Planning ahead - winter wheels / tyres?

[bazzabear]

I got my C63 last weekend, and it's phenomenal! Really pleased with it. I moved to it from an Alfa 156 GTA which I'd owned for 10 years, and it's about the only choice I could find that had the practicality (both cars are estates) and sounded even better than that Alfa V6.

Anyway, I've heard (and can easily imagine with all that torque) that the C63 can be a bit lairy in snow, ice, or even just very low temperatures, so I'm considering getting a second set of alloys with winter tyres on them.

Anyone any advice? Either on the plan as a whole, or on where to get a good quality set of alloys that suit the car from? I think my preference would even be OEM for the wheels, but I suspect that would be extremely expensive.

 

[BIRMA]

I guess it's down to where you live here in the deep South (Hampshire) I haven't put my winter tyres on for the last two years.

 

[developer]

I got my C63 last weekend, and it's phenomenal! Really pleased with it. I moved to it from an Alfa 156 GTA which I'd owned for 10 years, and it's about the only choice I could find that had the practicality (both cars are estates) and sounded even better than that Alfa V6.

Anyway, I've heard (and can easily imagine with all that torque) that the C63 can be a bit lairy in snow, ice, or even just very low temperatures, so I'm considering getting a second set of alloys with winter tyres on them.

Anyone any advice? Either on the plan as a whole, or on where to get a good quality set of alloys that suit the car from? I think my preference would even be OEM for the wheels, but I suspect that would be extremely expensive.

Mercedes themselves have had some very good deals of winter tyres and wheels.

I don't expect they have C63 sets lying around but well worth asking the local dealer.

Some of the sets I saw last year were silly cheap.

 

[bazzabear]

Cheers, there is one quite near here, guess I might as well give them a go.

 

[Captain Smerc]

If your wheels are 19 's , I may have just what your searching for ...
Have a look in the Mercedes parts for sale page of this forum . My lightly used.set of staggered Vredestein Wintrac S need a good home !

 

[bazzabear]

Thanks, but I have no wheels so far!

 

[Captain Smerc]

Yes , wheels first

 

[bazzabear]

I've been looking in the owners manual, and there's a bit of a range of possible options for winter wheel / tyre sizes.
I'm thinking the most sensible option though would be to actually match the summer tyre sizes - 235/40/18 on the front on 8.0 width wheels. 255/35/18 on the back on 9.0 width wheels. This would mean that I have the option to use either set of wheels I will then have for either summer or winter tyres with no issues - could be useful to cover for some unforeseen event.

I think I'd probably prefer to aim for oem wheels so I'll be keeping an eye on here (and I still need to ask at my local dealer as per the advice above!)

I guess I'm open to quality aftermarket though, if anyone has any suggestions for something that suits the car well?

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

I've been looking in the owners manual, and there's a bit of a range of possible options for winter wheel / tyre sizes.
I'm thinking the most sensible option though would be to actually match the summer tyre sizes - 235/40/18 on the front on 8.0 width wheels. 255/35/18 on the back on 9.0 width wheels. This would mean that I have the option to use either set of wheels I will then have for either summer or winter tyres with no issues - could be useful to cover for some unforeseen event.

I think I'd probably prefer to aim for oem wheels so I'll be keeping an eye on here (and I still need to ask at my local dealer as per the advice above!)

I guess I'm open to quality aftermarket though, if anyone has any suggestions for something that suits the car well?

Usually the staggered set up shifts to the narrower width even at the rear for winter, this is partly because narrower tyres perform better in snow, and sometimes because not all sizes are readily available as winter tyres.

 

[bazzabear]

The recommendations in the manual at least suggest that going to the narrower tyre on the back would require a different wheel size (8.0J instead of 9.0J).

The wider tyres are indeed a bit more expensive (and the winter tyres are more expensive that summer ones too).

 

[grober]

https://www.mytyres.co.uk/cgi-bin/k...c_klasse_amg_08&JFNmodelCode=694093&TypeCode=

 

[bazzabear]

The places I've looked at so far (including that mytyres link, thank you) offer completely the wrong offset too. Presumably that means needing spacers?

 

[bazzabear]

I also quite fancy the idea of a darker colour wheel for winter, since they get filthy so quickly at that time of year - but would it look rubbish on a Tenorite (metallic dark grey) car?

 

[DSM10000]

If you do not have one fitted already then a Limited Slip Differential would help in all conditions.

 

[bazzabear]

That's a good point too. Although grippier tyres would hopefully help with stopping as well as going.

What options (and approximate prices) are there for an LSD on the C63?

 

[grober]

This is a useful calculation page?
Car Bibles : The Wheel and Tyre Bible

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

The recommendations in the manual at least suggest that going to the narrower tyre on the back would require a different wheel size (8.0J instead of 9.0J).

The wider tyres are indeed a bit more expensive (and the winter tyres are more expensive that summer ones too).

Yes, ideally you would reduce the width of the wheel to match the front, but you may be able to fit the narrower tyre to your wider rear wheels, without any problems - a range of tyre widths can be matched to each wheel width.

In fact I did this when I first started using winter tyres, and used the Tyre Bible to calculate whether the narrower tyre would fit OK, and I see grober provides a link below. They fit a treat too.

This is a useful calculation page?
Car Bibles : The Wheel and Tyre Bible

 

[Captain Smerc]

If I may ... Ebay item 202020222732
One careful owner , honestly !

 

[bazzabear]

I'll probably be aiming for 18's to be honest. How have you found the Vred's?

 

[Captain Smerc]

I found the Vreds were excellent , they were recommended to me by Johnathon at Camskill out of all the brands of winter tyres they stock . That was good enough for me