Winter tyre advice please.

Scania

Scania

Scania

Caporegime
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On the road....
I live in Leek, Staffordshire, and this town gets a lot of snow over winter, not helped by pretty much all of the major routes having hills on them into and out of the town.

In the past, I've always found - with RWD especially - my problem is driven wheel grip.

I have good rear michelins, the fronts need replacing.
I'm considering putting the good rears on the front and buying a couple of Michelin winter tyres for the rear.

My thinking is this should help with rear end grip, my thinking being last year I remember (in my old 528) having no problems steering on snow, but the rear end was a bit wayward to put it mildly!

I'm assuming having better gripping rear tyres should be ok? - I've always worked on the assumption the rears should have the most tread etc..


Thoughts appreciated. :)
 
You will get a lot of naysayers here, but if you are driving a RWD car in the snow, slowly, then the main ballache is complete loss of traction uphill as you say.
So winter tyres or snow tyres on the rear are a great idea in my experience, as long as you remind yourself they are on there for pure traction in such situation, not to increase the overall speed of the vehicle in snow.

Vredestein Snowtrac 3 get pretty good reviews, I have some Avon Ice Touring which also seem to do the job nicely.

Another option is snow socks but it's a pain stopping to take them on and off.
 
Ricochet J said:
If you're going to put winter tyres on your car then do it properly and put winter tyres on all 4 corners.
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This was my initial plan, I'm asking after a discussion with a tyre fitter this morning, his point was I've managed in snow upto now, and never bought winter tyres previously, he said its a relatively common thing to do....
 
I've been using a set of Goodyear Ultragrip 8's.

Bought them at the start of December last year and got them fitted almost straight away.

They're on a 53 plate 5 door Focus MK1.5 and are 195/60R15

came to just under £300 fitted if I remember correctly.

Driven them all year and found them great. In fact despite being good in snow and icy conditions (as expected) their wet performance has been absolutely exemplary! I live in the Lake District so poor road surfaces combined with streams and standing water really test the tyres on a fairly regular basis.

Summer performance was also good and only on the very hottest days (no more than a week or so) would I describe the performance as becoming slightly 'spongy'.

I'd estimate I've done somewhere around 13k-14k miles and wear has been good. Almost no wear on the rears and only around 2mm down on the fronts. Due to getting close to winter I swapped the fronts with the backs last week to have the deepest sharpest tread on the drive wheels. Judging by wear levels so far I reckon there's a good chance they'll be good for another two years or so.

I've been surprised at how robust they've been TBH and wouldn't consider having anything else on the car regardless of the time of year.

EDIT: Regarding the 'buy 2' vs 'buy 4' idea. The way I look at it is I wouldn't want a disproportionate performance difference between the front and the back. Especially on a rear wheel drive car since both the front and rears need to work in their own way. I'd maybe accept that on a front wheel drive it would be at least moderately acceptable.

If I were you I'd seriously consider rebooting all four.
 
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ContiWinterContact 810s on 16" or 15" steelies.

/thread

Morbius said:
Am I right in thinking lower pressures are better for snow?
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If you're crossing the Antarctic, perhaps.
But tyre/car manufacturers recommend slightly higher pressures than for summer tyres.
 
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Lopéz said:
You will get a lot of naysayers here, but if you are driving a RWD car in the snow, slowly, then the main ballache is complete loss of traction uphill as you say.
So winter tyres or snow tyres on the rear are a great idea in my experience, as long as you remind yourself they are on there for pure traction in such situation, not to increase the overall speed of the vehicle in snow.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

For the OP, This is a great site for tyre reviews.. http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/2012-Auto-Bild-Performance-Winter-Tyre-Test.htm
 
gt_junkie said:
I've been using a set of Goodyear Ultragrip 8's.

Bought them at the start of December last year and got them fitted almost straight away.

They're on a 53 plate 5 door Focus MK1.5 and are 195/60R15

came to just under £300 fitted if I remember correctly.

Driven them all year and found them great. In fact despite being good in snow and icy conditions (as expected) their wet performance has been absolutely exemplary! I live in the Lake District so poor road surfaces combined with streams and standing water really test the tyres on a fairly regular basis.

Summer performance was also good and only on the very hottest days (no more than a week or so) would I describe the performance as becoming slightly 'spongy'.

