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[Bojan]

What fitment are the Omega wheels, and where would I be able to find some cheap steelies to fit some winter rubber?

scrap yards...

[Varche]

I'm buying a pair of tyres tomorrow. I will have a look at what MandS tyres they might have. I suspect that the V or W rating will rule a lot out.

I got stuck in snow here (Spain) last winter and had to walk the last mile home. The biggest problem is MUD. After it rains it gets washed onto the roads and is just like black ice. Oh and using the car off road as a tractor doesn't help.

[cem_devecioglu]

some years ago I bought Goodyear Eagle Ventura.. The pattern was good even for winter..
As my old ex was a fwd it pulls without problem..

But on a winter day,  The lights suddenly turned to yellow then red and the car in front of me (was abit far though) decided to stop..

tried the brakes and oops no brakes

the only option was to beep him and I tried , tried and he saw me from the mirror skating into his rear  and moved even it was red

so it was a iucky escape.. after that time, I never used summer tires again in winter..

[Lazydocker]

TBH, I had very little problems last year in the bad weather. Biggest issue for me was actually ground clearance as the snow on our road was over the bottom of the bumper line!

[omegod]

Last year mine was absolutely lethal in the snow and I mangled the front wing against my garage wall.

I have seen part worn winter tyres going very cheap at times so may go down this route, or some chains

[humbucker]

this is something ive thought about too as ive got some spare alloys and wondered about putting some 'winter' wheels on in those difficult months. being RWD we had no end of trouble up and down gradients last year, driving the cavalier as FWD was so much easier. maybe i should stick to a winter car instead of tyres hahaha!

[feeutfo]

Last year mine was absolutely lethal in the snow and I mangled the front wing against my garage wall.

I have seen part worn winter tyres going very cheap at times so may go down this route, or some chains

Cems earlier link re bridgestones winter tyres review talks about a wear limit mark about half way down the tread meaning they will not perform to the same level from that point on, plus given they operate at much lower temps I would be concerned part worn winter tires may have been cooked...?

[aaronjb]

You think it's bad driving a car as heavy (and long wheelbase) as the Omega - I was driving the MR2 home the night of the heavy snowfall in Feb (I moved house in the heavy snowfall of December  ) .. by the time I'd made it from Epsom to Bracknell you could no longer see the road - I got stuck 100yds from my house as I turned a corner from 'slightly driven on' snow to 'virgin snow' and the front end sank in to it like a snowplough  But by heck was it hard getting up the hilly bits to my road; short wheelbase RWD cars like to swap ends fast!

Fortunately two passers by came and dug me out of the drift and we managed to 'dig' the car to my driveway.. where it remained for nearly three weeks before I could get it out again 

[feeutfo]

You think it's bad driving a car as heavy (and long wheelbase) as the Omega - I was driving the MR2 home the night of the heavy snowfall in Feb (I moved house in the heavy snowfall of December  ) .. by the time I'd made it from Epsom to Bracknell you could no longer see the road - I got stuck 100yds from my house as I turned a corner from 'slightly driven on' snow to 'virgin snow' and the front end sank in to it like a snowplough  But by heck was it hard getting up the hilly bits to my road; short wheelbase RWD cars like to swap ends fast!

Fortunately two passers by came and dug me out of the drift and we managed to 'dig' the car to my driveway.. where it remained for nearly three weeks before I could get it out again 

That night was bad, day workers left at 5 and came back to work again by 7, slough was totally grid locked, my boss left slough at 4, early enough to gat half way up the m4 and sit for 5 hours in traffic turn round back to slough and get the train to Bracknell.

I thought stuff that and worked two shifts back to back and drove home at 6am in relatively calm conditions. Must have been 50 lorries parked on the m4 and three times that many cars along the back roads, bedlam.

Car was skipping around all over the place though, and the abs is shite in ice and snow.

But these conditions are exceptional in the uk in recent years, as said, if we only get rain this year we will be waisting our time and money surely? Or not?

[Kevin Wood]

short wheelbase RWD cars like to swap ends fast!

<whistles>

Move along.. Nothing to see here...

Kevin

[Pipsqueak]

Yours and Gaffers posts reminded me of last winter, and I do have a spare set of wheels.

....but then if all we get is rain it will be a waist of money anyway....won't it?

I was on a motorway slip road in the slush, using the left lane as the right lane was a mess. Car came round me like I was stood still, through the slush and everything. I remember thinking he must have full wets or winter tyres on, koz my sc3's set to to low psi where twitching around as it was.

Why did you have the tyres underinflated? That would give you an even wider, longer contact patch when what you really want is a narrower shorter contact patch to distribute the weight of the car over the smallest possible area?

