davepl

My 2018 S63 has Continental tires on it - ContiSportContact - and the car is terrible in the wet, which is bad, since I live in Seattle and it's winter, which means 9 months of rain pretty much.

I've run Continental DWS in the past and really liked those, so I'm wondering if the SportContact are known to be bad in rain, or ??? The skid easily and in turns "scrub" really badly. Yesterday I had to enter a downtown parkade at an angle and I slid sideways somewhat, which was spooky.

I guess what I'm really wondering is if a switch to a different tire would bring marked improvement in wet performance, or is it the car, or ???

Thanks!

okbarnett

just use a all weather tire, like extreme contact sport, or others. the car is 4x4 and has esp, so it is made to counteract the wet surfaces

Dan_B

Yes, I also work in Seattle and you can't use summer tires now. It kills the performance of the coupe and the tires too. Changing tires make a huge difference. I have dedicated high performance winter tires on now, and will switch to my preferred brand of summer tires come April or so. You can read great reviews on tire rack.com

My choice after trying different brands for the coupe:

• For Winter = MICHELIN PILOT ALPIN PA4 N-SPEC
• For summer = MICHELIN PILOT SPORT 4S

I hope this helps and that after you switch you'll get to see how awesome the S63 is all year round (with the exception of the once a year big snow storm that is just too deep)

Heisenberg

The OEM Continental tires are rubbish. My 2015 S63 came with them, wasn't that impressed with their traction and the tread wear was awful. I have P Zero Corsa on another car which are borderline track tires and they are holding up better than those Contis.

The Michelin PS4S are a no-brainer, they are the ultimate summer street tire. Better traction than the Contis (or Pirellis) and way better tread life. And they are not too expensive, you can usually get a set mounted with load balancing for about ~1400 with price-matching and rebates.

I'm in Arizona so don't need winter tires. It doesn't rain much here, but when it does it can be torrential. The PS4S are certainly suitable for driving in the rain as long as some common sense is used i.e. avoid sport mode and ESC off.

davepl

Any other options I should be looking at for a rain/occasional-snow tire?

davepl

Well I ordered a set of S65 style turbine wheels and four Michelin Alpin PA4. Hope they're good in the rain!

Dan_B

PA4 are great in heavy rain and temps below 40. I even drove it on ice, when bid trucks were sliding off the road.

Last Christmas Eve we had a surprise snow storm in WA that turned to ice in hours and we were 39 miles from home. It was one hell of a ride, and we got home safely which is the most important testimony for these tires and AMG AWD.

davepl

We were out at Church in Redmond that night, but thankfully were in the 4x4 Escalade at the time! It was actually a really beautiful night!

You would not wanted to have made that drive with the Contisportcontact 5p, that's for sure!

davepl

OK, after much excitement over getting the correct lug bolts I finally have them installed. I used a set of take-off S65 turbine style gunmetal wheels and Michelin Alpin PA4.

davepl

We had a heck of a time finding lug bolts, the originals and the 2018 S65 replacements that ordered having too long of an unthreaded shank under the head. You'd need a wheel spacer. So we got lugs that were threaded all the way instead, and that seems to have worked.

I'm concerned that the wheels, (eBay) are likely replicas, even though they came with center caps and feature the original part numbers on them. They were sold as factory "AMG Wheels", and have the AMG logo, all of that. That, or the dimension changed for 2020 such that the 2020 wheels won't work with 2018 bolts on a 2018 car. Anyone happen to know?