I just put my winters on the 02 XJR .. and somewhere along the line picked up a nail. Tire not fixable .. and the set was on the last winter .. so they are coming off.

I'm going to put a new set on the 18" rims -- thinking maybe ultra all-season.


The Continental Extreme Contact DSW is always a best seller -- but with our roads and the propensity of the tire to get side wall problems I always shy away .. some say they have made improvements .. but I'm still seeing reviews with the problem.

Yokohama has a new ADVAN sport with a similar tread to the old OE tire -- no experience.

Nothing really jumping out at the moment on Tirerack - lots of tires in this size have been around a while. Would like to get a tire not designed 5-6 years ago.

 

I've been very happy with kuhmo les for summer duty on my XJR. I run Kumho 4xs on my X type for an max performance all season and they do pretty well. LEs will last about 20k, the 4xs maybe 40k. I did just put a set of General G Max tires on our XK8 but haven't driven on them enough to give an opnion

 

Thanks,

The G Max looks like the old Firestone Firehawk design -- and the Bridgestone clone ... I had them years ago .. but no good in any snow.

Same with the Goodyear Eagle DS ??? -- I liked the Goodyears .. only summer.

I going to move this one up to my weekend house - So I may need a little snow tire.

 

The Gmax is a Conti product (I have had horrible experiences with Conti) so it took a bit for me to be convinced to give them a try so I would suspect they are a clone of an older conti. They are a little loud and got decent snow reviews (I have a place on a ski mountain and these are the only tires for the car so I did look into it a bit but have a set of chains for the unexpected).


I run dedicated snows so the LEs are a great choice since it takes about 4-5 years for me to put 20k on them. I would suspect you'd find the 4x to be an acceptable tire for 95% of your driving. Good in a couple inches of snow but beyond that with rwd you'd want chains on them. They are a fairly good do everything okay but nothing great. Better in one area usually means worse elsewhere.

 

Look at the Michelin X-Ice Xi3 ice and snow 245/40R18 on tirerack.com - set of 4 $680 net cost of $640 after mail-in rebate ($40).

Customer rating & Warrantee rating 4 1/2 stars out of 5 star range.

I will be doing my winter tire change around Thanksgiving with the Michelin X-Ice Xi2 tires I purchase at tirerack.com on 12/2010 for $452 (plus $70 shipping & sales tax) less $70 promotion giving total of $452. Standard tire size 225/60R16.

This will be my fifth winter season with this set of tires (total miles from previous 4 winter seasons totaled 25,400 miles).

We had no problems with winter driving in both the ice and snow, even with starting or stopping on icy hills.

Jim Lombardi

 

Jim - The x-ice and snow do look like decent tires. I have been running Dunlop performance winter tires on a couple cars with good results.

On this 02 I am using a set of 17" wheels from a 1998XK8 for my winter setup ... my plan was to replace the summer tires on the OE 18" rims with more of an all season tire. The 02 is going to my weekend house and will be used very infrequently ... as it is it only gets 4-5k on it.

I'm thinking it's not worth getting another set of winters and then dedicated summers next year.