Winter wheels/tires

[chai]

My Goodyear LS tires suck in the Wisconsin snow. I am contemplating getting a set of four 14" snow tires+wheels from TireRack and switching between winter/all seasons as needed. My OEM wheels are 15" steel w/TPMS. From what I can gather, I would need the following to change the tires myself (I don't care about lack of TPMS, that's what regular tire pressure checks are for):

21mm 1/2" socket
1/2" drive breaker bar
1/2" drive torque wrench (75 lb/ft is the magic number?)
floor jack or bottle jack
wheel chocks

Any specific recommendations for good torque wrenches? Would something like this be good enough? Link (Amazon.com) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0019VMI0Y/)

Rather keen on doing as much stuff myself as possible, as paying off 30K in student loans doesn't leave me a lot to burn at shops.

[supmet]

All you need:

breaker bar that came with the car
jack
jack stands

I would buy jack stands long long before I bought a torque wrench to do wheels.

[yaris-me]

Wheel chocks are important or just use a brick.:thumbsup:

[talcum]

I live in stoughton, so I feel your pain on the tires. Get a set of blizzaks on the stock steelies from Tirerack ($450 wship) and a $30 floor jack at Menards or the Fleet.

The jack should have instructions and the lift points on the Yar are just behind the front tires and just in front of the rear tires. Before lifting the car:

1) park on level surface
2) put on parking brake
3) put car in 3rd gear (MT; some will say reverse)
4) break the bolts loose with the lug wrench that came with the car. Remove hub cap if applicable.
5) slide in jack and lift car
6) remove lug nuts and wheel
7) put on wheel w snow tire.
8) tighten lugnuts in star pattern snug
9) lower car
10) tighten lugnuts rest of way
11) go to next tire and repeat steps 4 -10

It should take an hour or less.

And since you now have snow tires on the stock steelies, start looking for a hot set of rims and fat tires for the summer :thumbup:

[chai]

I actually ended up buying 14" Steelies + 14" General Altimax Arctics for $454 shipped from TireRack and installed them myself.

The Goodyears are tolerable in non-snow/ice conditions and I didn't buy a Yaris to bling it up, so the most economical decision was to buy a separate set of snow tires/wheels and just do the seasonal swap.

Then again, I could sell the stock wheels/tires w/TPMS (those things are expensive!) and just buy a better set of non-winter tires and wheels with the proceeds.

[supmet]

floor jacks usually are less catastrophic, but I've had floor and scissors jacks fail on me. Never work on a car just supported by a jack, buy a jack stand. You don't need chocks, you don't need a torque wrench, you don't even need to do your lugs in a star pattern(damn those 4 pointed stars). BUY A JACK STAND.

Yes I realize you already did it. But if you didn't buy jack stands you should have... lol