[Kaemslothel]

Living in a state with snow is it safe to drive with Summer Staggering wheels or should I just opt to driving with All season Staggering wheels ?

[Ohio Enthusiast]

Do you intend to drive in the snow or in below 40 degrees F? If so, summer tires will not grip well (or at all in icy conditions) and the low temperatures may cause damage to the tires. If you have a conditioned garage you can leave the car in and have other cars for winter duty, you can keep summer tires on.
Otherwise a separate set of winter tires (if your area sees a lot of snow on the roads) or all season tires (for less snow on the roads) would be needed.

Staggered or not doesn't really matter, but if your area does see a lot of snow narrow tires would help with traction, so a non-staggered setup might be better.

[tracer bullet]

Summer tires are not good for snow. The rubber for that style begins to get hard around 42F or so and gets worse as it gets colder. They'll have reduced grip on good roads and almost no grip on snowy roads. Bordering dangerous in some conditions.

Either get all-seasons and live with the trade-offs (not the very best summer grip, nor the very best snow grip, but decent at each end and great in between), or do 2 sets of wheels (one with summers and one with snows) and swap them out twice a year.

[NSXR]

Originally Posted by Kaemslothel

Living in a state with snow is it safe to drive with Summer Staggering wheels or should I just opt to driving with All season Staggering wheels ?

[IanH]

Originally Posted by tracer bullet

Summer tires are not good for snow. The rubber for that style begins to get hard around 42F or so and gets worse as it gets colder. They'll have reduced grip on good roads and almost no grip on snowy roads. Bordering dangerous in some conditions.

What do you mean "bordering dangerous" this is the understatement of the century.

If you drive on snow surface with summer performance tires, the tread pattern and the rubber are not sufficient.
Your car will be most comparable to a hockey puck on an ice rink, on even the smallest incline

I highly recommend the following tires:

Michelin Crossclimate 2
Pirelli Cinturato Weatheractive

Both of these tires drive excellent in the snow but also handle and drive well the rest of the year and have long lasting tread life. Modern tire technology is truly amazing.

[DeezBluBallz]

Summer time do sticky icky's, winter time do dedicated snow tires. Snow tires are a game changer. But i drive an Audi during the winter. I can't subject my F80 to these shitty roads in Nebraska with salt, and brine through the winter.

[IanH]

Originally Posted by DeezBluBallz

Summer time do sticky icky's, winter time do dedicated snow tires. Snow tires are a game changer. But i drive an Audi during the winter. I can't subject my F80 to these shitty roads in Nebraska with salt, and brine through the winter.

OP has a 330 x drive, they definitely don't "need" sticky summer tires

[DeezBluBallz]

Originally Posted by IanH

OP has a 330 x drive, they definitely don't "need" sticky summer tires

Nevermind….. thought it was a F8x. Trade that thing in for a 340i x drive and get the party started lol.

[MaxVO2]

Originally Posted by IanH

What do you mean "bordering dangerous" this is the understatement of the century.

If you drive on snow surface with summer performance tires, the tread pattern and the rubber are not sufficient.
Your car will be most comparable to a hockey puck on an ice rink, on even the smallest incline

****The above 100%. Many people think they are a great driver and figure they can run Summer tires in cold and sometimes rainy or snowy weather, because they are just better drivers than everyone else, or most everyone else except the very very very best F1 or other drivers - just because they think they are... No.

It is *ridiculously* dangerous to do this, and anti-lock brakes, and traction control won't help you that much taking turns or if you have to stop suddenly.

In addition, below 35 ish, the risk of physically damaging the compound in Summer tires permanently goes way way up as the rubber does not thermal cycle well in cold and can crack internally or externally due to the Ackerman effect as well as cold stress on now brittle rubber.

Just get all seasons or dedicated wheels with Winter tires and be done with it. No where NEAR as expensive as wrecking your car due to being stupid and if someone smashes into me or slides into me during cold weather I am 100% going to be looking at the condition and type of tire on their car. So will a good lawyer if it gets to that or there is question regarding culpability.

Insurance company will be looking at this as well, especially with a high performance car being driven in snow or cold, etc.. Yea, things happen, but running Summer only tires in extreme cold and snow is just dumb and dangerous. Potentially very expensive and painful lesson as well.

Cold cracked Summer only tires below. Both tires run below freezing - Corvette, and Audi TT. Not safe anymore to drive with tires like this at that point as they will fail, probably catastrophically in Summer or Winter with that damage.

[Kaemslothel]

Thanks for all this information! I think my best bet is to change the tires when my car gets to the dealership hopefully they can swap them out for me

[NSXR]

Originally Posted by MaxVO2

In addition, below 35 ish, the risk of physically damaging the compound in Summer tires permanently goes way way up as the rubber does not thermal cycle well in cold and can crack internally or externally due to the Ackerman effect as well as cold stress on now brittle rubber.

