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[mlifxs]

Originally Posted by sohlman

I can't work out why you would want such a wide tyre for your winter set. If you want grip in snow and ice you don't want wide tyres. Also why would you want super light wheels. When winter comes so does terrible road conditions and pot holes or certainly in the UK. Thus you want the strongest wheels you can get. I buy the arguments for the summer, but for winter your car will handle worse.

I would go with what BMW designed in terms of widths for winter running. They did a lot of testing to work out what worked best.

Out of interest my winter set is 225/45/17

Thanks for responding. To be clear, I'm in Florida. It snows about once every 30 years here (and just flurries) . Our roads are pretty good, partly due to year round mild to hot weather. I run summer tires year-round.

[mlifxs]

Originally Posted by msrothwell

The Conti DW in 255/40R17 is lighter than the RE050 RFT in 225/45R17. The 8.5" wheel is only a pound or two heavier than the 8" wheel.

I'm running DW all around. My guesstimate for difference in 8 vs 8.5 161's is 1 to 1.5 lbs (per the bathroom scale). Tirerack claims difference between DW 225 and 255 is three lbs, so if I stayed with DW, the increase is ~4 lbs up front. To go with DW 245/40 sq, front would gain ~3 and rear would lose ~1. To go with PSS 245/40, increase is 5 lbs and rear increase is 1.

I'd love to make the lightweight wheel play as part of this, but again, not in the budget.