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Snow tires & summer tires, or all season tires

2K views 16 replies 13 participants last post by  VMRWheels 
#1 · (Edited)
I bought a 2004 330i w/ zhp package. The car will be used all the time, but in the winter its going to be driven instead of my MINI. The MINI has michelin pilot super sports and they are amazing in warm weather.

I live in southern Indiana. We will get a little snow from time to time. There may be a week time frame that we get enough snow for the roads to be covered for a few days, sometimes a week. Other than that it may be some in the mornings but not often.

Would you go with an all season tire or separate summer and winter tires?

If I go with separate winter tires how long do they last and can you drive them mostly on non-snow covered roads? On dry days can you drive them hard and spirited?
 
#2 ·
Snow tires & summer tires, or all season tires

I bought a 2004 330i w/ zhp package. The car will be used all the time but in the winter its going to be driven instead of my MINI. The MINI has michelin pilot super sports and they are amazing in warm weather.
Used all the time but winter its going to be driven instead because then you will have michelin pilot super sports for amazing warm weather.
 
#3 ·
Don't waste the money on snows if your roads are bare all winter. They're very soft and the road will eat them up in a couple seasons or less depending on how you drive. Use some narrow all-seasons for the winter, like 215's all around on some 16x7's, it's a better compromise. Save the wide wheels and Pilots for summer.
 
#13 ·
OP... in my experience, all season tires in the snow with RWD is useless. The car is still a sled, not to mention, proper snow tires won't only give you better traction, but more importantly, braking and turning will be much better.

I have had snow tires (Blizzacks) since 2007 and will never go another route.



I would beg to differ. I'm in RI and besides the day that we get snow, maybe the day after, the roads are pretty clear as far as snow goes.

I was on my original Blizzack LM-25's since 2007, and JUST bought new LM-60's. 95% of the tire's use saw pavement, and they still lasted me 6 seasons, and if I had to guess... at least 40k miles.

In addition, where did you get the fact that snow tires are soft? Dedicated snow/winter tires should have a very hard compound that way water isn't absorbed and turned into ice basically, so this is the first time in my life hearing that snow tires are "soft."

:dunno:
 
#4 ·
I'm in a similar situation - here in the Pacific Northwet, we could get anywhere from no snow days to several weeks' worth. My solution was to buy a second set of stock wheels from Craigslist and mount winter tires on them. I run "Summer" tires all year 'round, and swap them out with the Winter setup only when needed. This prolongs my winter tire life and my enjoyment of the performance tires.
 
#7 ·
I live in southern Indiana. We will get a little snow from time to time. There may be a week time frame that we get enough snow for the roads to be covered for a few days, sometimes a week. Other than that it may be some in the mornings but not often.

Would you go with an all season tire or separate summer and winter tires?

If I go with separate winter tires how long do they last and can you drive them mostly on non-snow covered roads? On dry days can you drive them hard and spirited?
You don't say what kind of tires you have, but, if they are summers, then they will be very "hard" when it gets cold. And they will not take well to "hard and spirited" driving when the temps drop below 40F.

As others have noted, winter tires don't last very long (we typically get 3 years out of a set), and extended driving in warm temps (esp at highway speeds) will make it seem as if the tread is just evaporating away. While there are "performance" winter tires, their "hard and spirited " quotient is lower than a decent all-season....and that kind of driving will wear the tread even faster.

Don't waste the money on snows if your roads are bare all winter. They're very soft and the road will eat them up in a couple seasons or less depending on how you drive. Use some narrow all-seasons for the winter, like 215's all around on some 16x7's, it's a better compromise. Save the wide wheels and Pilots for summer.
Generally good advice, but the 16s won't clear front brakes on your 330. You might try the standard xi size (205/50-17) on rims no wider than 7-1/2".

Yep it all depends on where you live and how much you drive. All seasons will be fine where you are. I run 4 snows on steel wheels on my wife's XI. We get a ton of snow and she has to get to work. The car is pretty much unstoppable with that setup.
Agree. A quality "performance" all-season might work well for you in winter (as long as the tread depth is more than 6/32"), with a good set of summer rubber. In fact, I've seen studies that show all-seasons are better on very shallow snow and on packed snow than standard winter tires. (May be different on packed snow with the "studless" tires with uper-siped hydrophyllic treads.)

