Originally Posted By: mva
This is all interesting discussion.
My theory for winter tires is that dry traction is not really a significant factor. I buy a winter tire for safety during extreme conditions. I do not typically explore the dry traction limits of any tire in my vehicles. Even wet traction is vastly better than traction on ice.
Extreme conditions include going from wet conditions to sheets of ice on a highway trip when temperatures are near 0C, stopping at ice covered intersections, sharp corners on ice, emergency accident avoidance on snow and ice and traction in deep snow. These are the sort of conditions that can be very scary with an all season tire. I don't like that heart in the throat feeling when I am sliding towards another vehicle or the edge of the road while pushing the brake pedal through the floor.
Well, it depends. You're in Northern BC, I'm outside of Toronto. Most of my miles are in wet and dry and if something like studs makes wet/dry even worse than "typical" I have just decreased my family's safety (and my sporting driving pleasure, which is admittedly secondary in the winter anyways). I need to avoid accidents at 120kph in the dry just as much as at 60kph in the snow.
I'm living in a society which prefers all-seasons (and doesn't know the difference), shops for tires based on price alone (hey, they're round and black, right? Do they have a 120,000km guarantee?) and isn't full of truly knowledgeable people.
The trick is that snow tires have many more compromises than it seems summer (not all-season) tires do. Shopping for summer performance tires is easy compared to this. Within the High, max and ultra performance categories you spend more money and get more grip. Then you just need to worry about noise, or vehicle specific wear problems (German cars tend to need connected tread blocks about 1-2" in from the outside edges to avoid noisy heel/toe tire wear, for instance).
With snows you have so much more. Performance traction is opposite to winter traction, wet/dry is different than deep snow, studs or no studs, speed rating is opposite to winter grip, sipe wear is so much more sensitive than large tread block wear, the different mechanics of braking versus turning, on and on...
I thought the masses might be right on the M3s and I disagree. Now I'm pretty lost. Buying top of the line Hakka 5s w/ studs may have very little wet/dry traction. Buying great studless tires may be unsafe at speed. Buying performance snows might leave me still sliding all over. Nothing seems universally "best" in the snow tire world.
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For the BMW - I would look to try to find as narrow a tire as possible that would fit those rims and still maintain the same overall diameter. I don't know about the speed rating but I noticed the Goodyear Nordics look narrower than other tires for a given size.
I have already done this with the 225/55/16. This is the narrowest option on the E39 platform (except for possibly a 215 15" size). They only get wider from here. I'm not sure I'd like to mess around with altering from the recommended size. It's still a reasonably heavy car that corners hard in the dry and I still want dry/wet braking performance so I'm not sure I want to give up too much contact patch.
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Also, I always cross rotated my snow tires to reverse the wear on the stipes. This is not possible for directional tires.
I always front/rear rotated since all of my tires were directional until I got my summer PS2s. BMW doesn't recommend rotating but all of the North American owners still seem to do it. Someone who moved to Europe and continued to post in North American forums came back to clearly state that none of the Europeans rotate because of serious high speed stability problems, proving BMW's recommendation. I personally experienced a dramatic improvement in handling on a summer rotation where the two pairs were visibly identical (tread depth, appearance, scuffing, wear, same pressure split) but handled dramatically different. I now agree with BMW and will never rotate tires on a German car again. I stopped rotating my snows because one has a roadforce of 22 and causes vibration at 120kph that couldn't be tuned out to my satisfaction. That tire is permanently left as a right-rear.
I can feel that each sipe has heel/toe wear - from braking on the fronts and acceleration on the rears. Rotating would put the sharper edges doing opposite duty. When I used to rotate, it didn't really seem to help that much because it seems like they're still rounded off (as my photo shows) so they're still ineffective.
Sometimes I wondered if I really didn't need to just throw them on in the summer once and go and run them hard in some twisties. They still have 8-9/32nds left, but the sipes are shot. If I could shave about 1/32 off, maybe they'd be closer to new again.
Quote:
Back to my case. I hate to bring price and value into the discussion but I am seriously considering going a bit cheap and buying studded Nexen Winterguard tires from Walmart. Including studs they are $200 cheaper than the Goodyear Nordic and I havn't priced out the Hakka 5's yet.
What ever I decide - I will provide some feedback on how they work once winter arrives.
Hakka 5s w/ studs from my local dealer are $299ea installed (still plus taxes, I believe)
This is all interesting discussion.
