cold weather tyre thoughts

[[TW]Fox]

Why spec 19s if you are happy to run around on small wheels?

You also act like there is no downside - a winter tyre fitted car will likely take longer to brake in typical UK winter conditions than a UHP tyre fitted car. So you reduce your performance most of the time to see a marginal improvement some of the time....

 

[iaind]

Why spec 19s if you are happy to run around on small wheels?

You also act like there is no downside - a winter tyre fitted car will likely take longer to brake in typical UK winter conditions than a UHP tyre fitted car. So you reduce your performance most of the time to see a marginal improvement some of the time....

This is what the Winter tyre advocates never seem to counter with any credibility. They want you to believe that at 7 degrees, on any summer tyre you'll fall off the road at the first corner but there's absolutely no evidence to support that. I've driven a car with winter tyres in wet single digit figures and it felt so poor it made me quite uneasy. I'm pretty confident about my previous assertion of a gradual loss of performance with temperature on the summer tyre, but a much higher starting point. The massive delta in performance only really comes with snow and ice

 

[geekman]

These are the conditions where winter tyres make a massive difference:

But I still got up there without much drama with a set of worn summer Pirelli tyres. Considering we never get such conditions in England, I just don't see the point of them.

 

[xs2man]

Why spec 19s if you are happy to run around on small wheels?

To be honest, I only got the 19's because they were with the M-Sport Plus pack, and I was wanting the other elements of that pack anyway, making the 19's much cheaper than speccing them separately.

Also, my winter wheels are 18" anyway, so not exactly small.

You also act like there is no downside - a winter tyre fitted car will likely take longer to brake in typical UK winter conditions than a UHP tyre fitted car. So you reduce your performance most of the time to see a marginal improvement some of the time....

Again with the comparison to the UHP tyre. MOST cars on the road are NOT high performance cars. I certainly don't class my 530d in that league. And the standard fit tyres, Goodyear Excellence, are fit for my needs of the car. And as you have ALREADY pointed out, they are not a UHP tyre. MOST cars on the road do not have UHP tyres fitted, so your comparison with them is misguided when talking about the general populations tyre needs.

I personally do not see a downside either, for me. Winter is now upon us up here in the NE of Scotland. From here until around March, the temperatures generally stay in single digits. Sure, there will be days where it creeps above that, in the middle of the day for example. But for the most part, during actual driving hours (early morning / evening) the temps will likely be well within the range where the winter tyres work best.

Sure, if I lived in the South West of England my opinion would be drastically different. Or if I lived in some city somewhere, and rarely needed to leave it. However, the other day we had a reasonable dump of snow, and the roads were littered with people either off them, or up the back of other cars.

Sure, I was a bit late in sticking the winters on, as I was running a ropey set of Rainsport 3's and managed fine. But I would have undoubtedly been safer with my winter tyres on. Which were put on as soon as I got back.

 

[SDK^]

^ you have a RWD BMW so a light drizzle is all that is required to trigger Winter tyre fitting thoughts

 

[xs2man]

Sure. I also have a Seat Alhambra which is FWD though, lol. In fact, the winters aren't even on the BMW yet.

 

[kwerk]

Hi there

In full agreement with Fox a good wet performance summer tyre is absolutely fine in the winter and the best wet handling Summer tyres are:
Uniroyal Rainsport 3 (very much a wet tyre, good/average in dry)
Goodyear F1AS2, though F1AS3 is now out in USA, so could be in UK soon?
Advan V105 (Got these on the M3, coping very well in cold/wet)
Michelin Pilot Super Sport (very good wear and good in the wet, if available in your size they might last you longer)


If you go winter tyre, go with something like Fox suggest, you need ONLY a winter tyre, NOT a snow tyre, so avoid Blizzak series and look more at Continental and Michelin Winter tyre offerings. Bear in mind a Winter tyre will only show improved grip over the above good wet/summer tyres once temperatures are freezing and below, they are of course softer so wear faster and are vastly superior should we get any of the white fluffy stuff on the road. Otherwise the F1AS2 is a good bet as a very good all year round tyre as were the PS3 you previously had on the car.

Blizzaks are a winter tyre, they are designed for every winter condition. Snow tyres don't really exist anymore. I've used them (WS70s) for several winters and they are fantastic in rain and slush and sub zero dry road. But on fresh snow they are amazing fun.

 

[kwerk]

I should add that where I am it gets down to -25c and usually stays below sub zero day time temps. I would still buy them in the UK though if I lived there just for insurance and the few days of gloating opportunity as you fly by spun out range rovers.

 

[kwerk]

Why spec 19s if you are happy to run around on small wheels?

