snow tire size

[gladstoneg6]

I am wanting to run some blizzak's on the stock 17" rims, should I run the stock 225/50/17 size or something else for added traction?

[GraniteGrey]

I was told by the parts man at my dealership that the tire size (circumference) should stay within four percent (4%) of the stock tire size.

Since you're interested in sizing options, you could look at 215/55-17, but you'd be going 1.75% slower than your speedometer will be reading (i.e., 100k/hr on the speedo = 98.2k/hr in reality).

Looking around here, you'll see that many prefer to move down in tread-width (the 225/ or 215/ part).

There may be other combinations that you want to look at... a tire-size calculator is a good place to start. Of course, your tire dealer will have the answers too.