RWD - on which axle do winter tyres go?

[Lacquer Peel]

Drivel yerself

 

Apologies, I read your post all wrong.

[primeradoner]

I tried using winter tyres on the front of a Primera with worn tyres on the rear and ended up causing a 6 car pileup on the outskirts of Scunthorpe. This wasnt as bad as it sounds as it was at the Eddie Wright Raceway.

[Eddie Honda]

I do recall my 1-litre AX being absolutely brilliant in the snow, even on budget "summer" tyres. There's a lot to be said for low weight and 145/70s.

My 1.2 GS is GRRRRR8 in the snow, there's even more to be said of low weight and 145/80 15s

[gordonbennet]

Apologies, I read your post all wrong.

Not at all, re-reading my own post i knew what i meant but it did read somewhat at odds.

[chaseracer]

I do recall my 1-litre AX being absolutely brilliant in the snow, even on budget "summer" tyres.  There's a lot to be said for low weight and 145/70s.

 

Likewise, diesel 205 on 165s and (especially!) Dyane on 135s.

[Eddie Honda]

Daf 44 on 135 14s. Can't beat a bit of LSD-style belt propulsion.

[OwdChina]

BF Goodrich and 4x4 for winnas........better than mud tyres.

[drum]

 

^Dad at the wheel.

 

Our neighbour was rarely beat by the snow. He drove a beetle with skinny tyres. If things got really tough, he would tie some baler's twine round them.

[Guest Hooli]

Knobbly M&S tyres - stuck shortly after I took this pic

 

[rainagain]

I used to stay in a village that was always last in the queue to get gritted, even then it was only the main road through it. Being skint I would only fit winters to the front wheels of the FWD cars I had. Didn't have any real problems, used to smugly be the only car in our car park up the hill. A couple of time I got bad oversteer when I forgot I had summers on the rear but it worked out well.

 

I fitted a winter to the full size spare and bought one extra steel wheel from the breakers. This meant I only had one wheel to store, rather than a set of four.

[forddeliveryboy]

Problem is cars have now become a wanking fantasy 

 

This sums up almost everything with what's wrong with the western world, not just why modern cars are a bit silly.

 

And because I find single line posts difficult after beernwine, I'll add this - I was asked to drive a neighbour's car out of the twisty, steepish up and down bits this morning, about 6 miles. My 3 year old lassy was more than upset I refused to take her (she is a bit of a danger freak), but Mama wouldn't have forgiven me even if I'd killed just me. It was a Nissan Cashcry, with two more driveshafts than necessary.  

 

I looked at the tyres and realised why the driver was still looking a bit pale, having returned backwards down the initial slope half an hour previously. I also looked at the odd bit of tarmac poking through the snow where the plough had scraped low and other traffic, previous night's salt and morning sunshine had melted things a bit. 

 

I ummed a lot, then ahhed when explanation was given why they had to get out (main roads were totally clear). And muttered why I would avoid crashing, but couldn't say it wouldn't happen for sure. "If you bend it there's no bottle of '82 xxxxx or case of cheap plonk". Furrinuff. Life's too short not to take risks, so I waited for one of the school Landies (taxi) to pass through and asked him to hold any oncoming traffic at the top of the blind summit to let me have a run at the awkward bit without fear of meeting anything.  

 

The same Landy brought me back, but I'd forgotten how scary it is to drive a car on ice and snow without any grip. Especially with its owners beside and behind me - I gave it the beans going up hills where there was traction to be had and crawled down the other sides. The corners with big drops provoked plenty of noise, but since they were both uphill wcpgw? The worst bit was the car deciding to revert to torque-vectoring (what a bollox term) 4x4 from lock-up 4x4 every time I went over 30-35 - it only happened once. When the computer was getting confused as to where to send the drive, it was mayhem and scary. When all four wheels were doing the same thing, it was predictably bad but manageable. 

 

And so a good dinner this evening over the road, they proudly took me out to show the new all-season Michelins. Even though the roads are now clear of snow and slush apparently the car now grips like a leech compared with before and is endowed with a chassis from heaven.   

