Hello all,

Just looking around at Wintery tyres and think I am going to go for Infinity tyres around the £60 ea mark, anyone got any experience of these? Also is £55 around the bottom line for these only I think valves, balaning and fitting is going to total each tyre at £65 each and if I could save £60 that's quite a lot! I've read about certain garages that will fit tyres and so on pretty cheaply but I've always thought, especially where tyres are concerned you need proper tracking and so on?

I am going to go for Infinity tyres around the £60 ea mark, anyone got any experience of these?

Are you getting a second set of wheels? If so, are you going down a size?

The standard tyres for our car are 205/55VR16 - I bought some 15" steel wheels from a dealer and fitted 195/65HR15 winter tyres. There are a few advantages in doing this, they being that the cost of changing sets of tyres on existing wheels fairly rapidly pays for the cost of extra wheels, that steel wheels are more likely to be able to be mended after kerbing, the standard alloys won't be exposed to salt, and the smaller size winter tyres are cheaper. I've read that it is an advantage to have a narrower tyre tread and a deeper sidewall, but I don't know whether this is true and, if it is, why. There was another unexpected advantage in that the unsprung weight was reduced!

You could save money by buying steel wheels second-hand.

You need to check whether smaller wheels will fit over your brake calipers - brake discs are 280 or 288 mm on our car and the smaller wheels fit OK.

The main downsides are the increased up-front costs and the need to store the set of wheels not on the car.

As for tyres, if I didn't already have Vredestein Snowtrac 3 and wanted to buy mid-range, I might consider Kumho KW23 -- if you can find them; I noticed that Camskill advertised them for a while at a very good price but now do not list them!

Edited 12 October, 201015 yr by AnotherGareth

Hi all,

I have infinities on the front now, and in a word.... "Cr4p"

Ok in the dry but they will not function reliably in the wet and I hate to think what they would be like in the snow/slushy stuff.

I have had budget tyures on previous cars and they worked just fine, for instance I had Nexens n3000 and they were great (better than my previous F1s in the wet), and about £55 per corner on the Fabia, cant be much more on the Octy.

Reading the reviews Infinity certainly aint winter tyres,they get some shocking reports in the wet.Personally I cant see the point of putting carp tyres on a car, I value my life and that of my loved ones that travel in the car much more than saving a few quid.Try and find the Autocar tyre test on cheap tyres,they actually didn't fully test some of the tyres they were that unsafe,and took 14m longer to stop at 70mph.

In summary, Autocar warns readers against the temptation of cheap tyres: “tyres should never be regarded as commodities and bought on price alone. They are hi-tech products that can make a large, perhaps accident-saving, difference to the performance of your car.”

#2 - I'm not going to try and quantify it, but assuming the same tread pattern and depth, an narrower tyre will give you a higher ground pressure, and the 2 factors combine to cut through standing water or snow better than the wider tyres would, yes.

#1 and #2 - Take note that if you've got a set of steels and a set of alloys, you may need different sets of wheel nuts for each, since the shape of the nut seats may be different on one fro mthe other. A Skoda dealer should be able to advise you on this.

if you've got a set of steels and a set of alloys, you may need different sets of wheel nuts for each, since the shape of the nut seats may be different on one fro mthe other. A Skoda dealer should be able to advise you on this.

Our car is from early 2004 ... the dealer spent quite a while checking if I needed different bolts, (after I had asked), but concluded I didn't. I rather suspect this is the case for most VAG cars over at least the last 10 years or so, as a number came with 4 alloys and a steel spare.

However it is always wise to check. Our Alfas certainly have differently shaped wheel nuts for steel or alloy wheels.

I too have infinity's. And yes they are pretty ****e TBH. These are what the car came with when I bought it ( they were brand new so I left them on ) I am now after some Kumho Ku31's.

Hi all,

I have infinities on the front now, and in a word.... "Cr4p"

Ok in the dry but they will not function reliably in the wet and I hate to think what they would be like in the snow/slushy stuff.

I have had budget tyures on previous cars and they worked just fine, for instance I had Nexens n3000 and they were great (better than my previous F1s in the wet), and about £55 per corner on the Fabia, cant be much more on the Octy.

Meant to get back on this one,just for the record I would say that they are not very good at all. I had them on just towards the end of Autumn and in wet conditions I was skidding all over the place, something I have never done before, I think I'd say that considering I have spent 3 hours on the skid track at Silverstone and fully understand a skid, how it happens and so on and that I am doing my IAM, I would expect far more and am pretty sure I could handle a car just as well if not better with standard, decent shoes on. However, in snow there was a very clear advantage, but ice, slush- back to dangerous tyres. Pretty disappointed considering how expensive they were

#2 - I'm not going to try and quantify it, but assuming the same tread pattern and depth, an narrower tyre will give you a higher ground pressure, and the 2 factors combine to cut through standing water or snow better than the wider tyres would, yes.

Since we're resurrecting old discussions ...

The contact patch size will be the same since it's mostly a function of the weight of the car but a narrower tread width will result in a longer narrower contact patch which is better for accelerating and braking but less good for cornering. You're less likely to be doing crazy cornering in wintery conditions and, anyway, slightly less cornering grip is easy to manage by the driver.