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Used Porsche Cars for sale in Slough, Berkshire | RSJ Sports Cars

Daily driver - winter tyres

hopeydaze

hopeydaze

Spa-Francorchamps
Joined
6 Jan 2012
Messages
272
After a heart stopping drive early Sunday in the mountains that separate Henley on Thames and Wallingford here in the Thames Valley, temperature around freezing and the roads black and shiny and unsalted, I was slipping badly. Quite scary actually. LSD didn't help at all.

This is a daily driver so I need to do something. Porsche sent me an email advertising winter tyre and wheel sets from £1500 and storage for the other set. Yes please I said. 'No" was their answer as they aren't available for the 993. 'How about a set of Pirelli Sotto 03 winters for £642 all in".

My question to the team if you've got this far - is this a good deal and would I be happy? Never used winters before and my advanced driving Police mate tells me winters were crap on his M3 and not to waste my money. However he is a driving god who says he can drove from Heathrow to Cardiff in an hour - for work of course
 
I have a set of Vredestien winter tyres on the 993 and they are not very good but the Sottozeros on the 944 are magic. 16" rims on the 944 and same size tyre all round for about £350 inc fitting from etyres. Camskill,Mytyres (supply only) and Blackcircles do good deals.
 
My winter tyre experience car is not a 993 but a 2015 Cayenne ....I swear by the winter tyres on this car compared to the normal summer tyres once the mercury plummets ....

Snow fell early morning then all day last Wednesday , I was on the summer treads and was intending to change over at the weekend as the temps are routinely below 7 degrees every day now .....
Anyway School run was a nightmare with even the cayenne slip sliding around and feeling distinctly unattached to the road surface ( fully snow covered over hard packed sno
Fast forward .... winter tures dig out from garage and fitted ...the car is transformed even feels better on the road after the snow has melted , they really do ( IMO) handle better in the colder temps ...... at least the Cayenne does anyway ....
I would say for 600+ change , try them , if you don't think they make a difference you can flog them later ... or you will never know for yourself ... don't let your mate persuade you otherwise .... why listen to him? Believe yourself not others ..!

PS ...... I ran my Turbo S through the winter last year on a set of Sotozerpsbi bought off a member on here ... it was also better on the winter rubber on the cold days .... change back once the temps are up though !!
 
I used to drive my 993 as a daily and remember getting caught in a snap snowstorm on the M11 and I needed to get back to North London, fortunately it was at 02:30 so the roads were empty, pretty scary drive home

Mine is a C2 so absolutely hopeless in the snow, I simply don't drive in the snow.

I am not the greatest performance driver, but unless you have a C4 not sure that tyres would help much

However I'm sure there are plenty of Germans who love driving in the snow enjoying the thrills!!, I'm too chicken!!
 
I ran various non P cars on Continental 850s and liked them. They've since been replaced by the 860 which is supposed to be better.

Have a chat With Chris (Exel Wheels) about what may suit you.
 
I run winter wheels tyres on both BMWs - X5 and 120d - I will be changing the 120d in the next week or so. I find having two sets of wheels easier, as I can do the job myself - understand that this might be trickier with a Porsche - ideal would be to get some cheap wheels from FleaBay - not sure how practical this is for a 993 though.
 
Forgot to add:

If you go down this route, get the smallest wheels you can! The winter tyres will be cheaper!
 
Yes dont expect to buy same size winter tyres as the summer tyres - winter tyres are always smaller and may need smaller sized wheels.
 
You want small and narrow. If you can find 16" to fit the 993 in 7" and 8" they would be ideal. Unfortunately with Big Red calipers the 16"s no longer fit mine. I once got stuck in Belgium on the motoway after a heavy snowfall they were pulling wagons off and I ended up being the only vehicle on 6" of fresh snow. It was quite hairy as I was on PS2s but probably better on fresh than hard packed and it was when the car was std ride height, now she would act like a snow plough, but with rwd and all that weight at the back they make good snowmobiles.
 
Endoman said:
I have a set of Vredestien winter tyres on the 993 and they are not very good but the Sottozeros on the 944 are magic.
Click to expand...

What's wrong with the Vredestiens?

Are they Wintrac Xtreme S? I was thinking of getting those to replace my aging Nokians.

I have a set of 17" 996 10 spokes that are fitted with Nokians and they are great on snow even heavily compacted snow that has turned to ice. By great I mean that I never get stuck anywhere. It can still be pretty hairy if you're not careful though.

Without those tyres I would never be able to get out of the garage if there was snow.
 
Winters are unbeatable below about 7 degrees and are categorically not a waste of money. Though I will add that if you don't swap them back to normal rubber when it is not especially cold then they aren't great.

I'll just restate the usual advice though - buy a used set of wheels to mount them on (so that if you stop using them or change car they can be resold for roughly what they cost you) and if you use them for their full usable life they are actually cost neutral (the mileage that has been put on them is mileage not put on the summers). As long as you own a jack and have somewhere to stack the wheels - why wouldn't you?
 
I used to have a set of winter wheels and tyres for my Cayman (18" - same as the summers) and they were very good.

There was no snow to test them on during my ownership but they were definitely more secure than summer tyres on a cold, greasy road.

Having a spare set of wheels certainly made the process of swapping them over much easier. I didn't get my money back on the wheels in the end but didn't consider it to be too big an expense when viewed over the whole ownership period.
 
What's wrong with the Vredestiens?
Yes they are the Wintrac, they just don't work. Poor grip, no feed back, they feel worse than PS2s. I have no confidence in them. I will be swapping them for Sottozeros if I ever need to but I'm using the 944 daily now.
 
I've used Yokohama W Drive V902B on my AMG for the last 5 years. They are really excellent cold weather tyres with far better grip below 7/8 degrees. Also very good in the wet. They are a little cheaper than the Conti/Michelin options. More road noise but not unacceptable. Highly recommended and they appear to fit 993 17 and 18 inch. I personally wouldn't bother buying a second set of wheels unless you have really fancy/hard to clean wheels. If you have a spare set then probably worth putting the winters on these. I will be putting winter tyres on my Cup 2s next winter and keeping the 18s for summer.
 
I would want to run winter tyres, to get the most out of the car in the cold weather, and it's easiest to fit them to a second set of rims and do the job at home with a jack, rather than faff around with swapping tyres. It's probably best to go 'one size down' (i.e. narrower tyres with more sidewall) provided they still fit over the calipers. And even easier if you have wheel studs, not bolts. I'd also want to run Nokian or Continentals. I've tried some budget winters over the years, and they were pretty awful.

I did drive my C4S on the Michelin PS2s on frozen roads just the once, but it's not a journey I'd want to do again. They just don't bite, you can't turn in and stopping is the opposite of acceleration: you can take off just fine but it takes 4x the distance to stop again...
 
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