digits

I highly recommend the winter rubber. On cold roads the summer tires can be downright scary when it gets below 50F - especially in the wet. And if there's potentially ice? Seriously, just stay home.

STG

Once you start hitting 40 degrees or less, the grip on these tires takes a nosedive where ever you live (even dry roads). You have to really drive conservatively. Add snow, I'd say never try it.

garfunkle

You have any articles about this that you know of? Sometimes I hear people say just to wait until the tires are warm but... that doesn't change the temp of the road so I am afraid to have too much fun under 50 really.

Jim991

GSIRM3

I have used summer tires year round in NC for over 30 years.

minthral

I notice less traction at 30-40F, but still can't do anything to break the car loose (maybe due to AWD) in dry conditions. Summer tires are definitely fine at 50F...yesterday was a good example of where it was 50F and light rain in mid December. I had no trouble with aggressive driving whatsoever. However last week at 35F and moderate rain, the car was squirrelly if I pushed it hard and still kinda sketchy/twitchy simply cruising down a highway (hoping new tires fix this). Slam on the brakes and ABS kicks in...the slide is noticeable and even worse when PCCB is cold/wet so it does nothing for a few seconds. Whether roads are wet makes a big difference if summer tires perform okay when cold. I think enough water on the road cools the tires to be even lower than ambient temperature, but if its dry the tires build heat and seem to perform fine (between 30-40F anyway).

Out of all the people I know in NC, none of them get winter tires. They keep summer tires year round and drive their truck/suv with all season tires in winter conditions. I'm leaning toward just sticking to summer tires and driving something else in bad weather. If its dry, I honestly don't think its a problem to take a 911 out with summer tires during the winter, but I'd think twice or drive really cautiously if its wet and cold (lower than 40F) especially if your summer tires are 50%+ worn.

My AWD subaru crosstrek SUV with narrow all season tires or 4x4 toyota tundra is superior in bad weather. The subaru stays amazingly stable even on ice due to clever rapid ABS braking / torque vectoring to individual wheels meaning the car stays straight accelerating, stopping, or even turning with full power EVEN with open diffs...not sure why Porsche can't do that in a 911 (they did add 'wet mode' to the 992...). The truck's all terrain tires mean you hardly even need 4x4 and when the rear spins, you don't go anywhere since there's no weight in the back. I'm leaning on sticking to summer tires and driving one of them when required.

For the tire/wheel/TPMS combo I'm looking at 5K. That's a lot of money to spend...as mentioned you can buy another car for that much. Its not even just the cost consideration...seems like buying a john deere tractor to mow .15 acre. Regarding 'you spent 10k on PCCB so you should spend 5k more on winter wheels.' The car was CPO and that's not how I management my money or make decisions to spend it...

My rant about 911 AWD system (feel free to skip):

Doesn't seem like the system is designed for bad weather. Its nice for handling while putting the power down in less than ideal dry/damp conditions, but in heavy rain, handling is twitchy and the front will torque steer easily enough since there is no fancy front diff to control this like AWD SUVs (probably for handling reasons). When turning and putting the power down in slippery conditions, its isn't hard to get it sideways by loosing the front (possibly triggered by front torque) leading to domino effect of the rear possibly popping out as it wags to fix the front (complicated by rear steering). Easy to repo by making circles in a parking lot. If you go straight, it seems to figure it out but there's lots of wagging around just like a RWD car; however I suppose if it was RWD it wouldn't be able to do this at all (rear would be getting too much power, wagging, maybe breaking loose, and swinging around...or traction control will prevent you from even going anywhere). The front wheels don't engage almost at all unless you put power down which is counter initiative in slippery conditions because you don't want to be putting down lots of power; the 992 'wet mode' apparently fixes this by engaging the front wheels more. I found that if you start wagging, using moderate power can kick in the AWD system and straight you out OR could make it worse...getting off the power and fixing steering like a normal RWD car is probably the best solution. I'm a bit hesitant to take the car in bad rain storms and definitely wouldn't want to take it in snow/ice (ever). If you break a 911 rear out, you're pretty much screwed and better hope you got room to dance. In summary, when its slippery out and you don't have nice rain or snow tires, you're pretty much SOL (AWD wont help much). Based on my experience with this AWD system, I'll (probably) go with RWD with all the fancy rear diff stuff (steering, torque vectoring etc) next time. Maybe I should of considered T more...

CaymanSinAR

More power to you. I don't want someone telling me how to spend my money either! But I want to provide an alternate option for folks, lest they think it costs $5K to safely drive in cold months.

Buy the Bridgestone RE980 all-season tires. $900
Have your summer tires pulled and the all-seasons mounted in November. $100
Have your all-season tires pulled and the summers mounted in April. $100

So $900 for the all-season tires, which will likely need to be replaced due to age before mileage. Then $200 per year for mounting. Let's say you replace the all-seasons tires at six years due to age. That's a total of $2,100 over six years. Or $350 per year.

$350 per year to have complete confidence that your car is going to function properly in cold and/or wet weather, protecting you, your passengers, other drivers or pedestrians, and property.

I bet $350 is less than most people's deductible.

Heck, you could even argue that $350 is high if you factor in saving miles and potential extra wear on the summer tires from being driven in operating conditions outside spec.

