fitman88

I'll be purchasing a 17' B9 from a friend in about a weeks time. He's a dealer and bought it at auction for me but said that the tires will need to be replaced.

I live in Boston and travel up to VT and NH often in the winter for snowboarding. Any recommendations for tires? Should I eat the cost of buying summer and winter tires, or is there a good set of all seasons that might work well?

JDA_yeg

I would honestly get dedicates summer/winter tires. As long as you are able to find a summer tire that has good long term tread life, good on fuel economy, and quiet.

Winter tires is where you shouldn't cheap out either in my opinion. My A4 came with stock 19" summer tires; which is too big for winter. I actually went and bought 17" wheels and got Michelin X-Ice 3 (one of the top rated winter tires). Going smaller means a lot less expensive tires!

mplsbrian

Eat the cost.

1. As a fellow snowsports lover, you don't want to miss a powder day and with quattro and snows you won't.
2. Your summer and winter sets will last 2x as long, since you're putting effectively half the mileage on each vs. all the mileage on a set of all-seasons and so the costs equalize over time.
3. This also lets you run a cheap set of winter wheels that you don't care about scratching or bending on a pothole.

fitman88

Thanks for the input, as I read more about this I'm leaning more and more toward eating the cost. Any suggestion for winter wheels? And which tires do you use?

SNGGA

Same here, 19 for summers and 17 for winter
i think dedicated winter tires is always a good option and you get to switch up the looks in the winter

mplsbrian

I use 18" Andros R9 (17" won't clear my S4's front brakes) fitted with Michelin Alpin PA4, which are a "performance winter" optimized more for dry road handling and cornering/high speed stability than for deep snow and glare ice, which is where the X-Ice or Blizzak type tires are stronger. Most of my winter driving is city and/or highway after all but with quattro and these tires I can barrel up the gnarliest passes better than just about anything else on the road. If I actually lived in the mountains I'd get a proper studless ice & snow category winter like the aforementioned, but for the 5-10 days a season I'm currently traversing them in a storm these are beyond good enough.

bob m

I would do something different. I would get a good all season, actually I would look into getting the best all season tires as well as a set of snow tires and wheels. Now the reason I would go all AS rather than summer is this - the weather. You are in New England, where come October and November, you can and will get temps down in the 30's and 40's - and that is where the summer tires become too hard and unsafe. But you won't have snow in those 2 months - same thing goes for April. So you will be forced into using snow tires for an extra 3 months or so over the AS.

AMDG75

+1 Your weather is not much different than our Cleveland weather, where the temp is unlikely to be consistently below 40 from June through September. So, there will be 8 remaining months you will not want summer tires on your car. Of these 8 months perhaps only 2-3 require snow tires, the remaining 5-6 months would best be served by an AS tire. You should check Consumer Reports and Tire Rack actual tests, then round out by comments from this Forum and others. Top picks include the Continental DWS 06 and the Michelin AS 3+. I have been pleased with the former.

fitman88

Much appreciated! I think I may go with X-Ice or Blizzak considering that I intentionally drive into gnarly conditions for snowboarding

And the Andros look great! I may pick up a set.

fitman88

Yeah, that's what I'm going to end up doing. A/S make far more sense in New England. And thanks for the tips. I didn't think to look at consumer reports.