Winter Tire Thread

Mom didn't like her new black steelies / Blizzaks. Couple cans later and she's happy.

Ignore the overspray.

Shawny273 said:

First Post, First GTI here folks. Came from the Mini universe, so nice to see a similar community here!

Have some 18" Detroit rims locally in good shape. Any issue getting them on this?

year: 2015
make: VW
model: GTI with Performance Pack
location: Maine
tires only or winter package: Winter tires and wheels that will clear the larger brake calipers of the Performance Pack.

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The Detroit 18's will fit just fine

This is the first year that I've had dedicated winter (snow tires). I wasn't sure if they would be worth the investment, however first time driving them on bad roads made me realize they were well worth it. I purchased a set of Blizzak ws80 snow tires and they give me much more confidence in the snow. I'd recommend them to anyone.

cdubbgti91 said:

This is the first year that I've had dedicated winter (snow tires). I wasn't sure if they would be worth the investment, however first time driving them on bad roads made me realize they were well worth it. I purchased a set of Blizzak ws80 snow tires and they give me much more confidence in the snow. I'd recommend them to anyone.

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How is the noise? I moved out to the Midwest this year, and just ordered a winter setup (General Artics on Jetta stockers). Stock a/s tires were garbage on dry and hazardous in the snow lol. Cant wait to have some grip

c72k said:

How is the noise? I moved out to the Midwest this year, and just ordered a winter setup (General Artics on Jetta stockers). Stock a/s tires were garbage on dry and hazardous in the snow lol. Cant wait to have some grip

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There is a noticeable bump in road noise from the tire, but not enough that I think it is really noticeable daily driving the car. Now that's I've experienced driving my car with winter tires it's a no brainer for me to have these on every winter. I now understand why people have dedicated summer/winter tires.

cdubbgti91 said:

There is a noticeable bump in road noise from the tire, but not enough that I think it is really noticeable daily driving the car. Now that's I've experienced driving my car with winter tires it's a no brainer for me to have these on every winter. I now understand why people have dedicated summer/winter tires.

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Gotcha. Can’t wait to get mine. It’s snowing today and makes me wish I did it earlier

My beetle wheels with 215 generals.

c72k said:

Gotcha. Can’t wait to get mine. It’s snowing today and makes me wish I did it earlier

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After my first time driving my car in the snow with them, I actually look forward to it snowing now lol.

17" Goal Wheels

I'm using the 17" Goal wheels I had on my previous car, a MKV Rabbit. Bridgestone Blizzak WS80.



They just clear the PP brakes on my MK7.5

Hey y'all-- I'm plotting out my next set of winter tires. I have Sottozero 3 now, and they're discontinued. I just killed one in a pothole and had to get a replacement on Letgo. I love the tires when it's not snowing, but not in the snow. Also, the fronts are down to 6/32 after only ~3700 miles.

My previous car was an E46 BMW (2wd) which was great on Dunlop Wintermax (studless snow). The GTI is the first FWD car I've driven in the snow in many years, and the Sottozeros are the first winter performance tires I've had, so I don't know for sure which is the biggest factor in my disappointment.

So who has run a GTI on both winter performance tires and studless snows? Which worked better for you?

My Sottzeros are on 17" wheels but I plan to use my stock wheels for the next set, btw, and get some Neuspeeds for the nice weather.

Thanks
kevin

I've used Conti Winter Contact SI tires on two FWD VW vehicles with excellent results. Tire Rack had them top rated but they may have gotten into issues with buying from Europe vs. Continental's U.S. distribution system. TR pulled all of the test data on the Winter Contact SI and only gets a small shipment of the Conti Winter Contact SI tires each season. I bought mine from Tire Buyer who had them in stock at an excellent price with good service.

TechGuy32 said:

I've used Conti Winter Contact SI tires on two FWD vehicles with excellent results. Tire Rack had them top rated but they may have gotten into issues with buying from Europe vs. Continental's U.S. distribution system. TR pulled all of the test data on the Winter Contact SI and only gets a small shipment of the Conti Winter Contact SI tires each season. I bought mine from Tire Buyer who had them in stock at an excellent price with good service.