So yeah, you can spend money on a second set of wheels for your cold weather driving. I did. I got the RE980 tires, a set of O.Z. Leggera HLT wheels, and tire pressure monitors. Total cost mounted, balanced, and shipped to my front door was $3,503 from Tire Rack. But that is how I wanted to spend my money. I could have just as easily spent less and did as I outlined above. But for me the flexibility was worth the coin.

adcampo

I just got my car and live in northern VA. It's a bit colder than NC. However, I quickly noticed how bad the P Zero's are in sub freezing temperatures. She'll break loose without even trying. I've owned a lot of performance cars over the years and never bothered putting on winter tires. Most have been with PS variant or Conti's. They've been slick at times, but they never felt and slippy as the zero's.

My car is not a DD, so I don't need to consider a winter package, but my next tires with be the Pilot Sports 4S.

My $.02.

CaymanSinAR

Ditto. The Pirellis that came on mine were close to new. I want to say 9mm in the front and 7mm in the rear. But I'm thinking real hard about replacing them with the PS4S when it warms up. Stick the Pirellis in storage and slap them back on when it comes time to sell or trade the car in a couple of years.

adcampo

Not a bad idea to store them. Or, I'll wait till spring and earn a new set of shoes by getting a track day in. The joy it brings my wife when I have to spend $2k on tires. She never gets tired of it.

CaymanSinAR

I have a track day scheduled for March. Trying real hard to decide between taking the 911 or the Boxster GTS. Technically the BGTS is my track, autocross, and weekend pleasure cruiser. But I would kinda like to take the 911 to the track once to get a feel for it at the limit. Will help me better understand how it is going to react on the street.

minthral

I checked my tire tread and realized that the rears are actually near the wear bars and fronts are about 5/32. Less than I though... Granted I drive kinda hard a lot, the wear isn't horrible after 10k miles. I haven't really noticed that they're really noisy, but maybe I'm just used to it.

Something else to point out is that winter tires start to LOSE traction at 45F, which when summer tires start to GAIN traction.

Its 62F outside right now in mid December... driving with winter tires would be worse than driving with summer tires at 35F (-10F vs +20). If it was 50F (common in NC winters..could be up to 60F) that's in the summer tire range, but +5F for winter tires. On average, winter tires would be more out of the temperature range than summer tires or at least they would be equal depending on when you drive. This isn't even considering that when driving in dry conditions, the tire heats up (not cools down) to favor summer tires. Honestly only in January (average high 51F and average low 32F) would it make sense to have winter tires. If you live in SC and lower where its warmer, certainly don't need winter tires.

Winter tires also drive 'mushy' when its warm vs the summer tires drive 'hard' when cold. Not sure which is less safe, but I wan't a fan of winter tires in 55F temps a rental had when I was in sweden. It was kinda scary how the AWD volvo would fishtail in rain. Since both tires are probably fine when dry and the trouble starts when its wet.

Winter tires are know to be good on snow/ice, but are not as good as summer on water. Vertical grooves are for channeling water and horizontal grooves are for gripping snow/ice. The design of the inside tire is what's important for going straight and the outside is for turning. There's a noticeable difference in the tread design that suggests that the winter tire wont be as good in rain (my primary concern). The winter tire tread is actually specifically designed for snow in mind while the compound used is for cold temperatures. Being that we don't get much snow and I wont be driving in it, the design of the tire is pointless to me and I'd only care about the compound.

Here if you want to can compare the tread yourself:

Winter
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires...4XLN1&i3_Qty=2

Summer
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires...ramic%20Brakes

Apparently winter tires wear even faster at higher temps and should be replaced sooner (5/32+) per Michelin, however they don't have this recommendation this for summer tires. The small horizontal groves between the larger horizontal thread wear away so they're less effective on snow/ice.

My mind is almost made up that I should be getting a set of Michelin 4S. If anything, it would make the most sense to use a set of all seasons during winter (not winter tires).

adcampo

Some good information. Sounds like you're ruling out winter tires.

Have you considered any issues with switching from the N spec Pirellis vs the PS4s? Is that a big issue?

minthral

The PS4s is Porsche N0 spec. The Pirelli P Zero is N1. In theory N1 is better than N0, but its just a stamp saying Porsche approves of the tire per their testing.

I actually like P Zero's...hard to ask for more in dry sporty handling. My two complaints is wet traction degrades a lot when they're worn...and they wear down really fast. Personal experience is Michelin traction degrades less with wear and last longer (maybe even two times longer than P Zero's from last sets I had). If this was a weekend or track car that I didn't put many miles on, I'd probably stick to P Zero's as I think they're more sportier.

CaymanSinAR

In theory a P Zero N1 is better than a P Zero N0 because the P Zero N1 is the second generation of the N-spec P Zero (the first gen being N0). But it does not mean a P Zero N1 is better than a PS4S N0.

The N0, N1, N2, etc rating is within a tire model. The N1 on tire X does not mean it is better than an N0 tire Y. In other words, a mediocre N1 tire is not better than a phenomenal new-to-the-market N0 tire just because it is stamped N1. It's a generation marker; nothing more. You might very well know that, but I wanted to put it out there in case someone else doesn't and read it the wrong way.

I have both tires and in my experience the PS4S N0 is a better tire than the P Zero N1. The P Zero N1 is OK to about 60 degrees but then very quickly begins to lose dry traction. Traction in the wet is super sketchy once it is below 60. I've found the PS4S to have excellent traction all the way down to 40 degrees. Perhaps more, but I've only driven them below 40 degrees once, and that was in the 30s very early in the morning on the way to a track day. Was dry interstate driving so I didn't learn much dynamically.

I have not tracked the P Zero N1. I autocrossed and did two full track days on the PS4S and found them to respond superbly. The second full track day it was between 40 and 50 degrees. Maybe the P Zero N1 would have been fine, but based on my regular road driving I would not have been too excited about testing it.