**Unofficial Tyre Thread**
- Thread starter rossk26
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![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Agreed, but I don't want 18" all season tyres in the summer when 20" summer tyres would be much better; I have these wheels and tyres already. I don't want winter tyres in the winter (sounds odd 
) when all season tyres would be better for the majority of weathers I'll encounter.
) when all season tyres would be better for the majority of weathers I'll encounter.
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I fitted Bridgestone A005 all season last year very impressed with them.
They handle snow easily but are fantastic in the wet too and it's either snowing or raining 80% of the time in Aberdeen
They handle snow easily but are fantastic in the wet too and it's either snowing or raining 80% of the time in Aberdeen
Good to hear @silverblack , those were one of my options 
.
I should have added @[TW]Fox that I couldn't find a set of matching all seasons in 275/30R20 and 245/35R20 so changed to a non-staggered set up of 245/45R18 as per BMW spec.
.I should have added @[TW]Fox that I couldn't find a set of matching all seasons in 275/30R20 and 245/35R20 so changed to a non-staggered set up of 245/45R18 as per BMW spec.
because for our winters all season are best. And it works like this for me. New car comes with premium summer tyres which I usually get in October. Swap out immediate for all seasons. Put summer tyres back on around April/May. Works out fine
And this is where we disagree. I just don't think they are. I don't think all season are ever best, the point is that they are never worst, which a summer tyre can be in winter and a winter tyre can be in summer.
I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise though, which scenario is it that an all season tyres will outperform both a UHP Summer tyre and the best winter tyre?
I'm not against them - on the contrary I had 4 put on my sister's car as they are the best fit for how she uses her car. But as soon as you decide you want to swap wheels every winter I think they stop being worth it and you may as well have the best of both worlds.
Sorry I meant best for our winters in the UK. Except for the odd day when we have lots of snow, the all seasons will be better than any summer tyre or any winter tyre. The best all season beats every winter tyre at Uk winter temps or when wet etc. Its only extreme cold or snow that the winter tyres finally beat the all seasons. Add in the days which are then mild and dry where the all seasons will destroy the winter tyres. Winter tyres are great if you live somewhere where you get a proper winter than lasts a few months.
Look at the reviews, The cross climates beat all the winter tyres on dry and wet at all temps by some margin. It was only snow where were slightly behind and so close I doubt you would notice the difference.
But in summer clearly summer tyres are far better and like i have said, I will have a set of high performance summer tyres that came with the car so may as well use them up for the summer and then swap back to cross climates for winter.
so swapping between summer and all seasons for winter gives you the most amount of the year with the best possible tyres on the car in the UK.
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I've looked at the reviews - its why I went all season on my sisters car and didn't on mine.
I completely agree with you that for most UK winter days, a winter tyre is not going to deliver credible performance advantages. In-fact, as you identify, often quite the opposite. Where we disagree I think is the place of the all season versus the summer tyre in these typical mild winter conditions. If it's 8c outside and raining, I'd rather have a Michelin Pilot Sport 4/S or a Goodyear Eagle F1 or similar than an all-season tyre. This is actually why on my 5 Series I do not run winter tyres - I run Pilot Sport 4 all year round because I am happy that for me, this is the tyre which will offer the best performance in the conditions I use the car (and I am fortunate that in proper wintry conditions it can stay in the garage and I have another car with WinterContact fitted).
All season tyres are a compromise - you give up the outright winter performance of a winter tyre and the outright non winter performance of a summer tyre to provide a helpful blend which is useful in situations where you cannot or do not want to be swapping tyres.
Let's take a look at some reviews - here is a good one:
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2020-Tyre-Reviews-All-Season-Tyre-Test.htm
As you can see, the 'Reference Summer' manages to win almost every test that doesn't involve snow (and came ahead of a number of the all seasons in the wet!). It also does the same annoying thing that drives me mad about most tests like this - what is a 'Reference Summer Tyre' and what is a 'Reference Winter Tyre'? I don't fit 'Reference Summer Tyre' so I am not interested in its performance, I want to see how it compares with the tyres I'd actually fit. For all we know 'Reference Summer' could be a mid range tyre like a Pilot Primacy - who knows where a good UHP tyre would have placed in that cold braking test? Given the size tested its unlikely the 'Reference Summer' tyre was a UHP tyre, so the fact it still won is interesting.
Here is another test showing much the same story:
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2021-Auto-Bild-Winter-Tyre-Test.htm - again, same issue in that summer tyre is a 'reference summer tyre'. We've no idea what it is, but I bet it isn't a Pilot Sport 4S!