[dollywobbler]

 

Its the same one size fits all mantra of new tyres MUST be fitted to the front, which is eminently sensible if you have FWD but bloody daft if you have RWD.

 

I'm not sure who's coming out with that mantra. The perceived wisdom is that all new tyres should be fitted on the rear, because understeer tends to be easier to control than oversteer (ie if you're understeering, you panic, ease off, and the grip should come back. With oversteer, you panic, ease off, and just make things worse, so it's better to have more grip at the back). I've only met one 'professional' who said put new on the front, because new tyres will be less prone to aqua planing. He was a tyre fitted in Wales to be fair...

 

The other reason to put new on the back is that rear tyres don't wear anywhere near as much on FWD stuff, so degrading through age is more likely. Of course, I reckon most tyre fitters don't bother moving tyres around at all...

[gordonbennet]

Dolly if you pop onto Michelin's or any sizeable tyre retailer's site this new on back is the mantra.

 

Doh!!!  sorry its me i can see why you're all wondering WTF i'm waffling about, got it arse about face, the given mantra is new to the rear not the front, i'm a pillock.

 

Same argument stil applies though, its makes sense to put the new to the rear if its RWD, but buggered if i can see the point of fitting new tyres to the rear of a FWD, though i take your point about wear and age, as it happens i always rotate so replace 4 at a time.

[M'coli]

The idea is that they have the greater grip and hence less chance of oversteer: also, the ones on the front wear out before the rears, so the new tyres are placed on those rims, they're bolted to the back and the rear wheels go on the front, where they wear out, etc. etc.. It stops the rear tyres being on the car so long that they perish rather than wear out.

[forddeliveryboy]

because understeer tends to be easier to control than oversteer

 

With many modern front-drive cars maybe, with a good rwd one not so. I blame the 'orrid business of passive rear steer which VW 'pioneered' back in the early 70s and which to be fair wasn't so awful in practice for such a nasty idea of replacing decent suspension with a bar of steel and 'intelligent' rubber blocks.

 

Things grew worse when that demi-god of Peugoet chassis engineering (forget his name) made a fwd chassis handle so sublimely, BX/405-onwards (for a while). Life is give and take - you don't get summut for nowt - and the first time I had a 405 I was amazed at how it would scythe through really fast corners almost telepathically.

 

Unfortunately, the rubberyness of the whole process varies according to load, time and temperature. I'd felt the odd iffy moment when surface grip changed mid-corner, the proof of my pudding-thought was manifest in an empty area of Tesco-land one snowy day. With decent grip, I circled my PSA masterpiece faster and faster, more and more grip seemed to be summoned up by the gods until without warning and in a nanosecond, the bootlock wanted to mate with the door mirror.

 

I invited mates along in their varied machines, not one came close to the Peugoet's vicious grip-loss apart from a BX (which bar the shape and LHM is all Peugeot) with canted rear wheels à la Pug-gineer. The only car to corner as hard was a Merc 124, perfectly adjustable even right on the limit.

 

I wonder if an old Saab (pre-9000) could have outclassed the Merc. But none turned up, that snowy day. They always were the most exclusive transport, a 900 is as good as the best Mercedes in almost every way.

[gordonbennet]

Still don't get it, oversteer most of us brought up on RWD cars can cope with fairly well, understeer where the thing just ploughs straight on helplessly is one of the most horrible sensations, one of the reasons i bloody hate FWD cars.

[dieselnutjob]

I bought mine in August

[Guest Hooli]

Still don't get it, oversteer most of us brought up on RWD cars can cope with fairly well, understeer where the thing just ploughs straight on helplessly is one of the most horrible sensations, one of the reasons i bloody hate FWD cars.

 

Totally agree. I hate FWD in poor weather, it's dangerous because once it goes wrong you're a passenger. Give me RWD any day, especially if it's snowing!

 

Back when I was young I recovered a few attempted crashes in FWD cars by using the handbrake to force it to turn where it needed to do. Quite a handy skill to learn (wish I still had it). One time my Onion was heading straight for a tree on snow at about 30mph & none of the normal 'lift off, steer less etc' stuff worked, a bootful on lock & a dab of the handbrake turned it about 120degrees & sent me down the road I wanted without hitting owt.

