Show us your winter wheels

[neil_f]

how did the hankooks perform, just had a set fitted to my car.

There really good. I used them last year on the previous car I had.

[lucy_t]

cheers for the thread, just ordered some alloys and tyres from mytyres for my occy. I don't get the complete snow and ice experience so going for all season tyres and tramlining annoys the hell out or me so going from 17" 225 to 15" 195 for compfot saftey and economy. Wheels are : http://www.enzo-wheels.com/506_EN.htm?webdid=455 tyres are http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Goodyear/Vector-4Seasons.htm lets see what happens as I mostly drive in the cold and

[Rab-k]

Have the Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons on the Polo. If I'd known how pleased I'd be with them I wouldn't have bothered with the Nokian WR G2's on steels for the Octy.

[Rab-k]

I take it back - the Vector 4 Seasons might not have coped as well as the Nokians did in this stuff yesterday...

The 4x4 did help however, especially crawling side-ways, yes, SIDEWAYS, :wonder: out of a deeper drift when I turned the TCS off. A most odd sensation for all

[sly200sx]

I have had these winter wheel/tyre combo on now for 4 weeks and never sent temps lower than 3 deg c, never mind and snow :-( spose I should be grateful I guess. Temps today were around 12 deg c and this was in Edinburgh! Still not tempted to take em off though.

[domhnall]

I have had these winter wheel/tyre combo on now for 4 weeks and never sent temps lower than 3 deg c, never mind and snow :-( spose I should be grateful I guess. Temps today were around 12 deg c and this was in Edinburgh! Still not tempted to take em off though.

I'm only about 15 miles west of Edinburgh and it was lashing down with snow last night

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Wardy]

That's the tricky thing about running winters in Britain - looks like we'll be in double figures for the weekend, but I'm sure it'll be short lived!

[FUBAR]

Have the Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons on the Polo. If I'd known how pleased I'd be with them I wouldn't have bothered with the Nokian WR G2's on steels for the Octy.

That's what we use at work Goodyear Eagle Vectors M&S, really am impressed by them run all year and never had one car get stuck or any accidents in snow or icy conditions. Seem to be getting on egarly used company vehicles a good 50000km out of them. I have Hankook M&S and not really been able to put them to the test thankfully.

[HUD Engineer]

How do you knpw this? Here in Norway almost no cars are delivered new with steelies anymore... Its very rare to see newer cars with steel, and many cars have 17-18s wintertyres as standard. And thank God for that!

My source for the rule change (apparently effective December 2010) was http://www.theaa.com...s.html.Studying it more closely, it seems visiting cars are only violating the law if they are using summer tyres and encounter wintry conditions. See http://www.theaa.com...pdf. Violators may be fined 80 or 40 euros depending on whether they are obstructing traffic or not.As over here, new cars are generally purchased with alloy wheels with summer tyres (and possibly purchased with a winter set at the same time), but it is very common practice in Germany to have a set of steel wheels with winter tyres fitted, either stacked at the end of the garage/underground parking bay or stored in a "tyre hotel", rather than swapping tyres over on to the same rims. That is a good thing, otherwise very long queues would form at the tyre bays at the official start and end dates of winter in Germany.

[lard-ajc]

have changed my wheels recently. Decided to put the 5 spoke audi alloys on my wife's Leon and I picked these 7 spoke audi alloys from ebay. Only downside is that the tyres are 225/55/16, no 205/55/16 but don't cause any problems (except looking a bit like balloons!).

Edited 5 January, 2013 by lard-ajc

[RizzoTheRat]

^{Given some of the potholes I've seen round here recently I'm quite glad of my 16" steelies.}

[jarre]

The roads in liverpool city centre as terrible. Potholes/bumps everywhere! It hasn't even been a harsh winter this year, just poor maintenance. For all the tax that is paid for cars it really it poor.

[Wardy]

I've noticed the recent extremely wet weather has taken its toll, around here anyway. Where it's just seemed to wash sections of the road away!

Probably as a recent of the numerous 'spot' that tend to get carried out; seems as these have got eaten away at the edges by passing traffic the water's done a very efficient job of finishing the process off and uncovering holes again

[FUBAR]

have changed my wheels recently. Decided to put the 5 spoke audi alloys on my wife's Leon and I picked these 7 spoke audi alloys from ebay. Only downside is that the tyres are 225/55/16, no 205/55/16 but don't cause any problems (except looking a bit like balloons!).

SNAP!

[nickguzzi]

Another point re the German situation, in many places, parking if effected by mounting the kerb. Either side on or end on. As was intimated, when the snow is ploughed into thick berms, you cant see the actual kerb, I think the wheel proud amongst readers here would be reluctant to charge the frozen foot high iceberg in order to park their car. Bear in mind the huge majority of town dwellers live in apartments and have on park on road.

When I was there last October, the majority of vehicles in the tiny sample between my sisters place and city centre had winters and steels. And not because they couldn't afford alloys.

ps the weather forecast for Frankfurt is predicting a highest daytime temp of -2C until next Friday, nights at -7C.

