Winter tyres may not be necessary for everybody, but they are crucial for people who come from places where the weather is freezing cold in the winter. If you have all-season tyres on your vehicle, you may be wondering if you will need winter tyres too when the cold season approaches. Well, if you care a lot about your comfort and safety on the road, you should seriously consider getting the best winter tyres for your vehicle. Since they are designed to work well in snow, slush and ice, you will be safer and comfortable with them compared to their all-season counterparts. Continue reading “Questions to Ask When Looking for The Best Winter Tyres”
When colder months of the year start approaching, one of the things you need to do is make sure that you have your winter tyres ready. A winter tyre is simply a tyre that is made of special compounds in order to improve traction, handling and stopping. It is the safest option for driving on snowy, icy and wet roads. The rubber compound that this tyre is made of stays soft and flexible even when you are driving on a road with hard packed snow. It will still provide reliable performance and safety even when you are faced with extremely cold temperatures.
Before you go ahead and buy a winter tyre, there are a number of things you need to check first. The first one is whether the tyres you want to buy are studded or studless. Your choice will depend on a number of things, including your driving habits, where you drive mostly and the typical winter condition in the place that you come from. If you drive on slush and packed snow in winter, studless tyres will be the better alternative because they get traction through the wide and deep grooves that they feature. Studded tyres will be better if you drive on icy roads in winter. The studs, which are lightweight pins on the tyres, dig into slick surfaces and enhance traction.
You also need to check if the winter tyre you want to buy has sipes. The sipes are small patterned slits on the lugs of the tyre. They create extra edges for enhanced road grip when you are driving on snowy or icy winter roads. If you find a good winter tyre that is not siped, that should not hinder you from buying it. Custom safety siping can be added on the tyre in order to make sure that there is improved starting, stopping as well as rolling action when you drive on slick roads.
Last but not least, you need to check whether or not the winter tyre you want to buy has a rim. This is a question of time and money. If you can afford to buy a tyre that comes with a rim, it will be a good idea to go ahead and buy it. This is because it takes quite longer to unmount and mount tyres on rims each time. The unmounting and muounting also results into wear and tear that may shorten the lifespan of the tyre.