Winter tires for AWD (living in Chicago)

[jcloudm]

John,

Pleased to meet you. I've been poking around on TireRack and will likely go with something close to the size from the factory. Being in Colorado, you know that most of the time we are driving on dry pavement, but there are those days..... I will get more serious when the delivery date is closer.

In the past I have tried Michelin and Pirelli snowtires, but always come back to Blizzaks. I have not tried or know anybody who has tried the Vredestein, so cannot weigh in.

When is your build date? I'm one month from today! Not that I'm not excited or anything.

My struggle is the same: I'll want high performance for 90% of those winter tire days but need them to get me through those tough days where no side streets get plowed. And I really want a good looking large wheel.

My build date is 9/12, and it's going to be a tad adventurous if it gets delivered in November and the temps are cold (or even worse that there is snow that week). First stop tire shop!

Sponsored

 

[phidauex]

I’m in the “your car is only connected to the road by four tiny patches of rubber so you better do that one part right” camp, and we go with snow tires on all our cars in the winter (Boulder, CO).

You can get away with all seasons here, but two things to consider - you don’t buy tires for the average day, you buy them for a bad day. I don’t care if all seasons are fine most days, if the snow tires prevent an accident once every ten years then they pay for themselves.

Second, if you buy a 2nd set of wheels for the snows, and swap them yourself, then the marginal cost for snow tires is very low - just the cost of the wheels (and you can save by buying used). By swapping in the fall and spring each set of tires lasts twice as long. You still buy the same amount of rubber, you just buy some of it up front.

Right now I’m not seeing stock on a lot of great snows... I’ve always used Blizzaks, but have also had good luck with Hankook Icebears / W300s. Right now the Michelin X-Ice is available in stock size with a 103T XL load rating, as is the General Altimax Arctic 12. There are a few interesting performance snows on TireRack, the Pirelli Pzero Winter and Continental WinterContact, but they are darn expensive (probably because they look to be Porsche badged). I’ll see what options start appearing as we get closer to winter.

 

[tuminatr]

To answer the question yes the car has AWD and that helps give you traction going forward. What winter tires will do is help you break like it's summer and not slip around corners. I read an article a few years back that you are actually better off with an FWD car and winters than an AWD with all season. Today you can find 'tweener in what's called all weather. All-Weather is a new tire category to the USA that can be driven all year round and provides premium traction in all conditions. All-Weather tires also have the three-peak mountain snowflake (the winter tire rating)

I am going to do a set of winter wheels and tires. Here is the plan 225/60/18, yep downsize. I live in MN and the roads get quite bad (lots of potholes) in February / March so I like to have a tire with a little more sidewall. I picked out a Konig Hypergram 18x8.5 & Vredestein Wintrac Pro combo together they will weigh 13.5lbs per wheel tire combo less than my factory 19" wheels. I think the lower wight will make up for the fact that winter tires will have a negative effect on range. And you cannot buy a better performance wither tire than those Vredestein Wintrac Pro's

If you are not familiar with these tires check them out. Consumer Reports #1 rated performance (UHP) winter. They drive like a German performance tire and are awesome in the wet too.

 

[likescookies]

I am going to do a set of winter wheels and tires. Here is the plan 225/60/18, yep downsize. I live in MN and the roads get quite bad (lots of potholes) in February / March so I like to have a tire with a little more sidewall. I picked out a Konig Hypergram 18x8.5 & Vredestein Wintrac Pro combo together they will weigh 13.5lbs per wheel tire combo less than my factory 19" wheels. I think the lower wight will make up for the fact that winter tires will have a negative effect on range. And you cannot buy a better performance wither tire than those Vredestein Wintrac Pro's

tuminator, I'm in MN as well and the tire/wheel combo you've suggested makes good sense to me and I may leverage your research (thank you!). I've never swapped out all-seasons for winter tires before, so a newbie question: when swapping out to winter tires (or back), are there any steps necessary other than removing and replacing each wheel, especially when changing tire size? Do the tire pressure monitors figure themselves out? Etc.

 

[tuminatr]

Typically, the car needs to be programmed to the new tire pressure sensors. If you have someplace like Discount Tire mount & balance and assemble the wheel, tire, TPM sensors they will do the programming for you.

Come summer they will also put your factory all-season wheels & tires back on and program the car to the sensors for you (provided they installed your winters). They bag up the winter wheels and tires and will even put them in the hatch for you.

I usually buy my wheels, tires, and sensors elsewhere and have Discount install them. The Konig Wheels I bought off eBay (from discount tire) the tires I bought from Tire Rack and went to pick them up ($40 discount, if you pick up rather than deliver. TR's warehouse is in Roseville) and bought sensors from Rock Auto for $20.50 each. The sensors I buy are Schrader 33500 programmable sensors. The cool thing about these sensors is they can clone the factory sensors and then no reprogramming is needed when you switch winter/summer wheel packages.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any other questions

Sponsored