Hello All,

I am trying to decide if I should buy just winter tyres or winter tyres and a second set of wheels. In my case I think this pretty much comes down to the cost of changing tyres vs. changing wheels.

I know this will vary from place to place (I'm near Zurich) but can anyone give me an idea of the price difference between changing tyres vrs wheels?

I'd expect this question has been covered before but my searches failed to find the answer.

Thanks

It's not a good idea to have only one set of wheels and change the tires (winter/summer) on them, first you will ruin the geometry of the tire, second you will scratch your rims and it will cost you a lot for the fitting. Best is to buy a steel wheels as separate set. Check on ricardo you will find full sets for 100 CHF used.

The price for a tyre change is c25chf per wheel. The price for a wheel change is a bit less but they rebalance them anyway so not much difference. But you may need or want to have the wheels stored at the garage which brings the cost to the same or more.

If you buy cheap steel rims and change the wheels over yourself you might recoup the cost of the wheels over a few years but it is quite marginal.

On more expensive sports cars you might have narrower winter wheels that drive better in winter conditions. So say I have 305mm wide summer wheels and 20 or 30mm less on the winter wheels

__________________
www.templeman.net

Is normally worth getting steel wheels so you can get a narrower width and deeper profile tyre which are cheaper, as well as avoiding taking the tyres on/off the rims every 6 months.

My winter tyres are half the price of my summer ones, and the steel wheels were cheap (about 30€ each I think from memory).

Don't take your car for an MFK with those cheap steel wheels, it will fail unless they were made by the manufacture of your car or are approved for your exact car.
Also the allowable dimensions of winter tyres will be mandated for your car.

Thanks for the replies!

Realistically I'm not going to get round to picking up second hand wheels given my lack of time and (complete) lack of expertise. Nor am I ever likely to change my own if a professional will do it for chf100. For my car (xc90 Volvo) new wheels seem to run to a few hundred each so I'm leaning towards just tyres. The thing that might sway me is that I gather the tyres are meant to tyres are meant to aligned in a particular way to prevent high wear.

Presumably a standard tyre change covers this alignment? Or at least somewhat covers it. At the cost of tyres vrs wheels I can afford a fair bit of increased wear and change costs.

Good point if you are buying second hand.

Mine are approved, I had to give the garage a copy of the car log book so they could make sure they ordered the right wheels

Still probably not worth the hassle of doing an MFK with them fitted... I have no intention of finding out...

Poor posting on my part. This was meant to be a question. Do any of the EFers have a view on the extent to which getting tyres changed each time will compromise alignment resulting in increased tyre wear (or other issues)?

It's not an issue, I buy second hand cars, on 2 occasions there was only 1 set of wheels & I just changed the tyres over. I tend to leave older winter ones on for the summer then replace them next winter, so in effect will not change them twice every year!

Do the maths. in ZRH 100 to 125CHF twice a year to change your tyres in a garage.

I did this one year and then bought a set of winter tyres + steel wheels on reifendirekt, got the lot delivered in Germany in Waldshut, pick up VAT differential, change wheels yourself twice a year, payback 1.5 years. Storage needs the same space of course.

Here in Lux they just made winter tyres mandatory after 1st October (in case of snow, sleet or, funnily enough, black ice), so I have the wheels ready.

Another reason to have steel rims for the winter is if you have fancy alloy wheels, these will get damaged in the winter by salt.

I think it's a very individual decision. On my (very) old Landrover, I had tyres which I stored myself and had changed twice a year for about CHF125 each time.

Now I have a new car (as in brand new), a Ford which is leased and I have just ordered rims and tyres from the Ford dealer/garage. I was quoted about CHF800 for tyres only or CHF1,750 for tyres and rims. However, the garage will change rims and tyres twice a year and store the other set at no cost whereas they charge to change tyres only.
Over the four year lease period, it's pretty much break-even.
Plus I can't risk damage to the summer alloys on a leased car.
Plus I like the black spokes on the winter rims

Go for all season Tyres...

I had not considered this. Been here two months and bought car that came with winter tyres but not wheels. Definitely don't want to use my alloys during winter and will try to source some steel rims. Any ideas where to look in Geneva?
According to the web my wheels are 18 x 7.5 J. From what I have read this also covers the stud pattern so any 18x 7.5 J wheel should fit?

False. You need to match the number of studs (usually 5 nowadays) and PCD (http://www.raceandroad.com/technical...ttern-pcd.html). While there are some rims which fit multiple PCDs, they are rare and would have to match yours.

What car DO you have?

p.s.: another thing to consider is the ET number of the rim (which tell you how "far out" or "in" it sits). Too far out (towards the exterior of the car) and it might rub, too far in and it might not fit due to the brake calipers. Not to mention that in CH you need a certificate for any non-standard rims, otherwise you won't pass the MFK and the police might fine you too.

p.p.s: i'm not sure 18" steel rims exist

Not if you live in the mountains! We have space to store here, but many garages will store winter/summer wheels for a annual fee.

fHello
I know it doesnt respond to your question, but thought I have to tell you this:
After changing for more then 18 years every season my summer tyres into winter tyres and visa-versa, I have tried out all season tyres now for more then 5 years and it holds well on the road. Even if there is snow it goes well to drive, it always kept me on the road.
In a way I regret the 18 years where I always changed the tyres. But didnt know better.
If you are a lot in the mountains in winter time, then it makes sense to have good winter tyres.
Of course the tyre industry doesnt like to hear that and some garages too, for them is business/money.

About the prices, changing the tyres is more expensive.
regards edith

I'm really not sure this is something that is checked. I had my Volvo MFKd twice wearing its unmarked, unbranded, steel winter wheels. They _may_ have been Volvo ones, but I don't think it would have been possible to tell. Tyre sizes would have been correct to manufacturer specs, and I think this ie something much more likely to be checked, and in any case I'd be rather dubious about the idea of diverging from them in the first place.

Another point to note, wrt one or two other posts, as that many modern 'sporty' cars have wheel sizes that are not available in steel rims. Annoyingly, I had to buy a complete set of VW allow wheels for winter use on my Passat (R36), because it has such big brakes even a 16" steel wheel (the biggest that was available) would not fit over them.

I'm too tight to pay for another set of 19" wheels so I swap.

I've never seen any alloy of mine damaged by the weather. I've run alloys through winter for 15 years.

A (Swiss) friend of mine told me yesterday that he simply uses only winter tires all year around. According to his line of thought (you would need to confirm this) the real difference in terms of wear & tear starts with temperatures above 25 degrees, something that is not quite often where he lives and drives around. He has been using winter tires for the entire year for the last 10 years and claims to have saved a bit on changes and rims while not seeing the difference in gas consumption...