**Unofficial Tyre Thread**

Uriel said:
Michelin Primacy 3 vs Goodyear Vector 4Season Gen-2 vs Michelin CrossClimate vs Continental WinterContact TS850. Categories tested = Snow Traction, Braking & handling, Wet braking & handling, Dry Braking & Handling.

http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/Is-there-a-true-all-season-tyre-We-find-out.htm
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[TW]Fox;28824284 said:
A mid range summer tyre, great.
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To expand on this - there are 2 better performing tyres than the Primacy 3 in Michelin's range - The Pilot Sport 3 and the Pilot Super Sport. Against either of those both the wet and dry results would be very different, and I would think the snow advantage wouldn't necessarily be as pronounced.
 
Would anyone expect, or has it ever been claimed, that the all season tyre would compete with a UHP one though? Would be interesting to see the difference but not sure if its unfair or irellevant to use the midrange tyre

I'd be more interested to see the wet and dry braking differences at lower temperatures (sub 8 degrees) - when the winter tyre folk start talking about molecular bonds and superior performance
 
I'd think the ice/snow performance is one area where there really would be a marked improvement.

Wet grip is the most important winter (use) aspect for me personally. On the odd occasion I get proper snow (few days a year) the small car can be used - rest of the time I spend cursing the front end of the type R and that's with a high performing wet weather tyre. Cheap crap would render it a wet weather 1.0 Micra equivalent

As for cold performance I find all season vs winter quite interesting but would also quite like to see a uhp on there. Too
 
rodenal said:
I'd think the ice/snow performance is one area where there really would be a marked improvement.

Wet grip is the most important winter aspect for me personally. On the odd occasion I get proper snow (few days a year) the small car can be used - rest of the time I spend cursing the front end of the type R and that's with a high performing wet weather tyre. Cheap crap would render it a wet weather 1.0 Micra equivalent

As for cold performance I find all season vs winter quite interesting but would also quite like to see a uhp on there. Too
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There was a pretty heated discussion about this on the jaguar forum the other day involving some people saying you're an idiot if you don't run winter/all season tyres.... I was pointing out that our winters are rarely of the sort where winter tyres outperform summers.

The argument was always that rubber on summer tyes starts to harden at ~8 degrees (which is true I'm sure), which of course means that the rubber has no molecular bond with the road (:rolleyes:) and the summers would cause you to fall off the road.

What I'd like to see is wet and dry braking (forgetting snow and ice) performance of mid range summer, UHP summer, winter and all season tyres at typical british winter temperatures - somewhere between 0 and 10 degrees
 
Yeah it would be interesting to see - I'm not even sure what I think the result would be, tread design feels like it would have more of an impact than the summer/winter/all season compound but this is why I don't design or test tyres!
 
I think the winters wouldn't trail off in performance as much at those lower temperatures but the starting point of the summer tyre is so much higher that the intersection point would be a lot lower than we normally experience here... That's my theory anyway :)
 
I've just made a 250 mile trip to Oban via the A82/85 and back on the A85 towards Callander and over the Dukes pass back home via Clydebank. Think I saw 4.5c on the on board computer on the way back.

Loads of heavy rain, standing water, high winds, leaves, rush hour traffic with standing water and quite a few twisties. I'm not dead and was running my F1AS2 all round so not sure if I'd get the benefit out of winter tyres or if it is worth running an all season tyre at some point?

Still not in love with FWD as traction in 2nd gear is crap even with a good tyre and hitting ANY sort of bump in the road under acceleration feels like the poor car wants to crumble to death.
 
That's more a symptom of the car than the drive axle tbh

The fn2 is horrendous for it, but my friends softer Octavia vrs with more power (remapped) is mostly fine in the wet. It's no coincidence the Honda is rock solid and has far more dry grip imo
 
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Haven't driven enough cars to come to that conclusion but I can why that would be.

I must be getting old as I'm now coming round to autos now too... Over an hour today from clydebank/Duntocher to Hamilton. Can usually do it in 30 minutes or so but the stop start traffic makes me hate manual.
 
I'm a big fan of rainsports, had the 2's on my previous cars and have a set of 4 on my Golf GTD. Great in the dry, outstanding in the wet and as mentioned above fairly cheap. They are, as predictable with a soft tyre fast wearing but not as bad as T1R's and much better performance than them.
 
Was going to switch over to my winter wheels last weekend. The car's due a service tomorrow (main Honda dealer, oil change plus inspection). Asked the garage how much they would charge to switch them over for me. Turns out to be free of charge, given the other work they'll be doing. That will have saved me a while faffing about with a jack and wrench. Full UK AA brakedown cover getting thrown in for a year too.
 
I'm surprised being a main stealer, they didn't try charge you some extra. But, if they did I'd have told them where to go since it'll be up on a ramp anyway!
 
Frozennova said:
As far as RainSport3s, what about sizes where F1AS2 or SportContacts aren't available.

For the MX5 on 195/50/15 its pretty much either RainSport3, PremiumContact5, Pilot Exalto 2 or PilotSport3.

I'm not entirely convinced there would be much performance difference if any between any of those offerings. Although I'm happy to be proved wrong and would happily spend more money next time.
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All terrible. I ended up paying double and got AD08's, overkill but better than rubbish.
 
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