Cold cracked Summer only tires below. Both tires run below freezing - Corvette, and Audi TT. Not safe anymore to drive with tires like this at that point as they will fail, probably catastrophically in Summer or Winter with that damage.

Worse yet is that these cracks, accurately called sipes, can't be seen when they are internal. I haven't seen them cause a catastrophic failure (not that it hasn't happened), but the tire grip is never the same once they are formed because they allow the compound to squirm.

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by IanH

OP has a 330 x drive, they definitely don't "need" sticky summer tires

Are you serious? I have two e92 M3s, a f82, a f22 240ix and a g20 330ix M Sport. The g20 330 handles better than a stock f82 and, yes, it can “need” and put to full use sticky summer tires. Have you driven a g20 330i/ix? A Miata can “need” a sticky summer tire for street and track use. I sure hope this wasn’t a serious answer, and hence the use of the quotes, because if it was then it’s one of the more misinformed posts that I’ve seen in quite some time.

OP - I’d recommend running a 235 or 245 square winter setup. I’m running a 225/255 staggered winter performance tire setup on oem 18” staggered wheels to match the stock front and rear rolling diameters. However, I’d recommend a square set 7.5” or 8” wide wheels with 235 (using 8” 235 square setup on our f22) or 245 square winter performance tires (snow and ice tires depending on your driving conditions). We get multiple snow storms with a range of 2-8” of snow (> 24-32” of snow a couple of times per decade) which the staggered setup can handle without issue. The winter performance tires are more for sub 32 F temps (current temps are < 10 F) to ensure there’s sufficient grip when driving in our winter temps without icy road conditions.

[IanH]

Originally Posted by M3SQRD

Are you serious? I have two e92 M3s, a f82, a f22 240ix and a g20 330ix M Sport. The g20 330 handles better than a stock f82 and, yes, it can “need” and put to full use sticky summer tires. Have you driven a g20 330i/ix? A Miata can “need” a sticky summer tire for street and track use. I sure hope this wasn’t a serious answer, and hence the use of the quotes, because if it was then it’s one of the more misinformed posts that I’ve seen in quite some time.

OP - I’d recommend running a 235 or 245 square winter setup. I’m running a 225/255 staggered winter performance tire setup on oem 18” staggered wheels to match the stock front and rear rolling diameters. However, I’d recommend a square set 7.5” or 8” wide wheels with 235 (using 8” 235 square setup on our f22) or 245 square winter performance tires (snow and ice tires depending on your driving conditions). We get multiple snow storms with a range of 2-8” of snow (> 24-32” of snow a couple of times per decade) which the staggered setup can handle without issue. The winter performance tires are more for sub 32 F temps (current temps are < 10 F) to ensure there’s sufficient grip when driving in our winter temps without icy road conditions.

Read the room man,

OP is on the forums asking if they can use summer tires in the winter. They aren't an enthusiast and don't need to run season specific tires.

The newest 4 season tires are perfectly adequate for a non-enthusiast driver to run year round and have longer wear life than both winters and summers.

[Ohio Enthusiast]

Originally Posted by NSXR

Worse yet is that these cracks, accurately called sipes

I think they are called sipes when they are intentional (on winter and all-season tires to improve snow and ice traction by providing more surface are to grip). When it's caused by unintentional damage to the tire it's just cracks.

[NSXR]

Originally Posted by Ohio Enthusiast

I think they are called sipes when they are intentional (on winter and all-season tires to improve snow and ice traction by providing more surface are to grip). When it's caused by unintentional damage to the tire it's just cracks.

Tire engineers will call them micro-sipes, but they could just was well be called "temperature cracks" because "sipe" just means "to seep", so anywhere something can ingress in a small way can be a sipe, intentional or not. Also, they don't provide more surface area, they provide less overall, but they allow the tread to squirm/bend, and it's the bending that allows the extra grip. They're sort of like traction control in the fact that they add time, and time adds control.

EDIT: I guess I should have said that originally sipe meant to "soak up" moisture, but with regards to tires it doesn't really work that way. They are filled immediately, but allow the tread to move around, which allows more grip.

[tracer bullet]

Originally Posted by IanH

What do you mean "bordering dangerous" this is the understatement of the century.

I agree, just didn't want to be so dramatic about it.

They got the message.

[IanH]

Originally Posted by tracer bullet

I agree, just didn't want to be so dramatic about it.

They got the message.

It was pretty dramatic when I was 22y/o and slid 150ft into the middle of a 45mph road on summer tires in 0.5in of snow that had started to fall 15minutes prior.

Thankfully nobody was driving by at the time. I was less than half a mile from home.

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by IanH

Read the room man,

OP is on the forums asking if they can use summer tires in the winter. They aren't an enthusiast and don't need to run season specific tires.

The newest 4 season tires are perfectly adequate for a non-enthusiast driver to run year round and have longer wear life than both winters and summers.

Your post still makes no sense and clearly is an attack on the OP rather than helping to set him straight on the different types of tires.

Sure if that’s your opinion. You don’t need to be an enthusiast to run the proper tire for the correct season. Germany, and other countries, require the proper tire to be used in summer and winter. If an AS (all shit) tire with a M+S tire rating is used, you’re limited to 50 kph in winter conditions. That doesn’t sound like all shit tires are just as good as winter tires. There’s a significant difference between all shit tires and winter ice and snow tires, let alone winter performance tires. Additionally, all shit tires come nowhere near the performance and grip of a summer tire (to cover all seasons) regardless of whether he’s an enthusiast or not.

[MaxVO2]

Originally Posted by tracer bullet

I agree, just didn't want to be so dramatic about it.

They got the message.

****I get it. It is expensive to have dedicated wheels or tires for Winter and Summer on any car but more so on an expensive performance car with fairly rare sized tires..

All seasons work fine for year round use for most people.

Optimally, you have a daily driver for bad weather, Winter or whatever and your "nice" car/vehicle with Summer only tires for.... Summer...

Also, optimally - perhaps a nice girlfriend to take home to see your parents who is a nun in bed, and perhaps a whore in the kitchen - and uhhh.... a not so nice girl to NOT take home to ever see your parents who is just the opposite!

The car below expresses my thoughts somewhat more clearly: a decent daily driver, with some miles/age on it, not in perfect condition. Good in Summer, good in Winter. Reliable and capable, but maybe not so great to look at.

[tracer bullet]

Originally Posted by IanH

It was pretty dramatic when I was 22y/o and slid 150ft into the middle of a 45mph road on summer tires in 0.5in of snow that had started to fall 15minutes prior.

We could meet for a beer and I could tell you about driving a FWD car on Goodyear Gatorbacks on the way from Moab towards Denver. It was October, warm, and seemed fine but then we had a fun blizzard hit the pass on our way home. That was like 5mph and white knuckles for hours on end. One of the top 10 worst experiences of my life.

[freakystyly]

Originally Posted by MaxVO2

****I get it. It is expensive to have dedicated wheels or tires for Winter and Summer on any car but more so on an expensive performance car with fairly rare sized tires..

All seasons work fine for year round use for most people.

Optimally, you have a daily driver for bad weather, Winter or whatever and your "nice" car/vehicle with Summer only tires for.... Summer...

A 3 series with xdrive isn't a daily driver? A beater car cheaper than another set of tires?

Nah man... All seasons have their place but already having a summer set already is 1/2 way to owning two sets unless they sell the summers for some reason...

[Ohio Enthusiast]

Originally Posted by M3SQRD

There’s a significant difference between all shit tires and winter ice and snow tires, let alone winter performance tires. Additionally, all shit tires come nowhere near the performance and grip of a summer tire (to cover all seasons) regardless of whether he’s an enthusiast or not.

All of this might have been very true 20 or even 10 years ago. But if you read/watch recent tire tests you'd see that all-season (or the European all-weather) tires are significantly improved and are a valid option for many use cases. My E93 came with UHP all-season tires and they're more than adequate in both summer and light snow. I wouldn't track the car on them, but as I'm not looking for that extra 3 tenths of a second on my way to drop the kids off to school, a higher grip summer tire would be wasted. I also wouldn't try to drive in 6 inches of fresh snow on them, but snowfall here happens a handful of times a winter and the roads are very well plowed and salted. I have the luxury of choosing not to drive if there is fresh snow on the roads, so that helps.

On my BRZ I started with a summer and winter sets (specifically performance winter tires) and later moved to UHP all-season and track sets. The all-seasons definitely had less ultimate grip in the dry and warm (I even tracked the summer tires, to their great detriment in wear), but not something that I missed even in aggressive driving (and in fact it fit the character of the car better). In winter the performance winter tires were only marginally better in snow, ice and slush then the UHP all-seasons, and were worse when the roads were dry and when temps crept up (temps in the 60s in the middle of winter are not uncommon here, as well as temps in the single digits).

If you live somewhere were there's snow on the roads for months on end, dedicated winter tires are a must. But if you only get a bit of snow and the roads are plowed and salted, so in practice you rarely need to contend with snow and ice on the road, UHP all-season would serve you well and not rob you of the fun aspects of a performance car.