Winter tyres - advice sought.

[Jock]

I'm about to order some DEZENT RE 7.00J x 16 OS 35 alloy rims with Goodride SW601 215/55 R16 97H from MyTyres.co.uk.

Has anyone had any experience (good or bad) of either these rims or tyres before?

[Frenchtone]

yeap, used 'em for 2 winters, no probs, coped well with snow in uk jan/feb this year and also in france early march, go for 'emm!!

[muddyboots]

Personally, I wouldn't go for those tyres.

 

Snow performance might be OK compared to summers, but wet performance (where they'll be used 90%+ of the time in a UK winter) will be poor.

 

Have a read of this article. The tyre in question is included in the results.

[Frenchtone]

Take your point^^ although not had probs myself, I live by Douarnenez Bay in Finistere, facing the western approaches, and winters can be very wet and windy, and as above had no bad experiences, so, depending on driving style(pushing it )etc the above combination was a good value intro to winter boots, my thoughts were - should the tyres be cr*p with rapid wear then i would replace 'em with 'proper' tyres, but up to now well pleased(7mm tread left after 15k mls), in Jan the car got up a .25ml 1 in 10 to get away from my mums place(had a ferry booking) whereas previously a Berlingo on all weathers wouldn't/couldn't cope,

[FlintstoneR1]

The Yokohama W-Drives I used on my BMW last winter scored 16th/42 in the Auto Bild test mentioned above.  I found them to be truly brilliant in the wet, superior even to the Goodyear summer tyres the car came on originally. Equal to the summer tyres in cold and dry, and got me into a number of car parks where front wheel drive cars failed in the snow, even where several 4WD (albeit on summer tyres!) failed. They'll be going back on the Beemer sometime in Nov I reckon.

 

The Yeti currently has Hankooks all round.  Still undecided what to do with that for winter. Might risk it for a winter to find out how they perform?

[Frenchtone]

Forgot to add the tyres/rims came in at less than £100 a corner, interested to know what the per corner price would be using 'branded' tyres with the rims?

[FlintstoneR1]

Set of 4 good 2nd hand 17" Alloys for the Beemer (off Flea Bay) = £170

4 x Yokohama Wdrive 225/45 R17 94V = £551 fitted and balanced from Ears in Macclesfield.

 

Both rims and tyres for a Yeti should be considerably less, as don't need such an unusual size / width I needed for the 330d to get an exact match for the overall rolling circumference as the 18" summers. Nor would you need V speed rating (unless you have Boss Fox's tweaked 170 Yeti?).

 

Plenty of new wheel+tyre combinations available here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/161078801369?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Although I wouldn't recommend the tyres quoted in this example.

[Paul52]

I'm glad Jock raised this because I've been thinking along the same lines and also looking at the Mytyres web-site and the Goodrides. But following Muddyboots link and links on from there I think I'm now leaning to spending a bit more money to get something from the top end of the reviews. It might cost me an extra £50 a corner but if it  gives me shorter braking distances and better control under all winter conditions it could be money well spent. As we are repeatedly told it's just four little bits of rubber between the car and the road, something brought home to me when a pedestrian ran in front of me on a local dual carriageway last week. Good tyres with decent tread and a lot of luck (there was no one alongside me so I was able to swing into the outside lane) meant I was able to avoid hitting him although from news reports I gather another poor driver on the opposite carriageway wasn't so fortunate. 

[stevie.d]

I've just ordered a set of 16" steelies fitted with nankang sv2 snow tyres for the yeti.

We previously ran our fabia vrs for two winters with the same tyres and the wife preferred them to the summer continentals for grip/feel.

[The Plumber]

Hankook W310's here and I'd recommend them. Mind I might be needing a differant size soon if I go ahead with idea of getting a taxi

 

 

TP

[7029bob]

Hankook w310s and 16" steelies arriving tomorrow from Rainworth Skoda ,nearly bought Avon Ice touring from My Tyres but decided to spend that bit extra.

