When choosing drives for the winter, the question often arises: to take alloy wheels or stamped?
Usually they offer to take stamping because it ... and then they begin to tell you the advantages of stamped discs. However, all these "advantages" are very similar to urban legends or myths that have been circulating among motorists for years. So let's try to find the difference in the drives :)
What is known about how drives behave:
- they are destroyed in different ways. casting is more resistant to changes in geometry, but "knows how" to break, steel wheels easily bend
- at very low temperatures (well below -30) steel wheels are preferred in the far north, because alloy wheels become fragile
- steel wheels are usually heavier than alloy wheels
- due to structural features, on average, steel wheels clog worse with snow
- rolling a stamped disc is easier than cast and the result will be much safer
What conclusions can be drawn?
The opinion of TiresAddict is this: if you do not live in the far north and are willing to pay for the maintenance of beautiful alloy wheels - do not hesitate and buy alloy wheels.
The difference in the destruction of the disk if you suddenly drove into the pit can be disastrous in both cases, for example, on a steel disk, the wheel can be disassembled due to a strongly bent disk, and on the cast wheel the disk itself may burst. And of course it’s better not to fall into such situations.
In winter, the severity of the disk is most likely compensated by correctly selected rubber, which makes a much greater contribution to the road grip, and the driver is hard to drive out of a large snowdrift anyway, so the wheels here are not of great importance.
Another feature may be associated with low-quality and cheap discs at low temperatures, so of course you should not choose the cheapest casting, or at least imagine that it is wary to go somewhere on it at -40. And if you intend to go on a trip to the north - when figuring out exactly how to make double glazing and where it will be possible to put a webast and insulation for the motor, at the same time take an interest in those who have already traveled there - which discs should be put on such trips. And do not immediately believe in the word "experienced" people who have not traveled outside their own area for 15-20 years.
The rest of the story with stamped wheels resembles the legend when "experienced" drivers with mostly long experience and those who do not like changing habits recommend cheaper alternatives to the usual hardware, despite the fact that the technology for manufacturing alloy wheels has long gone ahead :)
Do you have your own opinion on the difference in discs in winter? Write a comment :)