I can see nothing in these tests to dispute my central point that the optimal position is a winter tyre and a summer tyre combination, but that if you don't wish to do this then all-season offers an excellent compromise.
I'd be genuinely interested to see a test that compares the tyres we actually buy - and happy to change my view in the face of better data.
I completely agree with you that for most UK winter days, a winter tyre is not going to deliver credible performance advantages. In-fact, as you identify, often quite the opposite. Where we disagree I think is the place of the all season versus the summer tyre in these typical mild winter conditions. If it's 8c outside and raining, I'd rather have a Michelin Pilot Sport 4/S or a Goodyear Eagle F1 or similar than an all-season tyre. This is actually why on my 5 Series I do not run winter tyres - I run Pilot Sport 4 all year round because I am happy that for me, this is the tyre which will offer the best performance in the conditions I use the car (and I am fortunate that in proper wintry conditions it can stay in the garage and I have another car with WinterContact fitted).
All season tyres are a compromise - you give up the outright winter performance of a winter tyre and the outright non winter performance of a summer tyre to provide a helpful blend which is useful in situations where you cannot or do not want to be swapping tyres.
Let's take a look at some reviews - here is a good one:
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2020-Tyre-Reviews-All-Season-Tyre-Test.htm
As you can see, the 'Reference Summer' manages to win almost every test that doesn't involve snow (and came ahead of a number of the all seasons in the wet!). It also does the same annoying thing that drives me mad about most tests like this - what is a 'Reference Summer Tyre' and what is a 'Reference Winter Tyre'? I don't fit 'Reference Summer Tyre' so I am not interested in its performance, I want to see how it compares with the tyres I'd actually fit. For all we know 'Reference Summer' could be a mid range tyre like a Pilot Primacy - who knows where a good UHP tyre would have placed in that cold braking test? Given the size tested its unlikely the 'Reference Summer' tyre was a UHP tyre, so the fact it still won is interesting.
Here is another test showing much the same story:
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2021-Auto-Bild-Winter-Tyre-Test.htm - again, same issue in that summer tyre is a 'reference summer tyre'. We've no idea what it is, but I bet it isn't a Pilot Sport 4S!
I can see nothing in these tests to dispute my central point that the optimal position is a winter tyre and a summer tyre combination, but that if you don't wish to do this then all-season offers an excellent compromise.
I'd be genuinely interested to see a test that compares the tyres we actually buy - and happy to change my view in the face of better data.
From the comments, but it's apparently mentioned in the video:
Summer Reference: goodyear efficientgrip performance 2
Winter Reference: goodyear ultragrip performance+
So the Summer is a fairly recent "good" performing tyre in smaller non-performance orientated sizes (e.g. 16/17") - UHP where available should be even better.
Exactly, there is a world of difference in performance between an Efficient grip and an Eagle F1 or something like that.
And yet still it wins many of the tests!
When I lived in Scotland on both our cars we would swap to winters from October to March and then summers the rest of the years. Needed winters a lot because of the snow situation. Interestingly, the major tyre manufacturers say that if you are going to run a single type of tyre all year in the UK then it should really be a winter tyre. they are not jelly, they do not have issues regarding braking , handling, etc for normal driving and they are way, way, better in wet and slushy conditions. I actually ran my then Touarag on winters all year and it made no difference to the car at all.
All seasons are meant to be run all year, and do not do the same job as a full winter tyre in the snow/slush. Why change them for summers? Change to a full winter tyre and back to summers, but not an all season to summers. Under no circumstances does a summer UHP out perform a decent all season when the weather conditions require an all -season or a winter tyre. If you are getting to the edge of performance of any UHP tyre on a normal UK road then you are driving like a knob and no-one can help you. If you are a normal, considerate driver who looks at the road and weather conditions and doesn't think that the roads are their own private race track then all-season and winter tyres are the way to go to avoid issues in winter weather.
There are all-season tyres out now that perform as well as if not better than summer and sometimes even winter tyres in their respective zones of expertise.
All seasons are meant to be run all year, and do not do the same job as a full winter tyre in the snow/slush. Why change them for summers? Change to a full winter tyre and back to summers, but not an all season to summers. Under no circumstances does a summer UHP out perform a decent all season when the weather conditions require an all -season or a winter tyre. If you are getting to the edge of performance of any UHP tyre on a normal UK road then you are driving like a knob and no-one can help you. If you are a normal, considerate driver who looks at the road and weather conditions and doesn't think that the roads are their own private race track then all-season and winter tyres are the way to go to avoid issues in winter weather.
There are all-season tyres out now that perform as well as if not better than summer and sometimes even winter tyres in their respective zones of expertise.
