cchristanis

I live in western ny (rochester). Normally the roads are clean. I noticed i was all over in the slush though today. i have some MotoRaptors that came on a 29er motobecane. They are fine on dry pavement. Or can i get away with a more aggressive knobby for this area. i dont mind the $ but I dont want to be slowed down. i know u cant have everything. thanks for the input

Staggerwing

From experience, studded tires are needed for icy conditions. They're not a lot of fun on pavement, nothing dangerous, but the Nokians I occasionally run feel leaden and a bit "greasy" in the dry. They also don't offer much help on fresh snow, or deeply rutted refrozen slop.

FreeSpirit10

^ ^ ^ Agreed. ^ ^ ^

I don't think the studs will help much with the slushy stuff. They are mainly for ice and hard-packed stuff.

Someone who knows more than me can probably direct you towards some good slush tires.

I'm actually building my first set of studs right now, from the tutorial at the top of this sub-forum.

Glad to see a fellow Rochesterian trying to get out in the snow, and good luck.

skijor

^ +1 to all except the fresh snow comment. They help a great deal on fresh snow that has no ruts. They're worth it for the ice factor alone. It's the small patches of ice that sometimes go unnoticed that catch you off guard.

Fizzaly

Well im gonna continue with the ^^^^ im gonna +1 SKIJOR studs for icy, fresh, and packed snow IMO. They dont do you a whole lot of good in slush. I think knobbies with deep lugs (aggressive) work with slush pretty good

andrelam

I commute daily in Buffalo and I can assure you that every year there are a few days that I am VERY grateful for the studded tires. Most of the time I would be able to get away with just using some knobby tires, but every so often you hit an unexpected patch of ice during the winter. If you've ever gone down on ice you'll know the pain it can cause. My rear wheel slipped out from under me because the 1st season I started with steel studded tires. You'd think it would be easy to recover from a rear wheel slip as all you have to do is get your foot out under you... it was slick so my foot slipped immediately as well and I landed hard on my elbow. I nearly puked from the initial pain. I was exceptionally lucky and didn't do any serious damage. I was off the bike for nearly 2 weeks, but neither broke anything no permanently messed up my shoulder either. Now I won't ride in the winter without studded tires. The weather is so changeable out here that you just don't know what conditions you'll experience an any given day.

I like the Nokia W106, but do wish I could use something wider than 35mm (the limit from my hybird). This works fine about 98% of the time. This is a bit thin when riding over packed loose snow. That stuff starts to move around like sand, and make the front end very unstable. All you can do is keep cranking your feel and power your way through. I don't like riding in that at all and slightly wider tires would help me float over that better.

I just put my snow tires on last Wednesday as we were looking to having some icy pathches on the road last Thursday. We got a dusting of snow here is Amherst, but 5 miles south of here they got almost 3 feet. Talking about localized snow fall! Today we had ourfirst real snow here in Amherst. When I left there was about 5" of powder on my local roads. The main roads were reasonable well plowed. I'll take the snow over heavy rain... this is more comfortable.

Happy riding,
André

cchristanis

I would rather live anywhere else. Im so sick of these winters here. I used to like them when i had the money and time to snowmobile. The only thing keeping me here is my job at good old wegmans warehouse (for now). The worst thing about cycling in this weather is putting all the gear on.