What makes you think that a narrow & thus smaller tread contact on the road is better in slippery conditions?

Ever looked at the width of the tyres rally cars run in the snow or mud vs. tarmac?

You want a tyre that has a small enough contact patch to 'sink' through the slush to the road, not a large one that will float over the top.

Same concept as boats.. ice skates.. etc.

All good stuff if you can plan aheadnd the weatherer forecasts are corect, this is the UK so planning doesnt allways work,  Twice from what I can remember I have seen 6 to 8 inches of snow fall in a few hours and catch everyone out, so if dropping the tyre pressures is the best that can be done then so be it.

[Mr Skrunts]

Yours and Gaffers posts reminded me of last winter, and I do have a spare set of wheels.

....but then if all we get is rain it will be a waist of money anyway....won't it?

I was on a motorway slip road in the slush, using the left lane as the right lane was a mess. Car came round me like I was stood still, through the slush and everything. I remember thinking he must have full wets or winter tyres on, koz my sc3's set to to low psi where twitching around as it was.

Why did you have the tyres underinflated? That would give you an even wider, longer contact patch when what you really want is a narrower shorter contact patch to distribute the weight of the car over the smallest possible area?

What makes you think that a narrow & thus smaller tread contact on the road is better in slippery conditions?

Ever looked at the width of the tyres rally cars run in the snow or mud vs. tarmac?

You want a tyre that has a small enough contact patch to 'sink' through the slush to the road, not a large one that will float over the top.

Same concept as boats.. ice skates.. etc.

All good stuff if you can plan aheadnd the weatherer forecasts are corect, this is the UK so planning doesnt allways work,  Twice from what I can remember I have seen 6 to 8 inches of snow fall in a few hours and catch everyone out, so if dropping the tyre pressures is the best that can be done then so be it.

Remember Jeremey Clarkson in his Iceland trip crossing the glassiers in the fog, big automatic tranmission vans with 235+ width tyres being run at 4 psi, if i was to follow anyone's addvice it would be from them as we would be travelling at thier speeds in the UK to get home, not running WRX subaru's doing 80 mph  broadside in the snow on skinny tyres.

[Entwood]

Yours and Gaffers posts reminded me of last winter, and I do have a spare set of wheels.

....but then if all we get is rain it will be a waist of money anyway....won't it?

I was on a motorway slip road in the slush, using the left lane as the right lane was a mess. Car came round me like I was stood still, through the slush and everything. I remember thinking he must have full wets or winter tyres on, koz my sc3's set to to low psi where twitching around as it was.

Why did you have the tyres underinflated? That would give you an even wider, longer contact patch when what you really want is a narrower shorter contact patch to distribute the weight of the car over the smallest possible area?

What makes you think that a narrow & thus smaller tread contact on the road is better in slippery conditions?

Ever looked at the width of the tyres rally cars run in the snow or mud vs. tarmac?

You want a tyre that has a small enough contact patch to 'sink' through the slush to the road, not a large one that will float over the top.

Same concept as boats.. ice skates.. etc.

All good stuff if you can plan aheadnd the weatherer forecasts are corect, this is the UK so planning doesnt allways work,  Twice from what I can remember I have seen 6 to 8 inches of snow fall in a few hours and catch everyone out, so if dropping the tyre pressures is the best that can be done then so be it.

Better idea is to have a set of snow chains in the boot, they take about 2 minutes to fit, you drive off the bad stuff onto the good stuff, then remove them, another 2 minutes. This protects your tyres. From November onwards my snowchains are there... not used often, but available when needed, and the only time they have been needed is to get on/off the estate, as the council never grit/clear side roads, but the main road 200 yards away is always done. Snow/ice tyres are fantastic .. in snow/ice... but poor on cleared surfaces .. and lets be honest.. the roads we generally drive on are clear more often than not.

[Marks DTM Calib]

I had no worries last year, the trick was to put some weight in the boot

[aaronjb]

Remember Jeremey Clarkson in his Iceland trip crossing the glassiers in the fog, big automatic tranmission vans with 235+ width tyres being run at 4 psi, if i was to follow anyone's addvice it would be from them as we would be travelling at thier speeds in the UK to get home, not running WRX subaru's doing 80 mph  broadside in the snow on skinny tyres.

Yes, but I doubt you can fit tyres that wide to an Omega! They're not 235+ they're more like 335+ I think..

And the reason they don't want skinny narrow tyres to sink through the snow to the hard underneath is that there is no hard underneath - you'd sink a good few meters before stopping..

Which would somewhat nullify the effect of skinny tyres when the car is sat on it's floorpan


Incidentally I was reading some newspaper in the kebab shop this lunchtime; they're saying we'll have snow before the end of September this year!