Winter tyres

[219]

You can get proper winter tyres here too - I had Vredestein studded winter tyres on my Audi years ago , only because the car came with them when I bought it , very good they were too .

 

[Dieselman]

You start with the simple fact that majority of countries and certainly the UK do not have a snow covering all through late autumn, winter and early spring. So for most UK drivers your winter tyres are going to be on Tarmac most of the time. On dry Tarmac the wider tyre is going to have better traction. On wet Tarmac the wider tyre again is going to have better traction. On ice it's down to frictional coefficients, the wider tyre will have a greater contact patch.

Modern winter tyres use siping to grip in snowy conditions. So again a wider tyre will afford more grip in the majority of snow conditions.

It's only in slushy conditions where it's possible to bite through to the harder surface affording more grip where a narrower tyre may give more traction where too wide a tyre may mean you still float on the slush.

So when considering winter tyres, the narrower they are the cheaper they are, but not necessarily the better.

cheers, Steve

I believe you are wrong on most of those points.

Wider tyres might grip better int eh dry.
Wider tyres won't grip better in the wet due to water damming in front of the contact patch.
On snow a wider tyre won't bite into the snow.

Wider tyres don't have a larger contact patch for a given vehicle and tyre pressure, they have a wider, but shorter contact patch giving the same area.

 

[cb1965]

Without wanting to derail from the discussion, what should i be doing on my SL55? What the handbook says, or get a smaller set of wheels?

Leave it in the garage would be my advice That's where mine stays in winter conditions. The £1K Volvo banger with winter tyres is what gets used in winter.

 

[Mrhanky]

Leave it in the garage would be my advice That's where mine stays in winter conditions. The £1K Volvo banger with winter tyres is what gets used in winter.

+1 in proper icy / snowy conditions mine remains on the drive and I use the wifes old Leon Cupra with 16's and winter tyres its great.

 

[the prince]

Leave it in the garage would be my advice That's where mine stays in winter conditions. The £1K Volvo banger with winter tyres is what gets used in winter.

My CLK cost me a grand. Does that make it a banger, or is my 205 diesel at £250 a true banger?

In the Winter the 205 has winter tyres, but if it gets really interesting i've always got the trusty 110 Landy that loves the snow as much as it does diesel

 

[cb1965]

My CLK cost me a grand. Does that make it a banger, or is my 205 diesel at £250 a true banger?

It's not the price, it's the condition really. You haven't seen my Volvo

 

[Rashman]

I agree with Chris.

Buy a set of wheels to use in winter.
This way, it's just a simple job of swapping wheels rather than going through the hassle of swapping tyres twice a year.

Can't help with offsets and clearances as I am unfamiliar with the C-Class in this respect.

 

[amokwa]

For winter tyres narrower is better. I'd buy 225/45 all round.

We have a W204 on 17" rims too. Have been using 225/45's all round for the last 4 years for our winters.

 

[Image2000uk]

I have just changed my rears on my W211 which were Yokohama w drive winter tyres I had 19k out of them running them all year round and no notice able difference in handling but they are 245/40/18. They make great wet weather tyres too almost suck the road dry in the wet.

 

[Mc250Cgi]

So it's ok to fit 225 45 17 on the larger wheels which should have 245 40 on them

 

[T5R+]

Another MB owner that may purchase 16" for the weeks/months ahead for a C Class. Suspect that will clear brakes - will check.

So what is the consensus on "M+S" tyres.

I have

• summer/general
• M+S
• winter

across a range of cars and find that "winter" are the best in freezing/cold conditions, suspect because of the compound and tread pattern. However, not convinced that the "M+S" are anywhere near as good.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

So it's ok to fit 225 45 17 on the larger wheels which should have 245 40 on them

If they're 8.5 inch rear wheels then 225 tyres will fit but will appear "stretched". I ran a C-class with exactly this winter wheel and tyre size combination and they were fantastic. I even used the them in Summer.

So what is the consensus on "M+S" tyres

We used to have M+S on our W163 ML and that was like a mountain goat. It was very impressive in snow and slippery conditions.

 

[Llewelyn]

Having talked to the tyre boys about winter tyres, they are a different, softer compound, optimised to work well at winter temperatures - typically the figure of 7°C or lower is quoted. The softer compound is better suited to cold conditions, cold wet tarmac and of course snow, when summer tyres are not likely to get enough temperature to perform well. On ice, no tyre grips well except if it has studs - but in most places studs are not viable - you need a constant and continuous snow/ice covering, studs on plain tarmac are bad for the road and the tyre.

I was also told that provided the temperature stays under about 20°C the winter tyres would not suffer too much wear in normal use - at hotter temperatures you will get accelerated wear and potentially less grip through overheating the tyre.

There are of course "all season" tyres although I think fairly those are fairly uncommon now.

The other aspect of winter tyres is a tread pattern which is designed to be better at clearing water from the tread, it typically has many more blocks an sipes. Some of the more high-speed summer type tyres are quite limited in this respect - you can see this by looking at racing tyres - in hot dry conditions you use slicks (if the rules allow), if it's a little wet you have tyres with a few grooves only, and full wet tyres have many grooves.


