When to Buy Winter Tires?

Now that I have nice summer tires for my truck it's made me think about purchasing good winter tires for next years season. I could just keep using one set of tires all year long, the ones I have are "all terrain" and would do okay in the snow, but a pair of proper winter tires will be the best. Since I have a spare set of wheels to mount tires on, I figure I might as well use them.
But now the question is when do I want to buy them? In the Fall / Winter prices rise because they're in demand, so I figure the best time to purchase will be once all the snow is melted in April or May and tire dealers are having blow out sales to try and get rid of their out of season products.
I'm looking for tires that are narrow and studded so that they'll handle as good as a winter tire. The main decision maker will be what I can get a good deal on though, if the dealerships don't have that good of deals and are priced higher than I'd like to go I might just wait until I find a used pair locally online or at a yard sale.
Luckily, I've got a few months to find a set of winter tires for the truck, but the sooner I find some, the better.

New Tires, New Look

Before

 Over February break we finally got my car running in tip top shape again, so I finally had a chance to work on the pickup again. The first thing I wanted to do was put on the new tires I had bought last month because I was just sick of having to blow up the ones on the truck every single time I worked on it. 

One of the new tires next to an old one

 These new tires are 31/10.50 tires so they're about an inch or so bigger than the old ones and they're a mud terrain tire so the tread is a lot thicker and widely spaced. They are gonna be the perfect size for me because they aren't insanely big so that I'd need to lift the suspension. At the same time they make the truck sit higher off the ground, give it plenty of traction on and off the road, and look bad ass.

After

It only took me about an hour or so to get the old wheels off and the new on, the I didn't push it into the garage or anything I just brought a jack out to the back and took one wheel off at a time. For the most part they all came off pretty easily but the lug nuts on the front were frozen since the tires were fully flat and buried in the snow.

I love how the wheels turned out, it makes the pickup look so much better already. It's crazy how much new pairs of shoes can completely change how a vehicle looks.

No Car = More Delays

For nearly the past month I've been having trouble with my Subaru. Its been randomly misfiring and we thought we had fixed it but the other day it started doing it again and left me stranded. For a while my sister and I borrowed our mom's car or got rides from friends.
This has lead to me not being able to make it up to my Uncle's house because its hard to get a ride there and back home. If the pickup was at my house I would've been able to make a good amount of progress, but we gotta get it running before we do that.
Once the Subaru's up and running again I plan on working on the truck as much as I can, I'm aiming for twice a week.

My Subaru next to my friend's 95 Toyota Pickup

Off by One Year

After the work I did on Wednesday I was kind of surprised by all the sensors and wires that seemed different on the new engine so I went online and made a post on https://www.facebook.com/groups/PICKUPMAFIA/. I asked if anyone else had done the same engine swap as me and what to expect with getting it to hook up right. 

When I woke up in the morning I had a load of replies, I think it was around 29 comments or so. All of the responses were helpful but not exactly what I wanted to read... Most of them were telling me how it'll work but the cabs harness wont hook up to the engine's computer. They also told me which parts / sensors I might need to swap out in order for it to work.
Luckily, the engine will still work I'm just gonna have to do a bit more work than I hoped. I'm going to look into it some more next time I'm up and see if there's some adapter or re-wire that I can do. If not, I'll take apart the dash and put in a whole new wiring harness to adapt to the new engine.