20" Wheels & Snow - help!

[burnin m]

Hi all,

I'm new to having these sweet 20" wheels. I know they're great for highway, but from experience wide tires stink in the snow.

Opinions from those of you with experience:

* Can I get some nice Nitto Terra Grapplers on my 20"s and get decent snow performance?

* Or, do I need to get a winter tire wheel combination with narrower wheels and true m/s tires?

Please understand I live in California, and am only blessed with snow like 2-3 times a year at Tahoe, if it happens to snow when I'm up there. So that's why i gave up my 4 Runner which was very good for offroading - really very little need for that for me. 99.9% of my driving is on the highway.

But for that .1% time in Tahoe, I don't want to be the idiot stuck in his sweet X5 in the snow, ya know????

Thanks fellaz.

[RamVA]

If it's only occasional and you care about it working in warm conditions and in the mountains, I'd get another set of wheels (17 or 18). You can get a set of Style 57 17"ers with Michelin MXVs for less than $400, and it's worth it for the piece of mind. It also lets you get very aggressive with the tires you put on your 20s. Just my two cents.

[AzNMpower32]

I recommend going with a winter wheel/tire setup, even if it's an all-season tire. The wide 20"ers look great, but IMO I don't think are going to be effective in snow.

You could go for a M+S setup on 18s if you wish. I put a set of "High performance snow tires" on the X3 over the winter because we don't frequently get tons of snow and do plenty of dry road driving in the winter, but there's those occasional times where you do want the benefits a snow tire offers. Hence, I chose the Pirelli 210 Snowsports.

*Offers 95% of the dry road, highway performance/quietness of our M+S
*It's about 70% better in the slick stuff than our M+S
*The only tradeoff I've noticed is more tire squeal when you push it to dry road handling limits, and maybe a hair less responsive in the twisties.

Not a bad deal at all. Plus, they're H-rated and look much better than many of the hardcore winter setups.

[Denalio]

I live up here in Canada and I can tell you that the last 2 weeks we have had qhite a bit of snow and crappy, icey weather. I have the 20's on my X5 and they are like skiis in the snow and ice. The stopping is scary. I just picked up my X5 two weeks ago and thought I could get away with not putting winter wheels on since the weather up to then was looking pretty mild. Well the day I was supposed to pick the new x up at the dealer we got dumped with 40" of snow. Even all seasons I think would work for you. Trust me, you don't want to get caught in bad winter conditions with those 20's on.

[mazinkaizer]

If you have the money and space, I strongly suggest you to get an extra set of rims with snow tires to put on your new X5 and stored your 20"s during winter time, well, get the cheapest rims you can fine because you only going to use them during winter season, 18'' will do just fine. I can tell you that "All Season" tires SUKKS BIG TIME, it's really useless when you have a lot of snow so your best bit is snow tires. You going to have hard time to find the snow tires for your 20"s especially it's run-flats.