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[silvrevo]

Well here in the good old midwest I awoke to about 3 inches of snow.

This is the first time in about 20 years I have driven a rwd car in the snow. The other car was a '75 Pontiac GrandPrix with a 455, lol fun car.

Well I must say the 335i has great traction, and the stability control is really neat. You can mash the gas, feel the car get sqiggley, then it tightens back up.

With traction control on, one push of the button, It felt like both wheels were searching for grip,, then the stability kicked in.

With everything off, well this tells you what the other controls are doing, they are doing thier JOB.

Overall it was pretty fun getting to work today. Im going to find a nice open parking lot on the way home and do a few more experiments.

The Hankooks icebears are doing a fine job, Im glad I got these tires.

Just wanted to say Im very impressed with the 335i in these conditions. Seems to be a fun car in the snow. Good thing, cause the Hankooks on dry is like driving on Mush,, and they spin in third gear.

225/45 Hankooks I-Pike. On 17" Beryen wheels.

I guess I also had 240lbs. of salt in the trunk. Maybe this helped too.

[judec]

Weight in the trunk is a usuall trick of cab drivers here driving BMW or MB in regions with lot of snow and hills. +50kg on both of the wheels (dumbell or salt or whatever) to get rid of the light back and U can drive uphill/downhill on snow/ice with a smile. Anyway - maybe not such a big issue on 335i which has 50/50 weight distribution front/rear.

[arbitrage]

Good to hear, I run Dunlop M3s and the benefit are they are pretty damn good in the dry and great in snow and slush, ice is a slightly different matter but I agree the DSC is simply amazing, just give it more throttle and it tightens it up and puts you right back on track. DTC is made to allow that little bit extra wheel spin if your on sheer ice, I rarely use it and definitely don't need it in snow/slush, just on solid ice to get going. Then DSC (full stability and traction) works great to drive like a winter maniac!! I would guess your tires would work better on ice than mine but worse on dry. There is always a trade-off somewhere. We've had snow/icy roads for the last week and as always I also run two sandbags over the rear wheels. Question...does anyone know if its better to not use sandbags because of the near 50:50 distribution, or are my sandbags sort of balancing out my own weight up front??

[SLC 335i]

Originally Posted by arbitrage

...does anyone know if its better to not use sandbags because of the near 50:50 distribution, or are my sandbags sort of balancing out my own weight up front??

Check out this post. Not sure what the final conclusion was, but you can read about the good and bad of adding weight to the trunk...
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98791

[JaMa]

I would agree with almost all of this - we have a couple inches of snow on the ground here in Colorado and lots of ice on the roads right now. I have the 225 40 18 Dunlop Wintersport 3D all the way round my E92 on stock wheels right now. While snow performance is *acceptable* I still get some wheelspin no matter what I do. However, Ice performance is awesome. I am able to brake moderately hard and manueuver on ice whereas I notice other cars, even AWD ones, have difficulty on it.

The trouble with this car and snow I think is that it cannot deal with any depth of snow. If it's snowpacked on the roads I do fine, but if there is a couple of inches of snow or slush on the road the car slides around a lot.

My 2c,

JaMa

[montreal_bimmer]

adding weight will not help you in winter.... it will make your current BMW worse.... your car has 50-50 weight distribution.... by adding weight in the trunk, your car will travel further to stop, and you will get much worse traction driving on any road the in inclined.