4x4 vs winter

facade wrote: The New One when it arrives, .

Ah so, you have a new JImny coming. Nice.
We have such little snow here that I am more worried about wet and in particular ice because we have a menace I never thought I would experience so much...........twisting bendy roads; they are a ruddy nightmare ...........and narrow with it.

The Winter tyres are good at low road temperatures, they are road tyres so they give good wet braking performance when there is no ice, they aren't studded, so they don't cut into ice, but they definitely offer more grip than the [strike]Renault[/strike] Nissan on its pretty worn Summer tyres, as I proved on Tuesday driving home in the [strike]Renault[/strike] Nissan .

On another forum, there is a heated debate every year about whether it is worth fitting Winter tyres in England, when there are only 3 or 4 days a year at the most when you actually need them.

My argument is that if you can simply leave the car on the drive for those 3 days, then it isn't. However, if you might have to go to work then it is, as even the slightest bump will cost more in time and insurance hikes/excesses than the Winter tyres, but of course, you can't actually quantify this, as a bump you didn't have is nigh on impossible to value.

facade wrote: On another forum, there is a heated debate every year about whether it is worth fitting Winter tyres in England, when there are only 3 or 4 days a year at the most when you actually need them.

I thought the main reasoning was that the compound worked better at temperatures below 7C, so probably 3-4 months a year in the UK.

I'm a big fan of winter tyres. My current daily driver is a 2nd generation Berlingo (XTR) which are terrible on ice/snow. I live at just under 1000 feet above sea level and run winter tyres all year to save the hassle of swapping over. I was expecting tyre wear to be an issue but the set of fronts I've just changed lasted 32K miles ( Continental Winter Contact TS850 ).

Colin

reedx wrote: I thought the main reasoning was that the compound worked better at temperatures below 7C, so probably 3-4 months a year in the UK.

It is for me, but I can drive the [strike]Renault[/strike] Nissan on it Summer tyres at low temperatures on dry tarmac same as everybody else. It is only when you have cold slippery roads that you would notice having Winter tyres.

Plus I have already bought the things, I need to wear 'em out before they pass their "best before" date

reedx wrote: run winter tyres all year to save the hassle of swapping over.

Precisely.

On my iQ that I just PX'd I had the standard 16" rims with Yokohama winter tyres and some nice 17" rims with Yokohama summer tyres on and would swap them over as the average temperatures dictated.

What has really surprised me is the Duelers fitted on the new Jimny are summer tyres even though they are marked M&S. I would have expected them to be All Season?