I'd estimate I've done somewhere around 13k-14k miles and wear has been good. Almost no wear on the rears and only around 2mm down on the fronts. Due to getting close to winter I swapped the fronts with the backs last week to have the deepest sharpest tread on the drive wheels. Judging by wear levels so far I reckon there's a good chance they'll be good for another two years or so.

I've been surprised at how robust they've been TBH and wouldn't consider having anything else on the car regardless of the time of year.

EDIT: Regarding the 'buy 2' vs 'buy 4' idea. The way I look at it is I wouldn't want a disproportionate performance difference between the front and the back. Especially on a rear wheel drive car since both the front and rears need to work in their own way. I'd maybe accept that on a front wheel drive it would be at least moderately acceptable.

If I were you I'd seriously consider rebooting all four.
Click to expand...
That is most interesting. I had always understood that Winter tyres were meant to be used in ambient temperatures of 7°C or lower. I had assumed that if used in the Summer, they would wear VERY fast.

I will have to have a think about that, I am spending the first quarter of 2013 in the French Alps and was planning on getting Winter tyres anyhow (see other thread ref. 195 vs 185 steel wheels) - thanks for the info :)
 
stockhausen said:
That is most interesting. I had always understood that Winter tyres were meant to be used in ambient temperatures of 7°C or lower. I had assumed that if used in the Summer, they would wear VERY
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I found his reply interesting too mate,

I'm probably going to go for just rears initially and eventually swap the fronts for winters as & when they have worn out.

It's not like we get much in the way of summer anymore anyway! :D
 
Spartacus said:
Agreed.

For the OP, This is a great site for tyre reviews.. http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/2012-Auto-Bild-Performance-Winter-Tyre-Test.htm
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Ha ha - yeah I used that site when deciding on mine.

This test sums the performance up nicely although rolling resistance and road noise have also never been an issue: http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/2012-Auto-Express-Winter-Tyre-Test.htm

Had economy tyres on before these and have seen no increase in road noise nor degredation in MPG. The car (a 1.6 petrol model) has always returned 42-44MPG regardless of tyre.

Also, re the ability to function well over 7c I've found them solid all the way up to 18c or so. Above that and you do begin to get a little softness in the attack of the tyres but when it's hot like that I just turn the aircon on and cruise anyway so it's never effected me negatively.

Out of any change/upgrade the move to winter tyres has been my most noticeable in terms of a positive experience (for my circumstances and local weather of course!).
 
stockhausen said:
That is most interesting. I had always understood that Winter tyres were meant to be used in ambient temperatures of 7°C or lower. I had assumed that if used in the Summer, they would wear VERY fast.
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Absolutely agree - I thought the same when I first had them fitted!

However I decided by the time it got to April that the cost of swapping back to my summer tyres would potentially mirror any additional wear on the winters. What I found though was that they were actually wearing only very gradually even on dry 'moderately' warm days.
 
Still got my winters on from last years rush to get them done for impending Armageddon that everyone was predicting.
I've actually increased my MPG figures since having them on (40 psi all round) and there is still shed loads of tread all round.
It never got hot /dry enough to warrant taking them off IMO.
 
gt_junkie said:
However I decided by the time it got to April that the cost of swapping back to my summer tyres would potentially mirror any additional wear on the winters. What I found though was that they were actually wearing only very gradually even on dry 'moderately' warm days.
Click to expand...

IIRC Continental actually recommend that in the UK if you can only afford to run one set of tyres you should run winters all year round.
 
I agree that to a certain extent that there's a market for all season tyres. However the main issue I found when looking at all seasons (assuming nothing's really changed in the last year or so) is that their winter/wet performance is only slightly better than summer tyres. For me that wasn't good enough. If I had to choose I'd rather have optimal performance in wet and cold weather.

Also, regarding swapping tyres back and forth, I could afford to run both winters and summers... in fact I have the set that originally came off the car when the winters were fitted. It just didn't make financial sense to pay to have them swapped back onto the rims when the winters were wearing and performing so admirably already.
 
gt_junkie said:
their winter/wet performance is only slightly better than summer tyres.
Click to expand...

I used to think that as well, but not All season tyres are created equal. After I've seen some Quatrac 4s in deep snow last year I have been most impressed and I'm very confident that no summer tyre will even come remotely close to them.
It is indeed true that winter tyres work their best at under 7 degrees celsius. But the excessive wear in hotter temperatures is exaggerated - sure I wouldn't want to use them all year round somewhere where there's regular 35+ degrees for 3-4 months, but in the UK that's not really gonna happen.:o
 
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