Winter V all Weather tyres

HashSlinging

Finally got my hands on some 16in alloys winter boots to replace my summer 18's! OEM and a bargain also happy days.. just wondering is it better to go for "full winter" (ie snow) in our climate or "all weather". My summer wheels will be coming off mid oct and after getting a full refurb will be put away.

After getting stuck numerous times and having a couple of scary incidents over the winter - I live fairly high up. In the interest of safety I'm going to give running a different set of wheels during the winter months a go.

So tyre wise can any boardsies recommend what I go for, if possible I'd like to get a couple of years out of the tyres due to rotation between the seasons etc.

2 Espressi

I'd go All Weather, you'll get a lot more rain here than snow. Snow tyres in the rain are worse than AW tyres in snow (or so I've found).

peasant

I'd definitly recommend full winter tyres. All-weather tyres usually are a compromise and proper winter tyres perform better on ice and snow and often in wet weather as well.

I would also recommend searching the internet for objective tyre tests and comparisons. Winter tyres have come on a good bit over the last years and they can be real specialist tyres these days. There are some that are designed to work on fully snow covered roads of Scandinavia or the alps and others that perform best in wet and soggy conditions with the occasional frost and flurry of snow.

Matt Simis

peasant wrote: »

I'd definitly recommend full winter tyres. All-weather tyres usually are a compromise and proper winter tyres perform better on ice and snow and often in wet weather as well.

I would absolutely agree with the above, go Summer for 3/4 of the year then proper Winters if you want better traction in the cold. Ive tried 2 sets of All-Weather tyres on our quattro and both performed very close to Summer tyres in the Frost/Ice and Snow, ie there really was no benefit.

On a side note I mentioned my plan to get a cheap set of Winter tyres and Wheels as a 2nd set (to be put on a couple of months a year only) for my RWD BMW to the local tyre place, he literally laughed me out of the shop ("no one has ever asked for Winter tyres in the 20years Im here").

In regards your question on specific tyres, I havent really researched Winters, however for both Summers and All-Weathers I find Falken to be an excellent compromise between cost and performance and do well in online tests and surveys. For Winter tests Id look at Canadian or US (or Scandi) comments, not UK/Irish ones for obvious reasons.

Saab Ed

Winter tyres only begin to work at 2 degrees and lower. Their very soft compound and ultra flexible side walls will lead to compromised control of your car at anything above this. These type of tyres should only be used in climates that suffer very cold and extreme weather conditions. Although we do suffer snow and ice it would be my opinion that it would not justify the fitting of winter tyres. Given that even in winter our temperatures rarely drop below 5 or 6 degrees I think the compromise would be too great for the limited number of times you will get the full use from them. Dont forget that outside of their opperating zone your cornering will compromised, your braking distance increased and the road noise will be greater nevermind the fact that if we have a typical Irish winter you'll be lucky if they last 6 months. Better IMO to buy a good quality all weather tyre. As a matter of interest what type of car is it OP?

gofaster_s13

Vredestein wintrac's brilliant winter tyres, handled snow , rain, ice flawlessly on my drive to Livigno and other snowboarding destinations last winter(fitted on a BMW 330d)

Matt Simis

Saab Ed wrote: »

Winter tyres only begin to work at 2 degrees and lower. Their very soft compound and ultra flexible side walls will lead to compromised control of your car at anything above this.

A source for this?
I just a did a google and came up with some "facts" (ie self proclaimed, but consistent) that stated Summer Tyres start to loose pliability and traction in a severe way under 7 degrees C and that Winter tyres will operate upto 20c (at which point they should be switched to Summers). All-Seasons remained rather pointless.
There were several PDFs and sites that said on top of this that Winter Tyres are quieter than Performance Summer tyres. Surely in low temps when the Rubber goes rock hard on Summers this makes sense!

Here was the the google string, see for yourself:
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=0AZ&q=winter+tyre+operating+temp+range&btnG=Search&meta=

Certainly 7c seems like a consistently quoted temp where Winters outperform Summers and this is very much our temp zone in Winter.


EDIT:
Example one of many, covers the "7C Threshold ":
http://www.tyres-online.co.uk/techinfo/winter.asp
Another one, from Michelin

Braking distance on wet roads at 80 km/hour,at a temperature below 7°C
Summer tyre: 40 metres –
Winter tyre: 34 metres
A summer tyre needs 6 metres more braking distance

Braking distance on snow at 50 km/hour
Summer tyre: 63 metres
Winter tyre: 32 metres
A summer tyre needs 31 metres more braking distance

Thats some difference in favour of Winters!

peasant

http://www1.adac.de/Tests/Reifentests/Winterreifen/195_65_R15T/tab.asp?ComponentID=229299&SourcePageID=229332#

last years ADAC tyre test (for size 195/65/15) ...the lower the value in the table, the better the performance.

colums from left to right:
Speed rating
price in euro
dry
wet
snow
ice
noise
fuel consumption
Tyre wear

Mr.David

Yeah Matt is right, the changeover point is 7C afaik and below this temp winter tyres outperform 'all weather'.

Am I right in thinking that in Germany you legally have to run winters at appropriate times?

peasant

Mr.David wrote: »

Am I right in thinking that in Germany you legally have to run winters at appropriate times?

Nahh ..they chickened out of legislating for it properly instead they put it like this: "The car has to be equipped with tyres appropriate to the conditions"

20 Euro if caught with "innapropriate" tyres, 40 Euro if you caused an obstruction, 1 penalty point if you were in a crash

your insurance company may also cancel your comprehensive cover or even come after you for third party cost if you have an accident on summer tyres in wintery conditions


Austria on the other hand has legislated that between November 1st and April 15th a vehicle may only be driven in wintery conditions if it is actually fitted with winter tyres

HashSlinging

Done a good bit of research myself and for me its the way to go.

Has anyone any opinions on getting two full winter tyres up front (car is FWD) and normal ones at the back or should I go for the winter setup on all four. Going to be sticking with the Vredestein ...

peasant

If you're going for winter tyres the only way to do so is on all fours.

In critical conditions having tyres with completly different characteristics on either axle is making things worse, not better.

Winter tyres on the driven wheels only may help with not getting stuck / spinning the wheels when driving off ...but in any other situation like going round a tetchy bend or under braking they make matters decidedly worse, as the end of the car shod with summer tyres only will lose grip a lot earlier and just go wherever it wants to.

Believe me ...I learned the hard way