A quick update on where I landed on tyres:
Following the discovery above that I had a set of nearly-new, excellent Dunlop summer tyres on the pepper pots that are highly rated for low rolling resistance, low noise and strong wet & dry braking performance, I decided to stick with these.
As I'll only be picking Merlin up from DS Motorsport in October at the earliest, attention then turned to the winter tyres on the spare set of OEM 5.5j 15" alloy wheels supplied with Merlin that Hilary used as winter wheels, in anticipation of the colder weather: These turned out to be Kumho winters dated to 2014, which while not an issue by itself as Hilary always stored them correctly when not in use, as I've said in previous posts, I prefer the security of fresh, premium rubber.
Therefore, rather than spending the best part of £100 per wheel on expensive-but-great Michelin all-seasons that I would be using for less than half a year at a time, I then did a great deal of research as to which premium manufacturers make cold weather tyres that fit these wheels (165/65/15 or 175/60/15 are the standard sizes, whilst the commonly-fitted 185/60/15 is very slightly larger than standard).
I discounted the 165/65 size as too narrow: Although one of my main goals for Merlin is to extract maximum fuel economy and minimal tyre noise - which would guide me towards narrower sizes - winter tyres tend to struggle on dry road braking compared to summers even in colder conditions, due to the tread block movement caused by all those sipes (minute grooves in the tread surface that "grab" snow and ice and give you traction). I feel that you need a certain amount of rubber on the road in order to compensate and be safe - and even the best 165 section tyres cannot provide that.
175 was my preference then, on a 5.5J rim. The next issue is that very few premium tyre manufacturers cater for 175/60/15 - I did look at 175/65/15 which is by contrast very well served, however I felt that with 30 MPH already corresponding to only 1750 RPM in 3rd gear with the new PTW six speed gearbox (
LINK), I didn't want to further gear up Merlin by going over-sized even by a few %.
I was about to pull the trigger on what I concluded to be the best tyre for my needs, Dunlop's Winter Response 2 in 185/60/15 84T flavour - But having read the Trustpilot reviews of some of the online tyre suppliers and been mildly alarmed to learn that these outfits will happily sell you a tyre
up to three years old as new(!), I hesitated.
<as an aside, I have no preference for Dunlops in particular, I just came to this conclusion using the excellent
Tyre Reviews website - it seems that both the summer and winter Dunlops are great choices for our A2s, with strong braking characteristics, low noise and excelling at low rolling resistance>.
To copy and paste from a thread in the wheels and tyres section, I was glad I didn't go ahead, as I then learned that Goodyear have just updated the UltraGrip9 (imaginatively called the Goodyear Ultagrip 9+), which has very few reviews so far, however the UG9 was pretty good and their update should put it well ahead of the now-ancient Dunlop design / compound in most respects. In addition it was not really any more expensive at £245 delivered for a set of four, in exactly the right size and load rating (175/60 R15 81). The added bonus is that as this tyre has only been in production since the middle of last year, I now have the peace of mind that I will receive fresh rubber.
I will do a review of them for the greater good once the weather turns and they go on - I’ll probably swap them once the Devon ground temps drop to single figures come November time. I'm just wondering whether to get them refurb'd, they look OK as is though - any thoughts from the group?
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