The review above seems to disagree (in that a "mid range" tyre wins the dry tests, and beats half of the all-season tyres in wet tests, and only does badly in snow tests where an actual winter tyre would be needed) - an actual UHP rather than mid range tyre would do even better!
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2020-Tyre-Reviews-All-Season-Tyre-Test.htm
Show me an all-season tyre that is better in summer conditions than a Michelin P4S, Goodyear F1AS5 or Continental CSC6, or an all-season tyre that is better than a winter tyre in actual wintery snow conditions
CC2 or AT+ do better than some winter tyres in actual wintery conditions but certainly not as well as the top winter tyres.
Science isn't your strong point is it?
I'm assuming you've never had to make an emergency stop or a sudden change of direction to avoid a hazard? The difference between the winter tyres you're running in anything other than very cold, slushy conditions, and a good UHP tyre is around 10 metres. That's the difference between you stopping safely, and you smashing into the back of the car in front, and the one in front of that, and the one in front of that, and the one in front of that.
In Scotland, there is an argument for all season tyres, or if you have the money, summer tyres and winter tyres. But for the 80% of the UK that doesn't live in Scotland, a UHP tyre still makes the most sense all year around. We have a temperate climate that doesn't really experience extremes (climate events aside). The Midlands, East and South of England, we only have around only 55-70 days of rain a year in which 1mm or more falls. We also have only a very small amount of snow, normally a 2-3 of days a year where it affects transport. And the lowest average day time temperature we experience is around 8-9c, with night times falling to the lowest average of around 2-3c. In the summer the average highs are around 23c and average lows are around 15c. In these conditions, running winter tyres is compromising your safety ~95% of the time with a UHP able to perform the job better the vast majority of the time. Not to mention that if you're running winters in warmer conditions, because of how soft they are, the wear rates will be horrendous, and the handling of the car will be compromised also.
All season's have got better, but then UHP's have also got better too. There is still a large gap between the best UHP and the best AS in summer conditions. This is before we even consider the question of wear, handling and feel in which AS's fall down even further.
Like i said, AS and Winters make sense in places that call for them, for the vast majority of us, that isn't England. Highlands of Scotland? Fine, yep, you'd be stupid to be without them. Most other places, UHP's are your best bet.
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I couldn't agree more.
Can someone recommend me front tyres for a a 3 series. 225/45/17.
It's got Goodyear eagle F1s on the back so was gonna go similar to the front.
Have narrowed it down to this list here but don't know what to pick?!
As3 or as5, was gonna go as3 and there is a homologated version which I got no idea if it's suitable?
Link
It's got Goodyear eagle F1s on the back so was gonna go similar to the front.
Have narrowed it down to this list here but don't know what to pick?!
As3 or as5, was gonna go as3 and there is a homologated version which I got no idea if it's suitable?
Link
Are your tyres runflats?
If not, the Eagle F1A5 is one of the best tyres you can buy and is quite a lot better than the A3. F1Autocentres are currently doing a deal where these are £65ea, which is about the same price as they sell ultra budget Chinese ditchfinders for! Goodyear tyres are such good value for money.
F1A5
Yes currently pirelli p7 RF but want to avoid rft.
Ok ta will go for a5.
I cannot find this 65 deal though, I was gonna get from ATS as they got Goodyear promotion comes at 138 for 2.
F1autocentre coming at 162.
I don’t know anything about tyre design, but the last few days with the really heavy rain and lots of standing water, the crossclimate 2 have sailed through everything without issue, in fact they feel much less affected by standing water than my summer tyres did. However I am not sure how much is related to tread pattern.
Even new, with 7mm tread, my summer tyres often felt they were pushing water. Whereas the cross climate 2 feel like they cut through the water.
Anyone know if this is just a placebo feeling or if the way the treads are designed actually do a better job at displacing water that just normal summer treads? They feel very different in heavy standing water that’s for sure. I guess I’ll see once the tread depth decreases.
I know on
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2021-Tyre-Reviews-All-Season-Tyre-Test.htm
the aqua planing results favoured the cross climates over a mid range summer tyre, at least when new.
Even new, with 7mm tread, my summer tyres often felt they were pushing water. Whereas the cross climate 2 feel like they cut through the water.
Anyone know if this is just a placebo feeling or if the way the treads are designed actually do a better job at displacing water that just normal summer treads? They feel very different in heavy standing water that’s for sure. I guess I’ll see once the tread depth decreases.
I know on
https://www.tyrereviews.com/Article/2021-Tyre-Reviews-All-Season-Tyre-Test.htm
the aqua planing results favoured the cross climates over a mid range summer tyre, at least when new.