Winter Tyres & Black Ice

muckybutt

You may also need to contact your insurer as well as strictly speaking winter tyres are not standard spec and could invalidate insurance unless they have been informed you are using them

vaio

Nah, I remember seeing an ABI rule (agreement?) that winter tyres don't need to be notified subject to the normal rules about being the right size etc

GolfBravo

micmac22 wrote: »

... black circles charging £200 each tyre (now tesco owned)...

:eek:

What? Blackcircles.com owned by Tesco now? You're joking!

I thought they just had some sort of a tyre fitting affiliate deal with Tesco.

agrinnall

vaio wrote: »

I put mine on last sunday thereby causing the cancellation of the predicted Siberian weather we were forecast for this week

You should have moved near me, it's pretty Siberian, -9 this morning, and yesterday we had to get a farmer to pull my neighbour's car out of the extremely icy track to our houses onto the road - he has winter tyres but they didn't do the trick (although the nice new ones on my car were fine).

steve-L

cardinalbiggles wrote: »

Absolutely not. Nothing will help with black ice once you start sliding no matter what you are in you're in trouble.

Absolutely untrue... having driven with studded winter tyres they have remarkable grip on black ice.

I drive home one day in Norway when a sudden warm spell took the temp from -26 to above freezing and it rained on the road that was still -26...

I drove home from work and lost grip on a 90 degree bend, dropped it into 2nd, reversed locked and drove straight out of it (before hitting the thoughtful roadsign indicating a sharp bend???))

I got home and parked the car (on a 25% gradient)and my passenger got out ... skid all the way down the hill ... so I told her to stop playing about.. got out and slipped all the way down the hill.... neither of us could walk up the hill, we eventually had to crawl yet the car with the studded tyres stopped fine going down a 25% slope.

DCFC79

GolfBravo wrote: »

:eek:

What? Blackcircles.com owned by Tesco now? You're joking!

I thought they just had some sort of a tyre fitting affiliate deal with Tesco.

I also was under the impression the 2 had an agreement or partnership.

GolfBravo

Friction levels in different winter conditions

So yes, winter tyres definitely help with black ice.

Wife's car has a full set of winter tyres fitted now (last winter only front wheels) - there is simply no comparison between summer and winter tyres below 5ºC. This morning -4ºC and ice, no wheel spins, no ABS kicking in, no oversteer. You just need to remember to drive slowly, and watch the rear view mirror when braking.

neilmcl

muckybutt wrote: »

You may also need to contact your insurer as well as strictly speaking winter tyres are not standard spec and could invalidate insurance unless they have been informed you are using them

There was a link posted sometime last year from the ABI showing which, if any, insurers required you to contact them. Very few did.

GolfBravo

aliasojo wrote: »

Would winter tyres have helped with this type of situation?

Yes.

aliasojo wrote: »

I have an old Clio. Any ideas about rough cost of replacing my tyres with winter ones? Even a very rough ballpark would do, I have no clue myself.

Go to blackcircles.com and enter your reg number to find out. Then select winter tyres.

vaio

or get the size off your existing ones and hit ebay for some part worn ones...if you are really lucky you might even find some already fitted to clio wheels like these