ok for the past 2yrs i have been running Continental ContiExtremeContact in 215/40/17 and with the winters in Pittsburgh i have been fine, in fact better than most.

I'm thinking of putting some 25/45/17 winters on my s-lites and picking up better summer wheels and tires in the spring (probably bbs rk and dunlop z1's).

Is there any downside to the 215 winters other then less good snow traction? (im in the city and we dont get much standing snow on the roads, anyways)

Has any one run the Dunlop SP winter M3 tires, currently the top of my list, or is ther a better winter performance i should be looking at?

Thanks
Jonathan

 

dayam!



no, you should be fine. narrower tires work better to bite in to the
snow and ice, but on a pretty heavy car like our MINI's i think 215 will
do fine for the most part.

 

I have set of 215/45/17 that were originally on my Focus and by sheer luck fit the mini saving me $$$. They work VERY well in the winter months of NJ.

 

I had a very competent all season tire (Conti Extreme Contact) and with a 215 tire the car felt like it would get up on top of the snow and feel really unstable.

I now have another all-season tire which has a lot less traction in snowe than the Extreme Contact but is in 205. It at least does not feel like it rides on top of the snow...

 

Which tire is best for your use will be partly determined by the severity of your winter, road conditions, length of commute and other driving conditions.

215mm wide winter tires can work with light snow and shorter commutes under good conditions.

Narrow and tall winter tires will work better as the snow gets more formidable.

Just be careful and test the road conditions as your start out.

Never take traction for granted in the winter.

 

Step down to the official MINI size of 205/45/17 and you have a number of really good choices - 3 of them are RunFlats, even!

TireRack - Compare Tire Search Results

Personally, which winter tire you choose should depend a lot on how much snow you expect to get in the winter. It's often agreed upon that the Bridgestone Blizzaks have the best snow performance... but they also use a softer rubber that wears out much faster on dry pavement (not to mention they perform quite poorly on dry pavement).

For me, I use the Pirelli Winter 240 SnowSports, because here in the Washington DC area, we really don't get that much snow every winter, which means that most of the time, we're driving on (cold) dry pavement. The Pirellis are a far better tire on dry pavement than the Blizzaks IMO (both in terms of performance and durability), yet they still have very, very good snow performance too.

Just like you're thinking, I put my snows on S-Lites, and I have another set (my JCW 18s) for the rest of the year.

 

Blizzaks! That's the tires i have. thanks i couldn't remember. They really are awesome. Even at the size i have. (215).

-Will