Winters off, summers on.

[DaiRees]

I know it's still a bit chilly but I had a bit of a quiet weekend so changed them over on Saturday. Love the look of my 18s

Anyone else done the biannual swap yet?

[steve_earwig]

Nope, legal requirement until April 15th. Although the Pug is still on summers and I won't bother changing them for the MOT tomorrow 'cos it's too bluddy warm for winters.

[GingerMagic]

I put my winters on about 2 months ago... we've hardly had any frost since

My summer wheels need new tyres, so I'll be shopping around on payday, maybe swap them back in another few weeks.

[Welly]

Anyone else done the biannual swap yet?

Yeah, what a weekend, I'm f*cking knackered, we met Jim & Barbara this time and she wanted to 'experiment' with some new gear but


Oh sh*t wrong Forum.

[Welly]

I know it's still a bit chilly but I had a bit of a quiet weekend so changed them over on Saturday. Love the look of my 18s

Anyone else done the biannual swap yet?

Hello, no I haven't swapped the tyres yet but thinking I will next week once this dramatic* blizzard* passes.

It's a nuisance for me as it's costing too much each time. I MUST find a set of 16 steelies this year if its the last thing I do.

I'm also faced with calling in the mobile man with his turny-roundy Fischer Price wheel balancing machine

[DaiRees]

Anyone else done the biannual swap yet?

Yeah, what a weekend, I'm f*cking knackered, we met Jim & Barbara this time and she wanted to 'experiment' with some new gear but


Oh sh*t wrong Forum.

nutter!

[Doggy]

I MUST find a set of 16 steelies this year if its the last thing I do.

I'm also faced with calling in the mobile man with his turny-roundy Fischer Price wheel balancing machine

Won't Get Balanced Again

He'll be working in the street
With my alloys at his feet
And the dustcaps that I detailed will be gone.

[Welly]

Last Thursday I parted with yet another £68.00 and had the Summers put back on. What a transformation in the handling/feel! I'm wondering if the Winters have gone all weird, there's plenty of tread on them but they're really 'squirmy' on the road.

I got the chap to put the bestest treads on the rears, to which I received a 'Man Nod' of approval. Strangely despite my car's reputation for shredding front tyres every 15 mins I manage to get at least 15K out of mine but then I'm very easy on them and keep the alignment right.

Anyhoo I think the mobile tyre man now realises I'm a fussy git and cranked up his whizzy-roundy balancer real good this time as they appear to be perfect.

I MUST get a set of 16" steelies this year. I reckon I could still sell my 17" Winters to someone on the Volvo Forum of doom.

[KozmoNaut]

Last Thursday I parted with yet another £68.00 and had the Summers put back on. What a transformation in the handling/feel! I'm wondering if the Winters have gone all weird, there's plenty of tread on them but they're really 'squirmy' on the road.

I've had the same experience, changing over last week from Michelin Alpin winters to Hankook Kinergy summers. Everything just feels 'tighter' and more composed on the summers. If you look at the tread patterns, it's obvious why this is. The winters have loads of smaller contact surfaces with lots of siping between them, compared to the big wide contact surfaces on the summers. Combined with a softer rubber compound, they will definitely squirm more under load.

I got the chap to put the bestest treads on the rears, to which I received a 'Man Nod' of approval. Strangely despite my car's reputation for shredding front tyres every 15 mins I manage to get at least 15K out of mine but then I'm very easy on them and keep the alignment right.

Personally, I think it's wrong to put the best treads on the rear of a front wheel drive car. You will end up skewing the wear even more to the fronts, and thus have to replace them much more often than the rears. The best method I've found is to always change your wheels front to rear when switching to and from the winter wheels. Unless you do crazy yearly mileage or go all boy-racer on your poor front tyres, the wear difference will stay within ~1mm. This way, you can replace all four tyres at the same time, and always have equal tyres front and rear, with the same model tyre, same wear and same age (which is more important than most people think). Predictable handling is so much more important than the purely imagined benefits of keeping old tyres on the rear because they have more tread depth.

No one has yet presented a sensible argument against simply rotating front to back two times/year.

Anyhoo I think the mobile tyre man now realises I'm a fussy git and cranked up his whizzy-roundy balancer real good this time as they appear to be perfect.

I can't stand half-assed balancing. Shaky steering wheel at motorway speeds is a great indicator of a lazy tyre fitter (or suspension problems).

I MUST get a set of 16" steelies this year. I reckon I could still sell my 17" Winters to someone on the Volvo Forum of doom.

A set of steelies for the winter tyres, a cheap "2 ton" hydraulic jack and ~30 minutes two times/year is so much better than paying ripoff prices at the local wheel storage/changing shops.

[Welly]

My thoughts on tyre rotation are that I'd rather leave the rears where they are and wear the fronts out, this way you'll only have 2 x tyres to buy mostly and the rears will be ok. The risk is that at some point you will have 4 x worn tyres on the car.