You also act like there is no downside - a winter tyre fitted car will likely take longer to brake in typical UK winter conditions than a UHP tyre fitted car. So you reduce your performance most of the time to see a marginal improvement some of the time....

Marginally shorter braking distance in double digit wet vs hugely longer braking distance in ice, snow and slush combined with near useless snow/ice traction. I know which I would choose. Now if you are driving at high speed proper winter ones are horrible, but they make HP winter ones for that. And keep some Autosocks and ice melt in the boot.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/types/perfCat.jsp?perf=PPW

 

[alx]

To be honest, I only got the 19's because they were with the M-Sport Plus pack, and I was wanting the other elements of that pack anyway, making the 19's much cheaper than speccing them separately.

Also, my winter wheels are 18" anyway, so not exactly small.



Again with the comparison to the UHP tyre. MOST cars on the road are NOT high performance cars. I certainly don't class my 530d in that league. And the standard fit tyres, Goodyear Excellence, are fit for my needs of the car. And as you have ALREADY pointed out, they are not a UHP tyre. MOST cars on the road do not have UHP tyres fitted, so your comparison with them is misguided when talking about the general populations tyre needs.

I personally do not see a downside either, for me. Winter is now upon us up here in the NE of Scotland. From here until around March, the temperatures generally stay in single digits. Sure, there will be days where it creeps above that, in the middle of the day for example. But for the most part, during actual driving hours (early morning / evening) the temps will likely be well within the range where the winter tyres work best.

Sure, if I lived in the South West of England my opinion would be drastically different. Or if I lived in some city somewhere, and rarely needed to leave it. However, the other day we had a reasonable dump of snow, and the roads were littered with people either off them, or up the back of other cars.

Sure, I was a bit late in sticking the winters on, as I was running a ropey set of Rainsport 3's and managed fine. But I would have undoubtedly been safer with my winter tyres on. Which were put on as soon as I got back.

I guess the point Fox was making is why bother with a set of average summer tyres and a set of winter tyres when a single set of UHP tyres is probably best the vast majority of circumstances bar full on snow (you also get improved tyre performance for non winter months of the year as well).

I do understand your point of view being in NE Scotland with country roads and snow, but for most people just buying UHP tyres to use all year round would probably be better....

 

[[TW]Fox]

Again with the comparison to the UHP tyre. MOST cars on the road are NOT high performance cars. I certainly don't class my 530d in that league. And the standard fit tyres, Goodyear Excellence, are fit for my needs of the car. And as you have ALREADY pointed out, they are not a UHP tyre. MOST cars on the road do not have UHP tyres fitted, so your comparison with them is misguided when talking about the general populations tyre needs.

I personally do not see a downside either, for me. Winter is now upon us up here in the NE of Scotland. From here until around March, the temperatures generally stay in single digits. Sure, there will be days where it creeps above that, in the middle of the day for example. But for the most part, during actual driving hours (early morning / evening) the temps will likely be well within the range where the winter tyres work best.

You live in the North East of Scotland. I have consistently mentioned that there are small areas of the UK for which the decision is somewhat different – your area is one of them. 95% of the population do not live in Cumbria or the North East of Scotland. If I lived in the North East of Scotland I too would have a set of 18’s in the garage with WinterContact TS850P’s on. I think you’ve made the right decision and it’s a decision I’d emulate.

UHP tyres are not for ‘performance cars’. The UHP refers to the tyre, not the car – the tyre is high performance. Ok sure they are generally fitted to better performing vehicles but they are far from a Ferrari tyre – CS5’s and F1A2’s are OEM fit on a range of cars offering a range of performance. Even my GF’s Mini – a 120bhp Cooper – came with a UHP tyre from the factory. They are not Ferrari tyres and neither are they priced like it. Though I suspect you know this as much as you know that your 530d actually probably is a ‘performance car’ – it does 0-60 in about the same time a 1995 E34 M5 did it!!

It is entirely correct that many in the general population may not think about these types of tyres but these people won’t think about winter tyres either. By definition if you consider winter tyres you are thinking about the best performing tyre for your car for the conditions – there is therefore no reason why you shouldn’t equally consider a UHP tyre as a better alternative – for most people it will offer more performance more of the time. The most extreme conditions most people will encounter in winter is pouring rain on a cold motorway – and I’d rather be on a Goodyear Eagle F1 Assymetric 2 than a Goodyear Ultragrip 8P in those conditions as I am confident my car would brake faster in an emergency as it has none of the compromises which have been made to ensure it performs well in the snow.

