economical-ish 4x4? HELP

ali-t

To the OP, I have a fakey off roader Nissan X trail and get about 30mpg so not very economical and I haven't had it long enough to see what it is like in the snow but tend to find it not very grippy in wet conditions.

To the others who use winter tyres I have never tried winter tyres and TBH had never heard of them until this thread. What are they advertised as and how much does the price vary compared to normal tyres? Having checked price for replacement normal tyres they are over £100 each so not cheap.

KillerWatt

ali-t wrote: »

To the others who use winter tyres I have never tried winter tyres and TBH had never heard of them until this thread. What are they advertised as and how much does the price vary compared to normal tyres? Having checked price for replacement normal tyres they are over £100 each so not cheap.

Paid £112 inc VAT for our BF Goodrich All Terrain's (265/75/16) a month ago, but they are proven to last 40,000 miles providing the vehicle geometry (caster, camber, toe, etc) is set up correctly.

ali-t

KillerWatt do you just leave them on all year?

KillerWatt

ali-t wrote: »

KillerWatt do you just leave them on all year?

I run them 24/7/365

Lum

Out of interest, are they're any tyre tests for winter tyres out there. I was looking at the Vredstein SnowTrac 3 but would be interested in comparisons with other brands.

Also if you get a dedicated snow tyre, is it still better to go narrower, or is a wide snow tyre better than a narrow one? I can run 205 or 225 on my wheels, but sticking with 225s that are identical in size to my summer tyres would likely help keep the alignment accurate.

teachmech

Okay back to original post how about a fiat sedici. I know all about no diff locks or low ratio but 42 mph front wheel drive good weather auto or 4 wheel drive bad wheather and always use winter tyres!!!

I drive a sedici and my OH drivers a nissan pathfinder just put winter tyres on both as live several miles on narrow single track lanes that do not get gritted.

Last winter sedici worked well but the pathfinders low ratio and lock worked better.

ali-t

On the basis of comments on this post I have done a search for winter tyres and can't find any that are described as winter tyres. On one of the sites the only ones that came up were all year tyres - is this the same thing?

I have checked my car and it currently has on the front wheels continental 215/65R16 98H tyres and on the back dunlop grandtrek ST20 all season tyres. Are these ok for winter or am I likely to be like a big black bambi on ice careering across the roads?

epninety

Hammyman wrote: »

Not quite. Old clunky Landrovers, Range Rovers and Toyota Landcruisers have the ability to drive all four wheels regardless of traction but not modern 4x4s. Your average modern 4x4 without a Landrover badge on does not have the ability to lock both differentials and transfer box. Instead they have a control system that sends drive to the wheel with the most grip. You can then end up with all the drive going to one wheel which is real beneficial in snow, not! And as the BMW X5 amply demonstrates, it is a cack system once you're in anything other than slightly bad conditions.

I don't know much about Toy cruisers, but I can't think of any production Land Rover product that had cross axle difflocks from the factory, from 1949 to the present day.

epninety

KillerWatt wrote: »

Paid £112 inc VAT for our BF Goodrich All Terrain's (265/75/16) a month ago, but they are proven to last 40,000 miles providing the vehicle geometry (caster, camber, toe, etc) is set up correctly.

How on earth do you get them to last ONLY 40k :cool:. I take mine off when the tread gets down to around 5mm depth (over 50k on my Landy) because the wet weather handling begins to suffer. They've still got loads of life left in them, someone always wants to buy them off me for a farm hack or a shooting truck.

I use BFG MT for all my vehicles now, but my disco spent it's entire (250k) life on BFG Trac Edge, Commercial Trac, then ATs.

Flying-High_2

I had BF Goodrich AT'S 265's on a SWB Isuzu Trooper... Mixed work lot of towing and mostly roadwork. 50k Miles on them and they had loads of life. Thing is with the BFGs I've found is they often start to Perish long before the treads are dead.

If I were to run another 4x4 it would be toss up between BFGs and General Grabbers...

I've also ran Insa Turbo Traction tracks... remoulds but highly regarded. I found them noisy and were 65% worn after 8kmiles.