It's a bit late in spring to talk about tyres and snow chains but I think its worth it.
About November last year I could see that this winter was going to be a bad one again so instead of complaining about it I would kit the van out before the weather started, so what to do first, the tyres on the van where fine and I didn't want to bin tyres with 5mm plus of tread so I started to look into chains... there are so many on the market in the end I was seeing a lot of good reviews on "Thule" chains and found the best deal from towequipe.com but there was still so many types to chose.... in the end I went for the CS-10 097 to fit my standard 205 65 x 16 tyres, these chains had a very easy on and off system.
I got the removal of the chains down to 30 secs and putting them on to 5mins a side the chains performed very well in show 1 inch to 5 inches and the ice breakers where great.
From the picture below you can see the impact to the ground!
This was all great for the large snow falls but I had another problem if the snow was not at an 1 inch deep then chains became more of a problem.
So the hunt for a snow tyre was needed in the end I settled for a pair of Hankook RW06 for the front which where great these tyres could deal with the ice and slush left from the snow and I could now get up my drive without and problems for the first time without snow chains.
The patten was still quite close so it still preformed well on the road without the ice or
snow problems. I was in the spring going to rotate the front winter tyres to the back and put the summer tyres on the front again to stop the higher tyre wear due to the softer compounds used but these winters have helped be to get out of camping sites which I would not have with the summer ones so for the moment they will stay on the front.