If you do not encounter any snow/slush/etc I bet there are almost no points at which there is a credible benefit of a winter tyre over a UHP tyre and I bet there are many instances where there *is* a credible benefit of a UHP tyre over a winter tyre.

Unfortunately all we can really do is argue about this because for whatever reason the tyre manufacturers blankly refuse to publish data showing the performance difference in the wet and cold between a top end tyre and a winter tyre. They will only ever publish the data that shows a midrange tyre isn’t as good as a TS850P or whatever. I wonder why this might be.

All comparisons are either against ‘A summer tyre’ (This is the biggest load of nonsense ever, any test which doesn’t specifically state the tyre model is meaningless. Look at ANY summer tyre test and you will see a HUGE difference between the best and worst summer tyres on sale so how can you test generic ‘Summer tyre’ and expect it to be representative of such a wide range of performing products? It’s just nonsense) or a midrange tyre.

 

[[TW]Fox]

Marginally shorter braking distance in double digit wet vs hugely longer braking distance in ice, snow and slush combined with near useless snow/ice traction. I know which I would choose.

Buy a Gibbs Aquada - it's slow and impractical but when it floods, you are much safer.

I would say its a ridiculous example but actually most of the UK is more likely to suffer flooding than it is snow - we very rarely get snow in this country (With a few exceptions) and when we do it barely sticks.

Peoples views have been skewed by a string of unusual winters we had a few years back now - but the last couple have been normal British winters with little if any snow.

Why compromise your day to day driving to prepare yourself for something that in all likelyhood won't happen? On the rare occasions it does snow, usually either:

a) It's sufficiently light that you can gingerly limp to a clear main road and carry on regardless (Whereas are you going to sit on the inside lane at 50mph on every wet motorway journey to mitigate your winter tyres? Erm nope)
b) It's unusual enough to catch the entire country out to the extent that even if you had an expedition specification land cruiser you'd be better off just not bothering

Your view is clouded by the fact you live in a country with proper seasons where winter = snow. Absolutely winter tyres are appropriate where you live. The majority of the UK just isn't like this. Before 2009, you never saw a single winter tyre thread on internet forums. I wonder why? Because before 2009 we were used to our British winters. It's back to normal again now...

 

[vince99]

Been using rainsports for a while, very pleased with them all conditions

 

[233]

well 4 new uniroyals fitted today,

obviously not quite has grippy as the PS3s but I think a much more rounded alternative for wet weather,

already hankering after a set of Pilot Sport 4s after winter

 

[[TW]Fox]

Surprised you didn't try the winter, of all the people in this thread I think you could have had a good case for one.

 

[Edinho]

I see the op lives in Glasgow. I have used winters for the last 2 years and having used them I wouldn't be without them tbh. Living in the north in the hills they come in to their own in snow. Last year they got up a major 30% incline on polished snow like it wasn't there, I was amazed.

If you live where it's flat and the chance of snow is 1-2 days a year then yeah they are not worth the extra money. If I lived in Glasgow id be buying a set.

 

[div0]

Surely depends a bit on what driving you do, even living up here. If you just drive about the city centre, then even Glasgow's not going to be a problem.

I certainly managed on normal tyres even in the couple of really bad winters that we had up here a few years ago. And I had to drive a fair distance and in more exposed areas than just the city.

That said, if I knew we were in for a really bad winter again, then I would almost certainly choose to get winter tyres. It's just that even up here, the average winter isn't really that bad and I can't justify changing to proper winter tyres on the remote chance that we might be in for a particularly cold winter. Especially as it has so far been a very mild start to the winter. Temperatures were still around 11 degrees last night!

All that said, I've recently changed over to the CrossClimates, which are basically a 'summer' tyre, which is meant to offer drastically improved performance in the cold/wet/snow, but without any noticeable trade-off on summer/dry performance. Given that I can't really buy any proper 'performance' tyres in my size anyway, there wasn't much reason to not try these, other than a slight price increase over the competition.

 

[Lopéz]

Snow tyres don't really exist anymore.

They do - I've just come back from Estonia and Latvia, and almost every car is either running on studded snow tyres or M&Ss.

 

[kwerk]

They do - I've just come back from Estonia and Latvia, and almost every car is either running on studded snow tyres or M&Ss.

"Snow" tyres were basically like M/T ones ages ago but were replaced with "winter" tyres that use special compound, special tread, siping, embedded particles. Proper studless winter tyres work better than cheap studded. M/S are just all seasons, they are terrible.

 

[HummuH1]

Winter tyres are not needed in this country... I recently got back from Poland over the weekend and everyone there had winter tyres, and for a good reason. It's actually winter there.

If you travel around Scotland between December and March I can assure you winter tyres come in very handy.