There's a school of thought that on a FWD car the handling will be more controlled/predictable with worn fronts but good rears; additionally the car will behave better under braking and suffer less lift-off oversteer with good treads on the back.

[KozmoNaut]

My thoughts on tyre rotation are that I'd rather leave the rears where they are and wear the fronts out, this way you'll only have 2 x tyres to buy mostly and the rears will be ok. The risk is that at some point you will have 4 x worn tyres on the car.

Yes, but you'll have significantly older tyres, maybe even a completely differente make or model on the rear. And all things being equal, you'll spend the same amount total on tyres, just a bit more spread out. I guess this could be easier on some wallets, but personally I prefer to save up just a little bit and have four equally good (and predictable!) tyres on my car at all times.

There's a school of thought that on a FWD car the handling will be more controlled/predictable with worn fronts but good rears; additionally the car will behave better under braking and suffer less lift-off oversteer with good treads on the back.

The argument is that understeer is more controllable than oversteer, which I disagree with. For anyone with even the slightest bit of driving skill, oversteer is so much easier to control, especially in a front wheel drive car, where you literally just have to steer into the slide and either clutch in (if you're inexperienced or drive something with ESP) or drive it out with the throttle, and then straighten up.

I can maybe see the argument that the rear end will be less squirrely under braking, but that depends a lot on the car in question, so it's not a good idea to generalize.

Besides, if your tyres are so worn that it will make a significant difference which axle you put them on, they probably should have been replaced a long time ago

(I generally change at around 3mm tread left)

[Welly]

In the UK we're 'allowed' to run tyres down to 1.6mm. Imagine your average motorist rounding a long, wet, bend too fast which tightens quickly with worn rear tyres; as soon as they lift off the gas the rear will go light and could oversteer.....left alone or not corrected properly the car will spin and will have no control over where it's heading. At least with understeer you can see what your about to hit.

The general consensus is that FWD understeering cars are 'safer' in the way they handle it's perhaps why the majority of cars are FWD and BMW's and Mercs are driven by expert* drivers who know how to handle. I think if most cars had a tendency to swap ends all the time it'd be chaos out on the roads.

[KozmoNaut]

In the UK we're 'allowed' to run tyres down to 1.6mm. Imagine your average motorist rounding a long, wet, bend too fast which tightens quickly with worn rear tyres; as soon as they lift off the gas the rear will go light and could oversteer.....left alone or not corrected properly the car will spin and will have no control over where it's heading. At least with understeer you can see what your about to hit.

I think the 1.6mm limit is EU-wide, it's certainly the same in Denmark. But of course that's the absolute minimum and the recommended minimum depth is 3mm, especially for winter tyres. (That doesn't stop people from running them completely down to nothing sometimes, but whattayagonnado, other than issue fines when you catch them?)

Still, for that situation to happen even with only 1.6mm tread, you have to be exceeding the speed limit, or at least the maximum sensible speed for that particular road. Or the roads would have to be very slick, in which case you could definitely be in trouble for "not driving according to prevailing conditions" or somesuch.

I've sometimes driven like a complete nutter, taking bends way too fast (on very questionable rubber in my first car in particular). Even when deliberately trying to provoke lift-off oversteer, I've only ever gotten a tiny bit that was caught by the suspension etc. (no ESP), without too much drama. So if it happens to some people, they would have to be going very fast indeed. Yeah, I've made the tail flick a bit in snowy parking lots, but nothing dramatic at all.

In fact, the only vehicle of mine that I've ever had any sort of proper oversteer happen on was my old motorcycle, a Suzuki Bandit 600, and even that pretty much sorted itself out. It was quite frightening for various reasons, though (ie. only 2 wheels). And that was in cold weather, with newly fallen rain after a long dry spell (brings out all the oil and other slippery stuff), on a roundabout, with typical summer-only motorcycle tyres. I managed to get to my proper exit, but rather sideways.

The general consensus is that FWD understeering cars are 'safer' in the way they handle it's perhaps why the majority of cars are FWD and BMW's and Mercs are driven by expert* drivers who know how to handle. I think if most cars had a tendency to swap ends all the time it'd be chaos out on the roads.

Good one

But it's probably true that understeer is "safer" for the majority of drivers out there, mostly due to the very low standards for driving ability in general. There was a competition ran by Seat in Denmark recently, where you could win prizes by completing a EU-standard 25-question written driving test. The failure rate was 80%...

It would be hilarious if all cars were RWD and prone to oversteer, though. Wintertime would be 24/7 entertainment, no need to turn on the telly.

[steve_earwig]

In cravat land it's 1.6mm summer, 4mm winter (I just checked).

I can change mine back to summers next Wednesday, hoorah.

[OllieNZ]

It would be hilarious if all cars were RWD and prone to oversteer, though. Wintertime would be 24/7 entertainment, no need to turn on the telly.

Sounds like when it snowed while I was living in Texas [emoji3] I've never seen so many cars in ditches.