[rockhopper]

The Yokohama W-Drives I used on my BMW last winter scored 16th/42 in the Auto Bild test mentioned above. I found them to be truly brilliant in the wet, superior even to the Goodyear summer tyres the car came on originally.

Almost any winter tyre will be better than a summer tyre.

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[rockhopper]

I still have 4 steel genuine Skoda wheels for sale......

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[Andy P]

I've got kumho winters on steels I purchased from Rainworth in february and they are great. I can't wait to put them back on.

[mrchrispy]

rockhopper, I might be interested in the wheels.

Is it just the wheels and how much are you after?

[33q]

Try tyre men.co.uk at Hull

[pipmurray]

Is this 'Winter Tyres' thing a relatively new fashion?

Must say in nearly 50 years of motoring I've never swapped tyres,

or known anyone that does, when Winter arrives on any of the large

number of vehicles I've owned. Only ever dropped one in a ditch and

that was Summer and I was ****ed!

[JCP]

Is this 'Winter Tyres' thing a relatively new fashion?

Must say in nearly 50 years of motoring I've never swapped tyres,

or known anyone that does, when Winter arrives on any of the large

number of vehicles I've owned. Only ever dropped one in a ditch and

that was Summer and I was ****ed!

Only 43 years in my case but they are only relatively new here in colder places they are well established. Not a fashion though-I expect you have come to terms with hydraulic brakes -disc brakes rather more recent but really rather better than drums. Radial tyres seem to have caught on too.

Can't recommend them too highly!

[pipmurray]

I guess fashion was the wrong word. Maybe trend would have been better.

It's the swapping tyres and wheels around twice a year that I find curious. What I was trying to say was

that sticking with all-year-round tyres is certainly cheaper and less of a hassle than this Winter Tyres

lark, unless you live in The Shetlands maybe!

[oldstan]

I guess fashion was the wrong word. Maybe trend would have been better.

It's the swapping tyres and wheels around twice a year that I find curious. What I was trying to say was

that sticking with all-year-round tyres is certainly cheaper and less of a hassle than this Winter Tyres

lark, unless you live in The Shetlands maybe!

 

 

Or even perhaps innovation, development or enhancement to safety might be better still. And, indeed, sticking to one sort of tyre may well be ostensibly less hassle and cheaper. But mild inconvenience and expense might be considered worth it if the purchaser considered it in relation to the hassle and expense of sliding about on icy roads and finishing up in a ditch (or worse).  And last time I checked, it wasn't just the Shetlands where it snowed.

[JCP]

They aren't snow tyres-they are made from a rubber compound which retains it's grip below 7c the temperature at which ordinary tyres  steadily lose their ability to grip. The tread pattern will work better in snow but the compound will work better in damp or dry if the outside temp is below 7c.

[MarieK]

Well it might save the UK from grinding to a halt every time we get an inch of snowfall if people used winter tyres in the winter months  :wonder:

[pipmurray]

Good point but no chance of it ever happening!

I'm not knocking them but I've never never felt the need or had the inclination to fit them.

Like a lot of weather orientated things in this country it's never usually that bad every year

to drive folks to invest in things like Winter tyres or snow chains. Very different in other

Countries of course such as Scandinavia when you can count on bad Winter conditions

for driving every year.

[Nick P]

I've used them for the last 4 years on my Octavia. I used to rely on chains before that. I wouldn't be without them now.

 

I've had mixed experiences with mytyres.co.uk though. They sent me a set of four winter tyres which were really old stock - like 3 years old or something. This is particularly bad with winter tyres as the compound doesn't perform at its best for as long as summer tyres.

[Zib]

I'm not knocking them but I've never never felt the need or had the inclination to fit them.

 

I thought the same until I discovered just how rubbish modern tyres are at coping with a bit of snow, and how much grippier winter tyres are on cold roads.  But if your need to travel in poor conditions is low, save your money.