his left mirror is compromised.

Glad your "adventure" also had a good outcome!

 

[UTStingerGT]

Hi everyone! New to the club and new to the Stinger but loving the forum and support I'm seeing here.

Purchased my 19 GT from Doug Smith Kia in American Fork 10 days ago. So far so GOOD. I cross-shopped with all the usual suspects. Really liked the Genesis G70, the Volvo S60 and (of course) the WRX but for my daily drive, the Stinger is a home run. I'm leasing and .... pretty sure I got a good deal..? The sales guy was great. The finance guy was a derp.

Wave if you see me on the road!

 

[MerlintheMad]

Howdy. I'll be happy to wave. What color should I be looking for? Whereabouts do you live. I don't get down to "Happy Valley" very often (thank heaven ).

I actually got my GT1 in Silky Silver from Doug Smith, but I bought it from Jerry Seiner, S. Jordan; they traded one of their cars for the Stinger because JS did not have a Silky Silver.

 

[UTStingerGT]

Thats me on the right (old car on the right). I'm in Ut Co, but I work in Sandy so I'm back and forth a lot. Hoping to be up the canyons all winter long!

 

[MerlintheMad]

(you mean "on the left"? did you get a good trade-in or did you keep it?)

Snow tires for you, then. I use A/S Nitto Motivo UHP because I never go up the canyons during the winter. You are AWD I see from the pic.

 

[UTStingerGT]

Ha. sorry. Yes. thats my old car, on the left (Civic EX).

Yeah. AWD on the stock summers. I've actually never run summer tires before - usually just all seasons. You think I'll definitely need winters? Even around town?

 

[UTStingerGT]

And they actually gave me a great deal on the trade. I'd shopped it around a couple of places and even Honda wouldnt give me what I owed for it. Kia did, easy peasy UNTIL the lease payoff came in 300$ higher with Kia than it did anywhere else. The dealership said thats Honda does that so you come in and trade with them and not Kia.

Kind of a bummer. The dealership and I split the 300 and got the deal done. Fair deal overall.

 

[MerlintheMad]

AWD on the stock summers. I've actually never run summer tires before - usually just all seasons. You think I'll definitely need winters? Even around town?

In the cold season? Yes, definitely. The Michelins get too hard when the roads freeze. Up to that point, they get decreasingly grippy. Once frozen, they turn into marbles. Seriously, a friend on here - @Gordo - went through the winter of '18 on his Michelins and slid to the bottom of his hill one morning on the way to work. Got away with it, was even more cautious and finished out the winter!? Watch a video on stopping power comparisons between summer, A/S and winter tires. That'll sober you up fast! But since we almost never drive on ice in the valleys; and because we have so much of our winters above freezing; and because we have really good snow removal and saline treatment, so that our roads are 95% dried out the next day after a wallop, A/S are actually the best compromise, because either side of freezing means they out perform winter tires all the rest of the time between storms. Well below freezing the winter tire rules. Obviously, around here we seldom see those kinds of freezes: and when we do, we drive very carefully on our A/S.

I plan on swapping out the Michelins on their "summer" rims only as the weather dives below freezing in the daytime. Until that happens, the residual temperature in the pavement will stay above freezing, even when it gets below freezing at night. When it stops rising above freezing in the daytime, i.e. is freezing and below in twenty-four hour stretches, then is the time to remove the summer tires. Just appreciate that when cold (below the recommended 40F), summer tires decrease in performance the colder it gets. In that temperature range, the A/S is king.

 

[UTStingerGT]

hmmmm a lot to think about. So my sales guy informed me that the summers were the only option without more cost. That was the only part of the deal and process I rushed through without thinking. I'm at my limit, cost-wise, on this car (worth every cent so far), so now I better figure out some low-cost options for tires. Maybe I'll throw some cheap all-seasons on there from discount tire and switch back to the summers in April or so.

Unless there's a market for these Michelins used. What do you think?

 

[MerlintheMad]

Your sales guy is right. To swap OE tires for something else is on you, not Doug Smith. I'm a bit surprised that Michelins are on the car: I thought that A/S were being ordered on them for this area. Perhaps only some vehicles have A/S on the 19" rims (of course 18" rims on GT trims are A/S: but then you "get" the reduced top speed of 130 MPH, which bugs a bunch of people when they find out after it's too late).

I put my Michelins on KSL last December and got ZERO response; good thing, too, because I ended up getting TSW rims for summer and putting the summer tires on them.

I went back and forth with just using my OE GT rims year round and mounting the A/S or summer tires, i.e. swapping twice a year and storing the unused set of tires in the shed. I bit the bullet and got "seasonal rims" to go with the tires so that all I have to do, of course, is take one set of wheels off and put the other set on. I take the four wheels and tires in the hatch (they fit easily) when the change is made (I do not work on my car, not even to change wheels: If I had a commodious garage I might feel differently).

If you're fixed on A/S year round (I thought about that too; it's the simplest, least expensive route: but you don't get the same cornering performance out of a UHP A/S tire as you do with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, or any other dedicated summer tire), there are several options that allow for high speed (UHP, with a "W" or "Y") rating. I picked the Nitto Motivo because they had the longest treadlife warranty. I'm still thinking that if I had not been able to afford what I ended up doing, that sticking with the A/S year-round on the OE GT rims would have satisfied me for a long time. I've gone plenty fast on the Nittos: last October on my way down to LA on I-15, I got into a tail chase, when a BMW i8 blasted by me just outside Baker and then tried to shake me (I don't do this anymore, but that's another story): I got up to over 120 MPH several times and the Nittos were smooth as glass.

 

[UTStingerGT]

Whoa! I got in a similar ruckus with a lexus 300 back when I had a '01 WRX. We bounced around 110mph outside of Reno NV. I was younger and dumber then.

Thanks for the reccomendations. I try to ski once a week, so I've got some soul searching to do on tires... 90% of the time the canyons are perfectly dry roads but puttering around the parking lot is slushy. Plus, I don't want to be hampered out of skiing just because I have the wrong tires.

I really appreciate your time and thoughts. I spent half of my at-desk-lunch looking at tires online.