 

Yes I could have gone slower but I was 20summink so no I couldn't.

[dollywobbler]

Still don't get it, oversteer most of us brought up on RWD cars can cope with fairly well, understeer where the thing just ploughs straight on helplessly is one of the most horrible sensations, one of the reasons i bloody hate FWD cars.

 

Whereas I'm the opposite. I feel more comfortable with FWD, as that's what I grew up with.

 

I tell you one problem. Magazines stopped being edited by folk who liked engineering and 'safe' handling, and were suddenly being run by boy racers who made a favourite of the word 'lairy.' If a front-wheel drive car couldn't be coaxed into a bit of lift-off oversteer, they'd absolutely pan it. 

 

Then some young driver enters a corner too quickly, eases off (or even touches the brakes) and suddenly they're flying off into the scenery. Yeah, well done boy racers. Your 'lairy' has just killed someone. Sod bloated Minis. I bet that sort of thing would cause the Issigonis-rolling scenario.

[forddeliveryboy]

Still don't get it, oversteer most of us brought up on RWD cars can cope with fairly well, understeer where the thing just ploughs straight on helplessly is one of the most horrible sensations, one of the reasons i bloody hate FWD cars.

 

I agree - many supposely fine handing fwd cars are horrid, away from the proving track and in the real world. Plenty of it is where the mass lives, though - a 30s-50s Citroën could be drifted easily on all four wheels through fast corners because of where the engine lived (and other more subtle things), the DS which followed was different and sprung like a cat so wouldn't drift but equally didn't plough on when things went wrong. The third and last in line (CX) shouldn't work but like a BMC Mini is rather splendid in all circs.

 

Modern fwd generics are supposedly failsafe and tbf are way safer than so much of what came before, but in awkward conditions they're rarely going to respond accurately to an intelligent driver.

 

Front and rear drive alike, there's way too much programmed rubber bushing to make anything truly predictable.

[Station]

What have I (inadvertently) started? Lol

I'm putting them in the rears.

[Guest Hooli]

Don't drive behind me!

[Guest Hooli]

Whereas I'm the opposite. I feel more comfortable with FWD, as that's what I grew up with.

 

I grew up with both, my car history started -

 

Metro

Mk2 Escort

Volvo 345

Mitsu Colt Mirage

Manta

Sierra

Midget

Mk3 Escort

Onion

XR4i

Etc

 

Have always preferred RWD, it makes more sense to me & seems more natural.

[Eddie Honda]

Time for a musical interlude sponsored by SVM Industries

 

[forddeliveryboy]

Magazines stopped being edited by folk who liked engineering and 'safe' handling, and were suddenly being run by boy racers who made a favourite of the word 'lairy.' If a front-wheel drive car couldn't be coaxed into a bit of lift-off oversteer, they'd absolutely pan it. 

 

Then some young driver enters a corner too quickly, eases off (or even touches the brakes) and suddenly they're flying off into the scenery. Yeah, well done boy racers. Your 'lairy' has just killed someone. Sod bloated Minis. I bet that sort of thing would cause the Issigonis-rolling scenario.

 

Couldn't agree more. These people don't live in December-dark, Yorkshire-rutted, grit-greasy Northern Britain - that's for sure. One reason I avoid PSA is their two-faced character. Great in Pamplona or around Montpellier, not so wonderful here when the dampness returns. The number of people killed in this neck of the woods in 205s alone is scary.

[Guest Hooli]

Time for a musical interlude sponsored by SVM Industries

 

 

 

That were reeght proper that, like watching proper rallying.

[forddeliveryboy]

RWD, FWD, what really matters is which axle has most grip, shirley?* But yeah, proper rallying is well-missed.

 

[dieselnutjob]

My 305 was brilliant in snow and ice.

[dieselnutjob]

Mind you the 607 was horrible

[forddeliveryboy]

My 305 was brilliant in snow and ice.

 

Sure, but which axle were the XM+S89s on? I mean…

 

The smooth underside always helped through the deeper drifts, I found.