Winter Tyres

OK, guys.

As you might know, I got sick of three weeks without being able to get the MG out of the drive. Mine has 215/40/16s all around and is a nightmare in snow.

So what I did was I ordered three spare wheels off ebay and fitted them to the car along with my own spare. Using one of the 16s as the spare.

The handling in snow was better even with the standard Goodyear GT tyres that were already fitted to the spares. Enabling me to get out of the village to get to the tyre dealer.

I got Toyo Snow Proxes fitted - same size (175/65/14) and the difference in grip levels is truly vast!
http://ssl.delti.com/cgi-bin/rshop.pl?details=Ordern&cart_id=51839427.110.2732&typ=R-148920&ranzahl=4&Breite=175&Herst=Toyo&Quer=65&Felge=14&weiter=0&kategorie=6&Ang_pro_Seite=20&Transport=P&dsco=110&sowigan=Wi

The handling is, of course, very different. Not sporty, feeling more like a small saloon. (Softer suspension due to taller tyres) But the car is very predictable under all conditions.

They are staying on until April.

p.s. A bonus is I now also have a hardly-used set of the Goodyears for sale.:yesnod:

Wise move, if we are going to get more of this now then it'll pay to have a spare set. Alot of countries do, our guys in Slovakia have winter tyres and wheels and a summer set up.

This is an interesting option & certainly one I'd be interested in. I take it you'd have to buy new rims as well?

Kara;8180 wrote: This is an interesting option & certainly one I'd be interested in. I take it you'd have to buy new rims as well?

Well, you could get winter tyres swapped onto your own rims, and store your other tyres until Spring, but it's actually better to have a narrower tyre for snow driving!
The cheapest option, I thought, was to use the spare wheels. It cost £58 quid to have the three new ones delivered from 'WeloveMGFs' on Ebay.
Plus it means that I can swap the wheels at home rather than having to go to a tyre place to get the tyres swapped over.( plus how do you get 4 tyres into the car?)

Then £180 for the winter tyres. But I hope to recover £50 by selling the original spare tyres, which are almost unused.

If Sheila can't get to work she doesn't get paid, and she needs a car to work, so that outlay will be recouped in a few days!:yesnod:

This is the car with the winter tyres and steel wheels.

interesting solution although outside cumbria (or other rural areas prone to heavy snow) i'm not sure if it'd be worth it?

Absolutely Adam.
For us, living in a tiny village on single track road that is never gritted, never ploughed, it makes sense.

People would need to evaluate their own circumstances.

On a related subject:-

I have just finished reading an interesting paper on climate change.

A group of respected scientists have being putting forward a theory for some time that temperatures are varying, not with man's CO2 output, but with a 30 year ocean temperature cycle. They predicted in 2005 that the temperatures would level off and begin to decline from around 2007. They also predicted in 2005 that this present winter would be severe and marked the start of colder temperatures.

Interestingly, they backed their belief by being able to match global temperatures over the entire period of recorded weather data to their model.

In the mid 1920s there was much concern about the fact that the arctic summer ice had almost entirely disappeared, and all the world's glaciers were shrinking at an alarming rate. Sound familiar?

It is also a little known fact that the amount of summer arctic ice has actually been increasing since 2007.

Food for thought?