CVTBenhogan

Hi all,

I'm almost done with the winter tire setup. I'm ready to pull the trigger on some 18 replicas (166s) and mount with dunlop winter sports.

That said, I'm sure there are many people that run all seasons for the entire year. I wonder if many E60ers with non-sport packages bother to swap on winters? I'm located in Chicagoland.

Option 2 is going a good all season tire, like a Conti Extreme Contact?



CVT Benhogan

Rudy

Your mileage may vary but I'm a strong advocate of using dedicated winter tires (I have the Dunlop M3's and they are great.)

Last time I checked, Chicago can get some snow -- in my opinion, all-season tires are just marketing BS...

KAF

CVTBenhogan

Hey Rudy,

Thanks for your comments.

I see where your coming from but I'm torn. I'm thinking the summer compounds and the thread of the sports tire are the main problems for winter use. Moving to the all-seasons corrects this a bit, although these are crap for heavy snow and the E60 gets banished to garage. I find my sport tires getting very slippery with falling temps. Decisions and decisions.

CVT Benhogan

tachyon

The new Car & Driver maganzine issue (Dec 2006) has a test of winter vs. summer vs. all-season tires. They used a Cadillac CTS as the test mule and tried out the Eagle Ultra Grip winter tire, the Eagle RS-A all-season tire, and the Eagle F1 high-performance summer tire.

The end result was as expected: the best performance comes from using winter tires when it's cold out and summer tires in nonwinter months. Interestingly, the winter tire out-performed the all-season on wet pavement (even on a 77 degree sunny day).

While all-season tires might be serviceable here in Chicago, I think it would be too much of a compromise on the 550i. Go for the seasonal set-up.

aybeesea

A new marketing strategy.

Create an all-purpose product to try to reduce sales of specialist variants.

?

ABC

joseyu

A dedicated set of winter tires is the way to go. And, I would suggest that you mount the winter tires on your current Style 124 wheels and then when spring comes along, you should have your summer tires mounted on the replica 166s. I don't see the point of mounting winter tires on a brand new set of wheels.

CVTBenhogan

Yes, thought about this as well. A couple of things. 1) Its $140 each time you tire swap and probably would do this twice ($280 minimum BTW the 18 runflats then sit idle because the 166s are surely 19s). 2) The 124s are okay and might as well use that rubber.

But, it seems weird to buy new wheels and stick snow tires on them.

joseyu

I thought the replica 166's that you were planning to get were 18s. If that is the case, the perfect setup would be to mount the 18" winter tires on your Style 124s and then mount the original 18" RFT on to the new 166 replicas. If that is the case, you will only have to dismount the RFT from the 124s, mount the tires on to the 166s and then mount the new winter tires on to the 124s. After doing that, then you will just have to swap the wheels out at the end of every season. You can do that yourself or Motorwerk can do that for $19.95.

doug_999

I went with used OEM 138s. Put Dunlop M3s on those babies and I'm set. While it does not look as good as the stock 18" (looks just like a stock 530) - it performs great in the snow (the 17" are a better wheel/tire combo for the winter - especially with the potholes we get here) and honestly I could care less what people think I am driving.