312 Sprinter
Active Member
I've been driving in all the worst weather and not got stuck becasue my summer tyres can't hack it (they're bad, but not useless).
All the delays I've had are either log jammed roads due to lorries and inexperienced car drivers blocking the roundabouts and junctions. Having winter tyres woundn't have helped me in those delays.
I'm sure winter tyres are great but they are also, too a greater extent, a howling waste of money, imho. Cue angry 'ive spent £5000 on winter tyres so they must be worth it' points of view.
Now all season tyres make much more sense....
The issue isn't primarily one of getting stuck, it is stopping and steering; clearly however traction is hugely better. I've just replaced my worn set of Vredestein SnowTrac 2. They were down to 3.5-4mm. The traction on them was still fine I towed a loaded car trailer up a hill on an unmade driveway to a farm with them without any bother at all 2 weeks ago. However you could just feel the front end sliding sideways when turning on snow. Having had them on from new I knew they were past their best so I replaced them.
As to being a "howling waste" of money I beg to differ. I looked back at when I bought them; I bought the original set at the end of 2004. I then replaced two of them in 2007 as they were getting low (low being 4mm on a winter tyre). Since November 2004 the car has done 163000 miles. I put 4 new tyres on the car the other day and kept the 2 2007 tyres as spares.
The mileage the car does is fairly even through the year and it generally runs on winter tyres from sometime in November to the end of March. I've therefore worn 4 tyres out completely in approximately 67K miles and the other two are at 5.5-6mm I don't think that is bad going on a heavy RWD car. The car is much heavier on its drive axle tyres than on the fronts. In reality that means the fronts have lasted 60K miles, the rears are doing about 30K. I tend to never rotate tyres. They're marked where they come from on the car and remain there for life. These tyres have been everywhere, from Norway at -20 to being hammered on a German autobahn at 120mph. On one occasion I subjected them to a 40 odd degree temperature differential in the space of three days by driving from Oslo to Lisbon with one hotel stop.
Interesting last March I put two new Pirelli P6000 on the back axle and when I took them off the other day they were remarkably low. Not illegal but probably at 3mm or so. They've done 18K miles or so.