Winter Tires on new S line A6?
 

New A6 S line owner. Came with 17" Pirelli P6 All season. What are the thoughts and experience on winter tires in the Rocky Mountains mainly around Denver. Second set wheels with snows, sames rims with snows, all season through the winter? If second set of rims what size? Thanks.

Good questions....
 

It all depends on how much you'll actually be IN SNOW. I go to the mountains nearly every weekend during the winter. The last few years I've had dedicated snow tires. I couldn't tell a difference in snow grip between 16" and 17". More important is the width of the tire. The skinnier the tire, the better snow grip it will have ceteris paribus. This fall I'll be getting somethig like a Nokian WR or more likely, the ContiExtreme Contact. This tire is an all-season tire, but with an emphasis on snow traction. I do a lot of driving, and with temperatures in Denver reaching the 60s or sometimes even the 70s, snow tires can wear very fast if you're not in cold weather all the time.
As far as wheels go...well, that's up to you. Keep in mind CDOT uses mag-chloride for de-icing the roads here, and that stuff eats through the clear coat on most wheels FAST. Don't buy nice wheels for the winter. Ideally, you would have wheels you don't care too much about for the winter and nice ones for the summer. I think I'll finally settle on two sets of 17" wheels.
If you're not going to be in the mountains much, you may just want to burn through the OEM tires before you get dedicated summer and winter setups. I don't have any first-hand experience with those tires.

Good advice from Pat
 

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/102/xmasinune2.jpg"></center><p>It really does depend on what you plan to do.

I don't go in the mountains - but I still run summer and winter tires/wheel because having traction in the snow is important to me - as several times I've needed to get out of the way of people who were sliding - and I needed the traction so that I did not become a victom of loosing control myself.

I like the freedom of having a second set of smaller rims with real snow tires for the winter.
 

I like having the extra traction the snows provide. Since it can snow in the summer here (up high anyway), I run all-seasons most of the year, and for Nov-March run winter tires. The Dunlop Wintersport M2's and M3's provide awesome winter traction without losing too much dry pavement grip.

FWIW, I've got a set of 5 of the 16" 5 spokes from an '01 A6 2.7T ....
 

I'm running 235/45-17 ContiExtremeContacts year round on 17x8 S6 Avus wheels, but if you're a snow-tire kinda guy, my old wheels would work well for you.