Winter tyres

Scotsitalian said:

Wil do but I have to wait for some snow to arrive!
going into Costco on Xmas eve as Goodyears finally here so I’ll post a photo of them fitted

Click to expand...

Excellent, little bit of snowfall here last night

Apologies for the Chelsea truck rims

I had to take a quick decision if I will mount winter tire or the keep the 17'' Duelers. I live about Lake Garda with narrow and steep roads (and my IG is my daily driver) - it is not becoming really cold here but in the morning these roads can be icy. And I am driving between December and April around 10k km mountain roads in the Italian Alps. The Dueler 3PMSF are not too bad but I am scared going downhill with 2.8 tons in some wet and icy hair needle turns. In Europe no 265/70 R17 with 116 load index available - it stops at 115 which is means basically you should detract 60 kg from you maximum Gross Weigth - technically not a problem but for the law and the insurance in case of an incident.
So the only available tyres I could find with the correct load index were 18" - so I would need new rims as well and of course TPMS Sensors. My dealer offered me the Michelin Pilot Alpine SUV in 255/70 R18 and 'Dezent' (part of the German brand of AEZ) alloy rims plus MX sensors (all available in less than a week - just before Christmas).

Yes, now with these rims the Grenadier looks like a Chelsea truck but behaviour and wet conditions with temperatures below +5 degrees Celsius is gifting me more confidence and yesterday I could test it as well on the snow the first time. What a GRIP! and I had never the impression that ESC did interfere.
And BTW the dealer could easily connect the TMPS sensor through his tool (yes IG is on the list) and not a single TPMS error message did occur after a TPMS reset.

I live off road, and have lived other places off road and un-plowed. I ONLY run BFG Mud Terrains or All Terrains. Everyone is always in search of some other "Holy Grail" to unseat the king, and all I see are flat tires for the prize. I have, likely the WORST hill to drive up on this forum, and currently despite my best plowing efforts is just glassy ice. We always make it up, and we are the only ones never in the ditch. I may fire up a rear locker this morning, but will not need much speed.

Funnily enough I’ve had good experiences with MT’s in snow and ice, BFG, kumho and more recently the Toyo open country in MT

BFG AT were appalling. Maybe ok in deep fresh snow but anything icy - forget it.

The Yokos I have on my grenadier now are superb on ice and hard packed snow, not had the chance to test them in anything more than 3 or 4” yet. Soon hopefully