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The WinterContact SI is not offered in Europe to begin with, so there is no European distribution for that tire, they are just made in Germany. It is product unique to US & Canada.

There is a chance that the WinterContact SI might see European duty, has Gislaved gets some Continental brand tires as hand-me-downs, as the old ExtremeWinterContacts are now sold as Gislaved SoftFrost 200.

General Altimax Arctic and Altimax Arctic 12 are hand-me-downs from Gislaved as the NordFrost 3 and Nordfrost 100 respectively.

Oscar LaVista said:

Hey y'all-- I'm plotting out my next set of winter tires. I have Sottozero 3 now, and they're discontinued. I just killed one in a pothole and had to get a replacement on Letgo. I love the tires when it's not snowing, but not in the snow. Also, the fronts are down to 6/32 after only ~3700 miles.

My previous car was an E46 BMW (2wd) which was great on Dunlop Wintermax (studless snow). The GTI is the first FWD car I've driven in the snow in many years, and the Sottozeros are the first winter performance tires I've had, so I don't know for sure which is the biggest factor in my disappointment.

So who has run a GTI on both winter performance tires and studless snows? Which worked better for you?

My Sottzeros are on 17" wheels but I plan to use my stock wheels for the next set, btw, and get some Neuspeeds for the nice weather.

Thanks
kevin

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"Performance" winter tires are technically "Studless" winter tires.

From the Studless you have 2 primary markets: Nordic and Central European.

Nordic are tires where they see more snow duty, without studs, such as the Dunlop WinterMaxx

Central European see less snow, and temperatures hover around freezing, more or less, so they deal with more cold rain than actual snow. They also focus on dry cornering grip, so compounds are different, as well as less siping for more stable tread blocks (less squirm). Think Dunlop SP WinterSport M3/3D/4D.

Choosing tires is a trade off, and winter tires are no different, you choose what you want to trade off and don't get disappointed in the areas where you made your tradeoffs.

I've ran:
Performance (Central European): Hankook Icebear W300 & Nexen Winguard Sport
Nordic: (firestone) Winterforce, Nokian Hakkapeliitta RSI, General Altimax Arctic, Nitto SN-2
All-weather: Nokian WR G3 (Assymetric)
...and no real classification, except they are remolded tires: Green Diamond MDT & Icelander (they have big chunks of silicon carbide distributed throughout the tread to provide grip in the snow & ice.

TR often buys directly from Europe. The tires don't have to be sold in Europe per se.

TR rates Performance and Studless snow tires as two separate tire categories.

Oscar LaVista said:

So who has run a GTI on both winter performance tires and studless snows? Which worked better for you?

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Last winter was the first winter with my GTI, so I needed new winter wheels and tires. I lucked out and found a set of 17" Audi S4 wheels for $400 that had Michelin X-ice tires on them, though they were the wrong size (215/55/17). We didn't get a lot of snow, but when we did, they performed as expected for that type of tire (I've run Blizzak WS70 & WS80 on my previous cars). However, when it's not snowing and the roads are clear, they weren't much fun to drive on. Plus, the speedometer error was annoying me.

So when Discount Tire had their black Friday sale, I picked up a set of Hankook performance winter tires, and I've been pretty impressed with them so far. Granted, we didn't get a great deal of snow this winter either (it barely dipped below freezing in December), but I did get a chance to drive them in light snow and some ice, and they did well. I don't know if they'd be as good as the Blizzaks or X-ice in deep snow, but since I can work from home and I'm getting better at keeping my pantry stocked, I probably won't ever need to find out.

Ultimately, it comes down to preference and priorities; since I didn't need as much snow traction, I opted for the performance winters so that driving on dry pavement wasn't as much of an annoyance. But, if my job required me to be in the office every single day, I may have gone with studless instead, since the Blizzaks made my old Civic Si (FWD with LSD) pretty much unstoppable in bad weather.