{"id":19455,"date":"2016-01-16T11:16:53","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T11:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=19455"},"modified":"2018-11-22T12:12:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T12:12:10","slug":"the-tyre-question-appropriate-tyres-for-a-motorhome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/the-tyre-question-appropriate-tyres-for-a-motorhome\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tyre Question – Appropriate Tyres for a Motorhome?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"motorhomeZagan, our 2001 3.5 tonne Hymer B544 motorhome, needs a couple of new tyres. And here the great motorhome tyre hunt commences! Our plan is to head for the Alps in winter, so we’re going to see some snow and ice, but we then plan to be on the road throughout the summer too.\u00a0Our route isn’t planned out, but we may want to drive through Germany or Austria in winter, and according to the AA<\/a>, that means we need tyres at least marked ‘M+S’ on the sidewall to be legal.<\/p>\n

Just a mo here. As I understand it, there are three ‘categories’ of tyre we could choose:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Full-on winter tyres.<\/strong> Best suited to driving in the cold, better grip, but not well suited to driving in warmer conditions. Folks using these seem to typically have two sets of wheels – one with summer tyres fitted and one with winter tyres. Works well enough if you have a garage to keep four or five wheels, not quite so well if you’re out touring from\u00a0winter to\u00a0summer.<\/li>\n
  2. Mud and snow tyres.<\/strong> Unlike winter tyres, this is a bit of an informal designation. Manufacturers don’t have to go through any independent testing to allow\u00a0them to mark their tyres as ‘M+S’. It’s questionable just how much additional grip these tyres would give us (I’m working on the assumption they’ll give no additional grip), but for legal reasons the tyres need M+S marked on them\u00a0to stay legal in some countries in winter.<\/li>\n
  3. Finally summer tyres.<\/strong> On our two year tour we used these and avoided cold countries in winter. Legally we could have (and still can) visit most countries in winter with these tyres, as long as we have snow chains, which we do.<\/li>\n
  4. One last point:<\/strong> as our garage pointed out, our tyres have enough grip to pass the MOT here, but not enough to be legal abroad. The AA website linked to above covers minimum tread requirements.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I started reading up on which motorhome tyres to get, and pretty soon ended in an exasperated mess!\u00a0Ian and Sue’s blog was the best write-up I found<\/a>, but the tyres mentioned were all rather expensive and only one set had the M+S marking. I also wasn’t sure whether having two different makes was a good idea – one pair on the back and another on the front.<\/p>\n

    In the end we went for the easy option: just get the same tyres as are already on it. These have lasted through 4 years of use by the previous owner, who loaded it at least as much as us but probably drove much less. They’re Chinese Westlake SC301 tyres, and are officially summer tyres, but have the M+S designation (go figure). We got them through www.national.co.uk<\/a>\u00a0as the local garages couldn’t source them, but\u00a0weirdly they told us about the option to buy online, and are more than happy to fit them?\u00a0They’re about half the price of the big names (just over \u00a350 each, plus about \u00a315 a tyre to fit).\u00a0Watch this space to see how we get on with ’em.<\/p>\n

    Cheers, Jay<\/p>\n

    Edit 21 Jan 2016:<\/strong> whoa! The tyre thing turned into something of a saga. Tons of advice came in suggesting the SC301 tyres would be a significant risk to our wanderings. We pondered this, read and wondered:<\/p>\n