What are Winter Tyres Like in 'Summer' ?
Discussion
I've been offered a set of wheels, on loan from a friend, with Michelin Pilot Alpin 4 winter tyres- to go on a Cayman GTS, which suits me as my summer tyres are now need replacing.
Snow and Ice may be infrequent here, but cold and wet is pretty common in the UK from now until next May. Are winter tyres OK from now onwards?
Snow and Ice may be infrequent here, but cold and wet is pretty common in the UK from now until next May. Are winter tyres OK from now onwards?
You wouldn't really notice the difference in the dry unless you did a back-to-back comparison. After a week, it becomes the norm, and i personally consider a bit less grip quite fun...
HOWEVER, my experience of winter tyres to date is they are poor in wet weather, especially under braking. I've tried 3 major brands and had similar results. They have been amazing on cold, dry roads - they feel like slicks - but on an average wet day in Britain i found them borderline lethal.
As such, hard for me to recommend.
HOWEVER, my experience of winter tyres to date is they are poor in wet weather, especially under braking. I've tried 3 major brands and had similar results. They have been amazing on cold, dry roads - they feel like slicks - but on an average wet day in Britain i found them borderline lethal.
As such, hard for me to recommend.
Winter tyres have more thread and are softer. So they will be more noisy and wear quicker. Grip on dry warm roads is more floaty as the rubber moves more than on the equivalent summer tyre but they dont have less grip per se. Due to more and deeper thread they are better at dispersing water and hence better in the wet. The big reason for not using them in the summer is really that they wear very quickly.
You really don't want 'winters' on the car when temperatures are 'warm'.
Stopping distances in the dry are much longer - in an emergency situation it's the difference between no accident and a BIG accident.
Here is the data:
http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/Is-there-a-tr...
Stopping distances in the dry are much longer - in an emergency situation it's the difference between no accident and a BIG accident.
Here is the data:
http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Article/Is-there-a-tr...
Koln-RS said:
Thanks - useful info.
I guess tyre technology is forever developing so it's hard to generalise, but it would be interesting to know what the latest generation Michelin Alpin 4s are like in typical UK conditions.
If I go ahead I'll report back.
The key graphic in that review is where at 18 deg cel in the dry braking from 60 to 5 mphI guess tyre technology is forever developing so it's hard to generalise, but it would be interesting to know what the latest generation Michelin Alpin 4s are like in typical UK conditions.
If I go ahead I'll report back.
- a humdrum Michelin Primacy 3 summer tyre stops the 'car' in roughly 36m
- the highly regarded Conti TS850 winter stops the 'car' in roughly 43m
So that's 7m further.
You can take my and everybody else's subjective experience on running winters when it's warm, but 7m isn't subjective; it's a big accident.
Suppose we could find a 'better' stopping warm-weather winter tyre, and get that difference down to 5m.....
Would you still be happy trying it out?
anonymous said:
[redacted]
It's easy to draw this line - you don't fit specialist condition tyres in the opposite environment to their primary function.It's simply wrong.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
As usual, you use a large number of words but miss the point (see what I did there?).Yes, I know that summers work better than winters in warm temperatures. The figures prove this, it isn't my opinion. That's why we have facts/figures, and why indies test tyres in real conditions, so that we have objective data rather than subjective marketing from the manufacturers.
You can argue subjectively that the test is not applicable to the magical Porsche, as it's brakes are better, or you could accept the fact that an object stopped in 36m on mid-range summers and 43m on high-end winters, and that's why we have summer tyres for summer.
UK winters are just not cold enough to run winters unless you work early and get home late
normal working hours UK temps are mostly above 6oc which makes winters pointless imo
I ran a set for 1 year, never again, in most cases in winter they were still worse than my Pilot SS
if you live in Scotland and have to goto work at 5am them yes might be worth a look, in you live in the middle of the UK which never sees snow either, wtf is the point ?
after 9am the UK ave temp never really is below 6oc, if you are fitting winters to save a crash, you are better off with good summers PS4 or conti 6, and on that 1 day it snows catch a bus of drive much slower !!!
summer tyres have got so good in the wet that any one fitting winters in the UK is a bit daft, unless you run s
t N spec P zero's which 95% of Porsche owners do lol !!!!
normal working hours UK temps are mostly above 6oc which makes winters pointless imo
I ran a set for 1 year, never again, in most cases in winter they were still worse than my Pilot SS
if you live in Scotland and have to goto work at 5am them yes might be worth a look, in you live in the middle of the UK which never sees snow either, wtf is the point ?
after 9am the UK ave temp never really is below 6oc, if you are fitting winters to save a crash, you are better off with good summers PS4 or conti 6, and on that 1 day it snows catch a bus of drive much slower !!!
summer tyres have got so good in the wet that any one fitting winters in the UK is a bit daft, unless you run s
t N spec P zero's which 95% of Porsche owners do lol !!!!Gassing Station | Porsche General | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff