If I was to buy 4 winter tyres what would people advise i do about the spare? Buy a 5th Winter tyre, or not bother?

 

If the summer spare had to be used with 3 winters due to a puncture would that be safe?

 

Cheers

Always kept it on a normal tyre in the polo i used to drive.

However, also only had front snow tyres on the front. Apparently its dangerous, but if you think about what your doing, its fine. Also, if you accelerate around a corner in the snow, the front pulls it round but the back doesnt grip, so you get a nice sideways control,able slide on. Its all fun if your expecting it and drive accordingly

See this thread.

 

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/294324-winter-tyre-spare/

If I was to buy 4 winter tyres what would people advise i do about the spare? Buy a 5th Winter tyre, or not bother?

 

If the summer spare had to be used with 3 winters due to a puncture would that be safe?

When I first got winter tyres I asked a Swedish colleague for advice. He said it was common in Sweden to just have four winter tyres and rely on the spare for 'getting to the nearest tyre fitters', so I did the same for the first year.

 

By the next year I thought about how difficult is was to get replacement winter tyres during the winter, so decided to get a spare.

 

Currently for the car with winter tyres we have 5 steel wheels fitted with winter tyres and a new unfitted spare in a shed. For the cars running on all-season tyres we have (or will have) 5 standard sized wheels fitted with asymmetric all-season tyres and an unused spare spare in the shed.

 

As an aside, I'm loathe to buy a car that doesn't have room for a full size spare, not least because of the problem of where to put the road wheel if you need to use the spare. In addition I don't see the point in having a 'full size' spare that is different to the standard road wheels and thus imposes a 50 mph speed limit. How crap is that?

 

 

ETA: using a summer as a spare with three winter tyres ought to be treated the same as using a space saver spare - I think all fwd cars specify that the space saver should be fitted to the back, and the top speed must be severely limited. I would do the same if using a summer tyre like this.

Spare non-directional winter or all-season preferred and easy to do if you've already used them.  Remember that they will have aged.

 

If 4x4 or throughout the summer, I wouldn't worry so much. On FWD don't use less than 3 winter tyres in winter (allowing for spare fitted).

 

Maxxis do "summer" tyres with some winter properties - check manufacturers' websites as they are hard to categorise by suppliers.  Some "basic" ones I would only buy for use as a spare, but that's normally for short-term use.

An all season spare is not a bad compromise, especially if your existing one is old.

I have 5 alloys with summers and 5 steels with winters (spare is asymmetric, rest are directional) because I'm very fussy about things being correct and also because I don't want to have a spare with any restrictions on it.

I live in Finland and I've got 5x summers and 4x winters, but that's because I was too lazy to hunt down the additional 16 inch rim for the winter and source an additional tyre.  I ended up just carrying the spare summer around, but on an all wheel drive car, that's probably as useful as a chocolate teapot... 

 

On the other car, I just run wheels in fours and carry a Slime puncture repair kit. There's no room for any kind of spare.