6 great tips for choosing cheap effective tyres

Seeking new tyres for your car? You might
not have to entirely deplete your bank balance to get your hands on new tyres
that can help your car to run genuinely effectively.

Turn
to a company offering a broad choice of tyres

For getting your hands on the right tyres,
you need to do better than simply walking to a tyre retailer on your local high
street and leaving with the first tyres you see that meet your basic needs. By
doing this, you could be completely overlooking other places offering
alternative tyres that are not only better-performing than those high street
tyres, but cheaper, too. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it. Even just a little online research could help you find a suitable place where you could, metaphorically speaking, scoff away. If, for example, you live in or close to Wiltshire, you could visit the website of Wiltshire Tyres. This company stocks tyres from all leading tyre brands – with Continental, Dunlop, Michelin and many other big names represented. Staff can even travel to homes or workplaces for wheel alignment in Salisbury and nearby places.

Look
at labels to assess the criteria of different tyres

Upon perusing the stock of tyres at
Wiltshire Tyres or another, similar
company, it will be easy for you to compare different tyres on criteria
including fuel efficiency, wet grip and noise ratings. This is because legislation requires tyres sold by such companies
to be suitably labelled showing how they fare in these areas. 

This information
is, thus, readily accessible to both customers and retailers.

A tyre’s fuel efficiency and wet grip will
each be indicated with a grade from A-G,
where A represents the most efficiency or wettest grip. Rolling resistance is used to measure the fuel efficiency, Parkers explains, while wet grip refers to the tyre’s ability
to help a car to, when in a straight line, brake in wet conditions. 

Meanwhile,
there are three categories of exterior noise level, which is measured with a decibel – look out for the
abbreviation ‘dB’.

Consider
whether you should choose summer or winter tyres

While many European countries have enacted
laws requiring cars to use winter tyres during that cold season, such
legislation has not been put in place here in the UK… at least not yet. In
fact, you are left with the ability to
choose whether, when temperatures are low, you opt for winter tyres, stick with
standard “summer tyres”, or choose all-season tyres as described by The Telegraph.

While winter tyres should indeed, befitting
their name, perform better in winter conditions than summer tyres, they also
tend to be more expensive. Furthermore, in temperatures exceeding
7oC, their softer
compounds will lengthen the time it takes a car to stop after braking and the
vehicle’s tendency to skid in corners. Depending on your driving habits, you
may deem them unnecessary.

Avoid
used tyres and be careful about run-flats

This article is largely about helping you
to find inexpensive tyres; therefore, you may be seriously considering buying
used tyres. They do, after all, carry more favourable price tags than new tyres.
However, there can be risks of opting for used tyres.

For example, such tyres could have worn to
a dangerous extent – meaning that, if you drive using them, your car insurance
could be invalidated and fines reaching £10,000 and penalty points of up to 12
could be imposed.

If you have a fleet of cars, you may be
attracted to run-flats. A car with run-flats can, following a puncture,
continue running for a further 50 miles; therefore, downtime is greatly reduced. However, with run-flats,
the maximum speed permitted is 50mph. You should also avoid using them if you
will tow something with your car; run-flats are
designed for supporting only the car’s weight.

Choose
tyres that have high tread levels

Auto Express reports that 40% of UK drivers are unaware that tyre tread depths must be at least 1.6mm by law. 

Therefore,
can you imagine how few of these drivers know how adversely a car’s performance
can be affected when tyres of low tread levels are
used?

The site tested two different types of
Goodyear tyres on a wet braking track. One set was completely new and 6mm in
tread depth, while there was a mere 1.6-2mm depth to the other tyres’ treads. The
test found that, with the newer tyres, the car reached a halt after 39.6
metres, while that figure was 49.9 metres for the car that used the worn tyres.

All of this testing took place on a road intended to replicate the condition
of heavy rain. Therefore, by splashing out on tyres with relatively deep tread
levels, you could increase the ease with
which you will be able to control your car in wet weather.

Remember
that costly doesn’t necessarily mean poor value

While trimming a few pennies or pounds here
and there can feel good, we would urge you to be careful not to take this
cost-cutting too far. In fact, before you spend money on any tyres, you should
thoroughly educate yourself about the merits and drawbacks of those tyres.

Let’s consider the special advantages of
winter tyres. Put these tyres on your car and, when in snow or ice, your car
can benefit from a significant reduction in stopping distances. Furthermore,
your car will be able to turn in situations where, otherwise, it might more
easily skid. Therefore, buying a set of summer tyres for use just in summer and
a set of winter tyres strictly for winter would be ideal.

The only disadvantage of this would, at
first glance, appear to be the more significant financial outlay that has to be made upfront. Why not buy just one set of
tyres and use them right throughout the year? One major reason is that, with
two sets, each set will last much longer – as neither of them will be regularly used for the whole year. A higher
price doesn’t necessarily make a tyre poorer value.