[FUBAR]

Another point re the German situation, in many places, parking if effected by mounting the kerb. Either side on or end on. As was intimated, when the snow is ploughed into thick berms, you cant see the actual kerb, I think the wheel proud amongst readers here would be reluctant to charge the frozen foot high iceberg in order to park their car. Bear in mind the huge majority of town dwellers live in apartments and have on park on road.

When I was there last October, the majority of vehicles in the tiny sample between my sisters place and city centre had winters and steels. And not because they couldn't afford alloys.

ps the weather forecast for Frankfurt is predicting a highest daytime temp of -2C until next Friday, nights at -7C.

Additionally steelies for winter for people like apartment dwellers especially can be supplied by tyre places on a rental basis and they store your alloys for you swapping them back and forward all being part of the price. No tyre place offering this service will invest in tens of thousands of alloy rims which may be damaged, steelies no one cares.

[Black_Sheep]

Additionally steelies for winter for people like apartment dwellers especially can be supplied by tyre places on a rental basis and they store your alloys for you swapping them back and forward all being part of the price. No tyre place offering this service will invest in tens of thousands of alloy rims which may be damaged, steelies no one cares.

I was under the impression that you own the wheels and that you pay to store either your summer/winter tyres with the tyre shop i.e. Reifen.com charge from €1.75 per month for storage; a similar service is now being offerred by BMW, Volvo et al in the UK too.

With respect to the steel vs alloy debate I have used both over the years. One of the significant benefits of alloys is that the brake calipers are far less prone to 'crud-up' and that the brake discs generally do not corrode as much, primarily due to the fact that you have greater access to these areas when cleaning the car whilst fitted.

[FUBAR]

I was under the impression that you own the wheels and that you pay to store either your summer/winter tyres with the tyre shop i.e. Reifen.com charge from €1.75 per month for storage; a similar service is now being offerred by BMW, Volvo et al in the UK too.

With respect to the steel vs alloy debate I have used both over the years. One of the significant benefits of alloys is that the brake calipers are far less prone to 'crud-up' and that the brake discs generally do not corrode as much, primarily due to the fact that you have greater access to these areas when cleaning the car whilst fitted.

That does seem to be the most common storage charge so to speak, but most I have seen offer it as a rental of the rims. It works well for the places that do it as when they get them back in they can sort them all out through summer and not have the massive rush just before winter. I think its a lot cheaper in long run to just buy them but if you change car they may not fit next one etc.

What I don't get in Germany is the winter tyres including motorcycles......... No chance I am changing those!

[Black_Sheep]

What I don't get in Germany is the winter tyres including motorcycles......... No chance I am changing those!

I can't recall having seen a motorcycle on the road here in the past week or so... the fact that there was ice on the inside of the windscreen this morning might have something to do with it though!

[Mr Ree]

Without trawling through 16 pages of discussion here, has an increase in fuel consumption using 'winters' been discussed?

Do they in fact...increase fuel consumption that is?

Marginally or significantly, on average, as I appreciate the rolling resistance tends to vary from one manufacturer to another.

Edited 13 January, 2013 by Mr Ree

[Gizmo]

My experience:

225/40/18 summer tyres (OE Contenentals) ave 47MPG - actual

205/55/16 winter tyres 49+ MPG

[Jane_i10]

Feels abit bouncy compared to the 18's i can finally give her throttle without spinning up!

[Black_Sheep]

Do they in fact...increase fuel consumption that is?

Marginally or significantly, on average, as I appreciate the rolling resistance tends to vary from one manufacturer to another.

In sum I see very little difference in fuel consumption in the real world.

From a scientific view point it is pretty difficult to do a like for like comparison. As described the majority of people run different sizes, pressures, compounds, treads between summer/winter tyres. Obviously the size of Winter tyres is purely down to individual preference, but the majority run smaller diameter rims in Winter than Summer (especially for VRS owners i.e. 16" rims as oppossed to 18" rims - although tyre profiles used mean that the overall circumference is within a few mm and thus speedo does not need to be recalibrated etc).

If you were to do a like for like, using same size / diameter then it is likely that the roliing resistance would be higher on the Winter tyres; but this will be negligible when compared to other factors such as air resistance or mechanical inefficiencies.

[matt_theforce]

With regards fuel economy on winter tyres, I ran 225/45/17 summer & winter tyres on the same Pegasus wheels and also ran the same tyre pressures, I saw a 1mpg increase when my winter tyres were fitted. Whilst my driving style stayed the same on some days (worse conditions) I would have driven slower but maintaining my usual driving style.

Summer tyres - Kumho KH31

Winter tyres - Vredestein Wintrac Extreme

[Wardy]

My consumption isn't that different. Only noticeable difference is that you're usually using winter tyres at lower temps, so economy usually suffers a little from longer startup temps etc.

225/40/18 Yoko Parada2 on Speedline Turinis

225/45/17 Vredestein Wintrac Extreme on Audi TT 8J alloys

Another factor for me is that the Speedlines are quite light and that usually the issue with economy when larger wheels are fitted; they tend to be heavier.