That said, if you HAVE to be places in the winter, short of AWD, nothing beats a set of winter rubber. I remember driving up I-65 from Louisville to Indy about 14~15 years ago, around New Years. A terrific storm hit, both snow and ice. I have plenty of experience driving in the nasty stuff, both in the mountains an on the plains. If I'd had all-season rubber instead of 4 quality winter shoes, I'd have parked the car (ended up choosing to do so about the time we got to 465 in Indy anyway).
 
#9 ·
You don't say what kind of tires you have, but, if they are summers, then they will be very "hard" when it gets cold. And they will not take well to "hard and spirited" driving when the temps drop below 40F.
I have to respectfully disagree. After the original Michelin summer tires wore out, I ran a set of Dunlop Direzza Star Specs, then just recently mounted a set of Michelin Super Sports. In even below-freezing conditions, they still perform great, and I'm confident they outperform All Seasons in any condition other than when there's ice or snow on the ground. As long as some care is taken, they're not the deathtrap everyone makes them out to be. I even drove on light snow with the Dunlops and got home just fine.
 
#8 ·
Same situation as you, we may get snow 2-5 times. Most times it stays a day or two, sometimes it will last a week or so. I found some blizzaks on CL for $200 for a near new set, going to mount those on dedicated winter wheels and see how it goes. My wife has a 30 mile one way commute everyday and has to make it snow or not so I decided to get dedicated winter tires to make it as safe as possible for her. I will likely wait until we actually get snow to put them on, then if we don't have any in the forecast for a while I may take them back off until we get more. I'd rather spend the time putting them on and taking them off than to have mediocre winter tires and run the risk of her going off the road and damaging the car. If it were me driving the car I wouldn't worry about it as much, but her winter driving skills are not great so the added protection puts my mind at ease a bit.
 
#10 ·
Disagreement is best done respectfully. We all have different experiences.

Some tires may perform better than others. Those may be different from what I've experienced.

I learned to put up the MR2s early in the season after experiencing driving their summer-only tires on damp, near-freezing days....and dry, below-freezing days. The one car came with NSX tires, and the other was shod variously with Bridgestone RE71 and Yoko AVSi (super tires, at the time).

More recently, I have had occasion to drive on both Bridgestone Potenza RE050 Pole Positions as well as Dunlop Sport Maxx tires when temps have dropped below 20F.

Even in the summer, they don't reach "operating temperature" in normal urban/suburban driving. Not even close in the winter. I found them to be even harder (more uncomfortable) than in the summer with a tendency to flat-spot a bit. Granted, responsiveness did not suffer too much, but they did not seem to brake as well nor grip in corners (no need even to push them). And the least bit of frost was quite evident.

True, those tires were 2-3 generations old, but the difference is marked, and became only more evident as the temps fell.

If I lived where temps only occasionally fell below freezing, I might consider using summer-only tires. Here, where it can be weeks between times where the thermometer reads above freezing (even where there is no snow), I choose winter rubber every time. And for those who aren't used to driving in nasty stuff (or are new to RWD), it is a no-brainer.
 
#11 ·
Sold my Ford Escape over the summer, so back to my little vert being out year-round, after six winters in the garage. Just put on a second new set of Blizzack WS 70's from TireRack, with dedicated rims. I was very happy with the first set and they lasted five years.

They way I see, I'm looking for maximum traction in the slop as well as decent handling in the dry. Because of the almost constant potential for black ice, I do not drive as hard in the winter, so maximum dry handling is a secondary consideration. And every mile I put on my snows is a mile I'm not putting on my summer tires, so two sets of tires and rims just makes sense.
 
#15 ·
The compounds in a winter tire stay soft at -7°c and below so it will hold frozen clear pavement better than the plastic all seasons will. Snow tires will give you better traction in snow and clear roads when it's cold. Hate to see you post a pix where you totalled the car into a pole at a corner that you've taken 100 times at twice the speed in the summer.
 
#17 ·
For light/no snow, the Continental DWS has shown to be a pretty good all-season option. If you don't drive your car hard, an all-season is fine for getting around town. That being said, all-seasons are sometimes considered the "Jack of all trades, but master of none" tire, so you'll definitely see an improvement during winter with dedicated winters, and and an improvement during spring and summer with dedicated summer tires. So it's really a toss up between the type of driving you do, and the conditions you'll be facing.
 
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