Sunday, May 4, 2014

Smart ForFour Snow tires

Scandinavia Snow tires

Quickly put: 6 months of the year Finland is covered by snow and ice so regular middle-European winter tires are not enough for our winter season. Those tires are for wet asphalt conditions where some snow might fall on the ground but would melt on roads thus never freezing it. And here again roads are in constant snow or ice cover so driving those tires are very dangerous and you most likely crash into something. 

So now we need to start looking for snow labeled tires which are studded or non-studded. Because currently I live in in southern parts of Finland studded tires are over kill for road conditions that warmer parts of Finland has so I want to look for non-studded tires.

So we know what we need now lets find good snow tires for ForFour

So Smart Forfour Pulse and Passion models comes with 15" alloy wheels as standard but Pure model comes with 14" steel wheels. Now the ideal tire size for my 15" alloys would be 195/50 but there are no "snow" labeled tires available for this size. Going up increases tire size to 195/55 where we have some but they are 30-50% more expensive than 195/60 but this later size won't fit under ForFour. So lets try go for smaller sized 15" tires and we see same problem repeating again that there is little to none trust worthy Snow labeled tires.

Source studded: 195/55 15" studded
Source: friction "nordic compound": 195/55 15" nordic compound friction
source: mid-European winter tires: 195/50 15"

Now lets see some quality brands that I would trust I have to pay at least from 110€ up to 150€ for one tire. With 195/60 size the price comes down about 30€ for one tire.

Now lets have a look at 14" rims.
For 14" the best sizes are: 185/60, 175/65 , 165/65, 155/70 where diameter difference is close to 1%.

165/65 14" nordic no trustworthy options
155/70 14" nordic none available

Lets increase our difference to 2,5% and we get also these sizes:
195/60 14" nordic none available
175/60 14" nordic none available

So we our choices are 185/60 and 175/65. In snow tires the narrower tire is better choice because more pressure on smaller area and we know grip increases when contact area gets smaller. So it is matter of personal taste do you appreciate more grip or better handling. Well anyway as you can see quality brand which has performed well in Finnish Tekniikan Maailma magazine only coming second to Nokian and costs 70€ less than Nokian for 15"? That is why I decided to buy 14" alloys for winter use and sell my second set of 15" alloys.

Lets find 14" alloys that fit

So we need 14" alloys with 4 x 114.3 mm PCD (pitch circle diameter), 46 mm offset (ET) with 67.1 mm center bore. Easy eh? Well as it stands out 4 x 114.3 mm PCD is commonly shared by Mitsubishi and Hyundai and they both often have same offset and center bore size.  

So because I didn't want to pay 150€ for one new rim I started searching used ones. After a month of searching and waiting I finally found a complete set with minor paint damages. And the price was only 40€ for whole set! Almost free for alloys because you can only find steel wheels for that price. 

These used to be old Mitsubishi Galant 1996 wheels but now they are in storage waiting for new snow tires and next winter. You want to look for simple design because otherwise snow won't fall off the wheel.

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