I'M SURE 206MAXI WILL BE ALONG SOON........
He can smell a winter tyre thread from another continent.
Hmph
I've just spent the last 2 hours or so putting some new wheels on the wifes car in preparation for getting the standard wheels fitted with winter tyres when the weather starts to get frosty.
Prepare for an essay.
Specs for winter tyres are as follows (this is from memory btw! and I'm not kidding.....)
175/65 R14 82Q
185/55 R15 82Q
There is a 16" option but that's just silly really....
In practice you'll probably end up with T or H rates which are rated higher and are absolutely fine.
The choice for the OP is an absolute no-brainer, put the winter tyres on the 14" rims. Part of the reason I've got winter tyres is to save my nice 16" multispokes from the nasty salt on the roads. In snow a narrower tyre like that on the 14" rim will perform better anyway.
Now for my experience. I did a touch under 3k miles on my winter tyres earlier this year and they were fantastic. Can't remember the date but RobW organised a meet with some 500 owners and Clubcento at RAF Cosford. Now the night before we'd have a nice whack of snow and the roads were very slushy but the 500 felt hardly any different to driving in the rain on summer tyres. I was in quite a hurry to get to Cosford as I'd left a little late and I was overtaking people in the slushly lane on the dual carriageway going uphill doing about 60 whilst the clear(ish) lane was doing about 40, some cars did try to follow me but you could see them struggling to put their power down and just going nowhere. The tyres were just fantastic and if not for them I'd have been in the slow lane with everyone else.
There was also one occasion when they saved me from having an accident. I went round a corner and some dozey old coffindodger just pulled out in front of me on a fairly cold day when the roads were a bit damp. Stamped on the brakes and I pulled up with a bit of room to spare. I'm pretty sure that if I had the summer tyres on that would have been an accident or a very very near miss.
On ice and snow the grip is really good. It's not like driving around in summer on summer tyres, but it's much better and I'd say braking distances are probably halved at the very least on proper sheet ice. When pulling away with summer tyres the 500 would just spin its wheels, with winter tyres on there was still a little bit of wheelspin but it was miles better. I would say that traction in the snow was about equal to that of our AWD Subaru which is high praise. Handling and braking were much better than the Subaru as AWD doesn't help with cornering or braking at all.
Even just on dry days when it was merely cold rather than snowy or icy the handling, braking and traction were noticeably better than summer tyres. Even my wife - who tonight said there's little/no difference between the knackered Falken's that were on the front of her Subaru and the brand new Vredestein Sportrac 3's we put on tonight when there clearly is - noticed the difference and mentioned it to me hence which I'm being allowed to put winter tyres on her Subaru. So RobinPJ that may be of help to your wife
They just work m'kay? Sure you could get by without them and people have done and will continue to do so? But who here wants to be safer in their car? Who here likes the idea of a car that pulls up shorter than it did before? Who likes the idea of their alloys not getting knackered by salt?
Sure it's an outlay, BUT whilst you're spending money on new tyres, you're saving wear on your summer tyres (summer tyres wear more in winter than in summer) which are usually more expensive than winter tyres, you'll save yourself an alloy refurb, if your winter tyres are narrower than the summer ones you'll save money on fuel and how much is your excess if you put it into a wall/car/child etc etc?
My other but of advice is to leave it as late as possible and order from
www.mytyres.co.uk who are based in Germany and I'll explain why. Tyres harden/degrade as they get older so you want tyres which are as new as possible and I doubt that any of the tyres currently in stock in the UK are "fresh" ones. You're not going to die if you get last years tyres but they will be better, hands up who sees milk with a better use by date and takes the older stuff still?
As for what tyres to get. The Vredestein Snowtrac 3's I bought were top of the class in the ADAC tests last year as were the Conti range, Goodyear Ultragrip 7+'s did well and Nokian's are usually worth a lookin as well. Think I might try some Nokian's, Bridgestones or the Goodyear's on the wifes car
Pics of the Snowtrac 3's compared to my summer tyres here
http://members.iinet.net/~fenix1983/Files/500/Wintertyres/
I hope this helps anyone considering winter tyres to make their decision.
