Originally Posted by JB3

Thanks everybody!

more manual steering commentary-

Just put on my snow tires (thanks gatorblue for the steel wheels!)

What an incredible difference the rubber compound of the tire makes in steering ease, with the soft snow tires, the steering has bumped up to nearly that of power steering for ease of turning. Just shy of being able to parallel park one handed.

I am amazed. Its so different that for a few minutes I thought something was broken, and after checking over all parts of the steering, its all in the soft rubber. What I find really weird is I had this exact brand snow tire on my manual steering VW as well, and summer and winter snow tires made no difference on that car, but its a huge difference on this one.