Winter Cycling - studding your own tires

My dad told me his old college roommate had some homemade studded tires for his winter bike. Anyone have any experience with this? Anyone have instructions? This sounds like a fun project for a budget commuter.

I just did it. I'll post pics/instructions to my blog and reply back in a jiffy.

The old method is the screw short sheet metal screws into the knobs of tires.

http://kc-bike.blogspot.com/2007/12/tricks-of-trade-make-your-own-studded.html

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=369227

Cool, I'm making my own tires as well. I have a set of POS Panaracers that lost almost all their studs. When one of the tires got a punture flat I deceided to restud it myself. I'm using 1/2 inch pan (rounded) head screws inserted much like you show. I thought the pan heads would bottom out flat against the tire nicely and the rounded head would be less damaging if it got pushed back into the tire a little bit. I'll probably use a few layers of duct tape to cover the heads since it'll stick in place.

Unfortunately I've decided to try to replace all 156 original studs. I'm about 2/3 done with my first tire. It looks like it'll take about 2 hours per tire and eventually I'd like to do 4 of them.

Anyway, please keep us updated on how the tires are working out.

Last night, at 1:00AM I took them for a 3/4 mile spin on perfectly smooth glass ice and they were bad-ass. I could break the back loose by getting on it (such as while climbing), but the front stayed planted. I didn't lose traction in the rear enough to have it come out from under me or keep me from moving. It just got some wheel-spin.

Well, mother nature hosed me, quite literally this morning. This morning, temps slid up to 34, stuff was slushy and rain was still falling. Not so good for my studded tires. I rode about 3 miles on them this morning on wet pavement. No issues yet, and all the studs are still sticking out nicely, and showing no wear. Things should solidify a bit throughout the day. When this ice goes away, I'll be riding on the new Kendas. I may put them on my rigid MTB, or I might just steal the rigid's wheels, and swap wheelsets on this bike when I want to switch between my ghetto-studs and the knobby kendas.

I started a set last year, got about half way through the first one and set it aside due to winter being over. I went to start again due the ICE STORM- that did not hit (yet?) here in Kansas.

I have some old airless tubes that I am tempted to try. I figure it may be quick and easy beacause I can just drill the screws in.

Where in Kansas?

I am just below you in Gardner.

Damn, that makes one more local. :)

How may locals are hanging around this place?

Needless to say I do not meet may people who are equiping thier bikes for winter.

It's nice to come here though and type with others who understand the pleasures of cycling.

so, i've looked around and seen 2 methods. ONe involving hex heads out and the other with points out. Which works better?

You'd need to ask someone who has tried both, I'd bet. I have less than a mile on actual ice and tips out worked pretty well. In slush with a thin layer of ice on top, they were sluggish and of little help. It didn't do any better than my knobbies alone would have.

I'm considering cutting or grinding the studs down on my tires. They didn't let me down today, but they didn't impress me, either.

Some blog excepts:

The sidewalk north of 87th was still covered in a thin layer of ice, which worked nicely with the studs this morning, but I think they would have been ridable with normal knobbies. The path over the viaduct, however, is a different story. The slush had frozen hard into an arctic moonscape. Imagine technical singletrack with 1/10th the traction. The studs did worse on this than before it was frozen. Yesterday, it was merely difficult to pedal through. This stuff was constantly flailing my bike around all over the place. Needless to say, my ride to the bus was very, very slow. I don't have a proper pair of studded tires to compare them to, but I'm pretty sure there's not a tire out there that would make easy work out of this stuff.

...the only place the studs have really come into their own for me is on the smooth glare ice.

... smooth ice is so rare around here that I'm considering writing off the studded tire project. I haven't given up on them yet, but I need to compare the handling to some normal MTB tires.

I tried lowering the pressure to what I'll guess was 25-30 PSI. It was 35 when I left home. Still no dice. All I can think is that the studs might be more effective if they weren't as long as they are.

I finished mine yesterday, I'll post a pic later.

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/8290/cimg6546ft8.th.jpg (http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg6546ft8.jpg)http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/3482/cimg6545up1.th.jpg (http://img297.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg6545up1.jpg)http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/3802/cimg6544zv6.th.jpg (http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg6544zv6.jpg)http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/1478/cimg6542ss7.th.jpg (http://img297.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cimg6542ss7.jpg)
I used 328 3/8 inch #4 wood screws. Lined the inside of the tire with half an inner tube and some duct tape to hold it into place. They worked reasonably well on my street, haven't actually gone anywhere on them.
What do you all think?

My dad told me his old college roommate had some homemade studded tires for his winter bike. Anyone have any experience with this? Anyone have instructions? This sounds like a fun project for a budget commuter.

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/hotbike/StuddedTire.jpg

I used 252 #6 x half inch machine screws. Used a Mr.Tuffy tire liner to protect the tube.

This year I found studded tires in the LBS. The machine screws are not hardened and wear out.

You can try making your own if you want. But I would rather buy them rady made, if they are available.