There is of course another point that most everyday motorists rarely come anywhere near the limits of grip of their tyres. However, a summer tread pattern (deisgned for mostly-dry conditions) and a hot weather compound will give significantly lower limits in the winter, where winter tyres won't.

 

[dad4geer]

I was just going through this thread and still on the fence whether I should go for Winter tyres or stay with my current ones. I will be replacing both my rear tyres soon (summer) so they will be new in condition but they will not be winter tyres. My front tyres does say "M+S" ? what is that? Are they good in winter?

I live in SE and it does not snow that much over here.. when was the last time we had good snow in SE? must be few years back...commute to work is 20 min drive on B roads with option to WFH so I will see how my car behaves this winter (this is my first Merc, I had FWD Honda Civic before so never had to worry about winter).

 

[190]

Mud and Snow. They are considered to be an all season tyre suitable for winter use but they will not be as good as a true winter tyre.

 

[rf065]

M+S only means at least 25% of the tread pattern is open. Theoretically this will give you more traction in mud or snow but this is not measured in any way and you basically have a normal road tyre with "open" tread pattern.

Cold weather tyres have the snowflake in the mountain symbol, are made of different compounds & are tested to ensure they do have more traction in extreme weather. They will also carry the M+S marking due to the tread pattern but it is pretty much meaningless in itself.

Russ

 

[Dryce]

Having talked to the tyre boys about winter tyres, they are a different, softer compound, optimised to work well at winter temperatures - typically the figure of 7°C or lower is quoted.

Nobody seems to really know where this comes from.

There's a crossover point - my feeling with winters on my last car was that they felt a bit better below about 2 degrees.

The softer compound is better suited to cold conditions, cold wet tarmac and of course snow, when summer tyres are not likely to get enough temperature to perform well.

It's the temperature related characteristics of the compound rather than softness. One of the claims is that winter tyres have more silica in the compound.

I was also told that provided the temperature stays under about 20°C the winter tyres would not suffer too much wear in normal use - at hotter temperatures you will get accelerated wear and potentially less grip through overheating the tyre.

I didn't notice any difference in wear rates - but I delude myself I'm gentle on tyres. What I did notice was that the winters definitely weren't as grippy as my normal tyres once the temperature was above about 15.

The other aspect of winter tyres is a tread pattern which is designed to be better at clearing water from the tread, it typically has many more blocks an sipes.

The sipes aren't about clearing water but making the tyre contact better with the surface. They in effect make the tyre surface region more flexible.

a hot weather compound will give significantly lower limits in the winter, where winter tyres won't.

The problem is that the UK climate in populated areas sits in the middle. If we have a bad winter then it is clear cut that winter tyres provide some sort of benefit - in our normal winters - unless you drive a lot at night or in areas of the country where temperatures are lower then you probably won't get much benefit.

My reckoning is that during the winter of 2013/2014 that my winters were probably a disadvantage overall - the weather conditions when I was driving were mild apart from a couple days. OTOH the winter of say 2010/2011 would move the advantage much more to the winter tyres.

Also bear in mind that winter tyres are recommended to have at least 4mm tread. So while still legal below that they may have lost some of their supposed benefits.

So switch or not switch? My feeling is that people should go into this with their eyes open. Be objective about what our winters are like and what your journey patterns are likely tobe in winter. Most of the people I know probably wouldn't benefit that much. Just making sure they have plenty of tread on their normal tyres on a FWD car would probably be sensible advice. With a performance car then the balance maybe shifts a bit more in favour of the switch to winters IMO - particularly if it's RWD. And if you know your journey routes and times will mean they will be more useful then that also shifts the balance.

My *personal* position has changed in recent years because I have more aging family in remote places - and while I don't have a performance car my concern is that I may find myself having to make long winter journeys at a time not of my choosing. So I'm looking at the option of all-season or just fitting winter tyres all year round.

 

[dad4geer]

OK thanks for explaning the M+S thing for me..

Is it better to have M+S tyres than normal summer tyres in winter?

Is it better to have M+S tyres than normal summer tyres whole year w.r.t fuel consumption, grip etc.

 

[st13phil]

With a performance car then the balance maybe shifts a bit more in favour of the switch to winters IMO - particularly if it's RWD.

It's also worth noting that some Summer tyres are better at low temperatures than others. I've run both Pirelli P-Zeros and ContiSport 5P's on my E63's. My first E63 started on Pirelli's and I then swapped to Conti's, but my current car came on Pirelli's and they're still on it.

While the Conti's have no winter snow capability, they grip reasonably well even at modest sub-zero temperatures (-2c / -4c). At +6c and above the grip is good enough on a dry road that the traction control isn't exercised even under full throttle unless you do something to provoke it. By contrast, the Pirelli's grip is very poor even on dry roads at temperatures below about +7c, so much so that even modest throttle use just results in spinning rear wheels. Add in dampness and it's almost like driving on ice

 

[rf065]

OK thanks for explaning the M+S thing for me..

Is it better to have M+S tyres than normal summer tyres in winter?

Is it better to have M+S tyres than normal summer tyres whole year w.r.t fuel consumption, grip etc.

Why not forget about the M+S marking, as I've said it means very little and only defines a tread pattern. If you want a tyre to use all year round in all weathers why not look at Michelin Crossclimates?

Russ