My theory for winter tires is that dry traction is not really a significant factor. I buy a winter tire for safety during extreme conditions. I do not typically explore the dry traction limits of any tire in my vehicles. Even wet traction is vastly better than traction on ice.
Extreme conditions include going from wet conditions to sheets of ice on a highway trip when temperatures are near 0C, stopping at ice covered intersections, sharp corners on ice, emergency accident avoidance on snow and ice and traction in deep snow. These are the sort of conditions that can be very scary with an all season tire. I don't like that heart in the throat feeling when I am sliding towards another vehicle or the edge of the road while pushing the brake pedal through the floor.
Well, it depends. You're in Northern BC, I'm outside of Toronto. Most of my miles are in wet and dry and if something like studs makes wet/dry even worse than "typical" I have just decreased my family's safety (and my sporting driving pleasure, which is admittedly secondary in the winter anyways). I need to avoid accidents at 120kph in the dry just as much as at 60kph in the snow.
I'm living in a society which prefers all-seasons (and doesn't know the difference), shops for tires based on price alone (hey, they're round and black, right? Do they have a 120,000km guarantee?) and isn't full of truly knowledgeable people.
The trick is that snow tires have many more compromises than it seems summer (not all-season) tires do. Shopping for summer performance tires is easy compared to this. Within the High, max and ultra performance categories you spend more money and get more grip. Then you just need to worry about noise, or vehicle specific wear problems (German cars tend to need connected tread blocks about 1-2" in from the outside edges to avoid noisy heel/toe tire wear, for instance).
With snows you have so much more. Performance traction is opposite to winter traction, wet/dry is different than deep snow, studs or no studs, speed rating is opposite to winter grip, sipe wear is so much more sensitive than large tread block wear, the different mechanics of braking versus turning, on and on...
I thought the masses might be right on the M3s and I disagree. Now I'm pretty lost. Buying top of the line Hakka 5s w/ studs may have very little wet/dry traction. Buying great studless tires may be unsafe at speed. Buying performance snows might leave me still sliding all over. Nothing seems universally "best" in the snow tire world.
Quote:
For the BMW - I would look to try to find as narrow a tire as possible that would fit those rims and still maintain the same overall diameter. I don't know about the speed rating but I noticed the Goodyear Nordics look narrower than other tires for a given size.
I have already done this with the 225/55/16. This is the narrowest option on the E39 platform (except for possibly a 215 15" size). They only get wider from here. I'm not sure I'd like to mess around with altering from the recommended size. It's still a reasonably heavy car that corners hard in the dry and I still want dry/wet braking performance so I'm not sure I want to give up too much contact patch.
Quote:
Also, I always cross rotated my snow tires to reverse the wear on the stipes. This is not possible for directional tires.
I always front/rear rotated since all of my tires were directional until I got my summer PS2s. BMW doesn't recommend rotating but all of the North American owners still seem to do it. Someone who moved to Europe and continued to post in North American forums came back to clearly state that none of the Europeans rotate because of serious high speed stability problems, proving BMW's recommendation. I personally experienced a dramatic improvement in handling on a summer rotation where the two pairs were visibly identical (tread depth, appearance, scuffing, wear, same pressure split) but handled dramatically different. I now agree with BMW and will never rotate tires on a German car again. I stopped rotating my snows because one has a roadforce of 22 and causes vibration at 120kph that couldn't be tuned out to my satisfaction. That tire is permanently left as a right-rear.
I can feel that each sipe has heel/toe wear - from braking on the fronts and acceleration on the rears. Rotating would put the sharper edges doing opposite duty. When I used to rotate, it didn't really seem to help that much because it seems like they're still rounded off (as my photo shows) so they're still ineffective.
Sometimes I wondered if I really didn't need to just throw them on in the summer once and go and run them hard in some twisties. They still have 8-9/32nds left, but the sipes are shot. If I could shave about 1/32 off, maybe they'd be closer to new again.
Quote:
Back to my case. I hate to bring price and value into the discussion but I am seriously considering going a bit cheap and buying studded Nexen Winterguard tires from Walmart. Including studs they are $200 cheaper than the Goodyear Nordic and I havn't priced out the Hakka 5's yet.
What ever I decide - I will provide some feedback on how they work once winter arrives.
Hakka 5s w/ studs from my local dealer are $299ea installed (still plus taxes, I believe)
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