Tire Choice for Trip to Arizona
 

I have a 2003 996TT with two sets of tires - one mounted with Pirelli Sottozero W240 Series II and the other with Conti Extreme Contact DW. I am planning a trip, in January from the middle of Washington state (Chelan) to Tucson. The dilemma is which tires to use? The first part of the trip will be over winter roads (temps around freezing) with cold rain and maybe light snow. This will transition to rain and temps 35 - 45 along I-5 or 101 along the ocean. Once I reach CA the temp will increase again probably into the 60's.

I know that the Conti are not meant for temps below about 40F, below which the rubber gets hard and dangerous under wet conditions. The Pirellis overcome the temperature limitation; but are noisier and potentially wear faster; however they are described as an "Autobahn" tire in some literature I found. The rear Pirelli tires have about 4.5/32 of wear on them. All the others tires are 6/32 or better.

Opinions are solicited on choice.

I would run the winter tires. The first part of your trip will require them for safe travel. The Pirellis will be dangerous under those conditions and unsafe.

Get there in one piece - who cares about a bit more tire wear from a winter tire in warm conditions.

Thanks for the reply Damon. My inclination matched your recommendation; however there are a couple of more decisions. The winter tires were purchased by the PO and the sizes are not the Porsche sizes, namely the rears are:

295/35 R18 N2 W240 Series II (tread: 4/32 at worst spot)

and the fronts are:

225/45 R18 95V M+S series III (tread: 9/32 uniform across tread)

so the questions are: 1) are these tires close enough to Porsche spec to use? and 2) is 4/32 enough tread for a 3000 mile trip?

I know Tire Rack recommends >4/32 for wet conditions so I can guess the answer. Given that should I buy 265/40 R18 or 265/35 R18 to replace rears?

:confused: