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Goodyear Vector All-weather tyres vs summer tyres

Upto you - can only supply the information. The same information the Insurance companies will go by in the event of a claim. As you know, they will check everything to avoid paying out in the event of a claim, so be prepared. All the tyre companies give the same advice including major car associations such as the AA & RAC.
Its your choice in the end.

Yes some insurers sometimes try it on to avoid paying claims. But I'd be very surprised, in the UK, if there could be realistic grounds to reject a claim because you'd 'mixed tyres' between axles provided that the sizes, speed and load ratings were within the vehicle manufacturer's spec and of course each tyre was in a legal condition.

Just because the car manufacturer recommends something - like you only use OEM VW brake fluid in your VW - isn't an insurance matter, even if it was actually quite good advice, unless your deviation from the recommendation makes the vehicle non-roadworthy in some way that contributes to the accident in question.

Unless someone has specific case intel that says different.

(And to be 100% clear here, I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea to mix tyres, only questioning whether it can invalidate your insurance).
 
Yes some insurers sometimes try it on to avoid paying claims. But I'd be very surprised, in the UK, if there could be realistic grounds to reject a claim because you'd 'mixed tyres' between axles provided that the sizes, speed and load ratings were within the vehicle manufacturer's spec and of course each tyre was in a legal condition.

Just because the car manufacturer recommends something - like you only use OEM VW brake fluid in your VW - isn't an insurance matter, even if it was actually quite good advice, unless your deviation from the recommendation makes the vehicle non-roadworthy in some way that contributes to the accident in question.

Unless someone has specific case intel that says different.

(And to be 100% clear here, I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea to mix tyres, only questioning whether it can invalidate your insurance).
Two Tyre shops round here, one national and one local will sell you the tyres but won’t fit them ie: 2 new tyres on front axle.
 
Two Tyre shops round here, one national and one local will sell you the tyres but won’t fit them ie: 2 new tyres on front axle.

My local tyre place has no such scruples (Diamond Dave's Ditchfinders - North Korean Imports & Part-Worns Our Speciality). :Grin

But there's a bit of serious business logic at play here too. Putting the part-worn tyre onto the front (on a FWD car) means it will wear out much quicker than if it's left on the back. So a quicker second sale (/cashflow) for that particular tyre shop.

Of course I'm not saying that's why they do it - but it must be lovely when the engineering advice and commercial logic come together... ;)
 
My local tyre place has no such scruples (Diamond Dave's Ditchfinders - North Korean Imports & Part-Worns Our Speciality). :Grin

But there's a bit of serious business logic at play here too. Putting the part-worn tyre onto the front (on a FWD car) means it will wear out much quicker than if it's left on the back. So a quicker second sale (/cashflow) for that particular tyre shop.

Of course I'm not saying that's why they do it - but it must be lovely when the engineering advice and commercial logic come together... ;)
At least the customer that takes their advice has a chance of coming back and of course they probably lose those customers who decide to go to Dodgy Davies.
 
To be honest I think a lot of stuff about tyres is only going to be noticeable to an extremely skilled driver driving on the limit on a racetrack (yes, we Cali drivers all know we're above-average drivers - just like 95% of the rest of the population :D). In normal driving I'd challenge most of us to know what tyres we had fitted, in a blind test.
Think so. Also because, these days, we and our Calis have systems like ESP, that will act and correct before an average driver like most of us, driving normally, will have noticed he or she needed the support.

We stick to changing back to front every time we change summers/winters, to have even wear on all four wheels. Thus differences after each season are in the range of 1 mm anyway, and then we're not even discussing measuring error ranges. :D
 
I would put the new ones on the front.

1. If the make/model of tyre is the same front to rear the only difference in grip is going to be down to water dispersal.
2. Less chance of aquaplaning with new front tyres
3. The van is designed to understeer anyway, new fronts with worn rears just makes it more neutral rather than tail happy.
4. If the tail comes out there is something you can do about it - bit of opposite lock on the steering. If you are understeering you are just a passenger.
5. punctures are more likely on a worn tyre, I would rather have a puncture on the back as its easier to control the van with a flat rear rather than a flat front.
6. deeper grips should give better traction in mud.
7. If the rears are that worn that its going to make a real difference you should be replacing the rears as well.

I will qualify the above with the fact that my teenage driving years were spent thrashing Ford Capris with invariably barely legal tyres so I am used to going sideways !
 
Hi Everyone

Has anyone gone from standard factory fit 17" summer tyres to fitting goodyear vector cargo all-weather M+S tyres at all?

Did you notice any road noise or MPG differences?

I understand the vector cargos are the likely tyre that I would get if I order all-weather tyres on my new Cali and just want to choose them eyes-wide-open, if we do order them.

Thanks
I have run Cargo Vector 2 M+S 215/60R17C 109/107T on our 2007 4Motion for about 3 years - including a round trip to the far end of Greece - where we amost got stuck in a muddy field when they were pretty much new. They are OK, but not great in either mud or snow (the M+S of the tyre name) to be honest. On the plus side, they have a "snow rating" so are legal to go over continental cols in the winter, but having done that, I think I'd pack chains to go with these for the next trip.

I have a video of them spinnig gently in some spring snow in an alpine forrest clearing, it was pretty much flat, so I was very dissapointed that the 4motion seemd to just be four wheels in rotational motion and no van in forward motion, managed to "coax" it out after about 5 mins of gentle reverse & forward, but frankly my 2WD Alfa 147 (that I sold to buy the Cali) with snow tyres on it would have coped easily.

I'm currently looking for a set of "real" winter tyres for a Christmas trip to the Pyrinees and I have had Michelin Latitude Cross highly reccomended as a "summer tyre" for the 4Motion, they are commonly fitted to Land Rovers etc that need a combination of on and off road grip. They also seem to be pretty well reviewed for snow, but not so brilliant for ice.

There is another part of this discussion that asks whether to just put 2 winter tyres on a vehicle, and theres a pretty good demonstration, albeit only a "lightweight" VW Golf, on exactly why that's a very bad idea, unless you fancy pirrouetting 2,600kg of van on the first patch of snow on a gentle bend - not my idea of fun though.
 
It would be interesting to see how a 2wd golf with summer tyres on all 4 wheels compared.
I think it would be worse than the golf with 2 winter tyres on?
 
These videos are produced by tyre manufacturers or suppliers and to say they are biased is a massive understatement and I think the Michelin one in particular is criminally misleading.
 
+1, thats my dilemma - interested in peoples responses to this one....
Its OK to have winters on front and summer on rear - i bought a spare set so i could have set of winters / summers, but am getting there gradually. The 'problem' is the tyres last for ages and take 1000s of miles to wear out - will put my winters on the front in next few months, but reckon i am about 12 months away from buying the next two.
 
An interesting thread...
Two things spring to mind - mixing different tyre types, i.e. two summer + two all-weather (or winter) tyres sounds like a bad idea, regardless of the front/rear arrangements and might raise some insurance eyebrows if loss of control was a factor in a collision.
The second discussion on new at the back vs new at front is a different one.
Having driven front wheel-drive vehicles exclusively since I ditched my Vauxhall Chevette in 1985, I have experienced understeer on a number of occasions, but oversteer only in one set of circumstances - I had just had new 'value' tyres fitted, on the rear, at Halfords - the backend of the Megane stepped out at every roundabout. It was my wife's car, it was bloody dangerous, I wouldn't let her drive it and took them back to Halfords and insisted they swap them for another make - the improvement was incredible.

So poor rear grip on an FWD car will cause oversteer, but the greater danger under normal driving conditions will be understeer, but not 'track conditions' understeer where grip, at speed, is lost at the front - but where traction is lost under braking so the wheel slides with the momentum of the car (a straight line, at a tangent to the arc you are trying to turn) rather than turning the car. This loss of grip is the more typical driver experience on public roads at safe speeds, and low front tyre tread may be a significant factor in wet or snowy conditions.

I don't think having better tyre on the front than back would be an insurance issue, where tyres are matched, but for normal driving in this country, particularly as winter approaches, I consider more tread on the front of a FWD is likely to be more beneficial and more likely to mitigate the risk of sliding in everyday, rather than the aggressive driving extremes that the sportier cars may be subjected to.
 
Can I ask those that have switched from the factory fitted tyres to Goodyears or Nokians, did you do this pretty much straightway as a matter of course because they are much better tyres, or did you wait until the factory fitted tyres had reached the end of their lives?


I’ve used Nokian for winter tyres on T5 now T6, really date them as long life and good when the going gets very bad
 
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