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Old 01-21-12, 04:53 PM
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coldfeet
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I bumped a similar thread on SS, but should have one in Winter as well.

Spent the Holidays rebuilding my old tourer as a 2nd Winter bike, with a pair of the Top Contact Winter IIs. These use soft rubber and lots of grooves for grip, they don't have the grit embedded in the rubber like the originals.

First impressions on clear roads, hard to tell a difference from the Marathon Supremes, smooth, grippy, nice cornering, quiet. Tried experimenting by tracking over the freeze/melt patches in the gutter lane, there is a fair bit of contamination in these, they look black, no problems, kept pushing the boundaries and eventually got the rear to kick out while mashing the pedals on an upslope, the surface was milky ice, recovery was fairly easy.

After a few weeks and about 300 km, I’m very impressed. This week we have had some horrid low temps after a few inches of snow, so the side streets have packed down and are taking a nice glaze. I've had one brief spin out, accelerating from a stop at a nasty intersection, but the tire stayed straight, and it only slipped maybe 3 inches.

These do NOT have the same grip as a full studded tire, ( Ice Spiker etc ) even Schwalbe snow studs have an edge sometimes, but sometimes the Top Contact feel more secure. They do well on those cold, greasy, city streets you sometimes get, can handle thin snow, you can track across actual ice with a fair degree of confidence if it is flat and even. Iced lumpy bits had the bike kicking around, but that’s more the fact that they don't have the lugs to deal with the ruts more than anything else.

The plan was to use these on the better days, and keep the Ice Spikers on the cargo bike. The benefits in rolling resistance and silence means I will order a pair for the Cargo bike, and put the studs on a third bike for those days when most people look out their windows in horror.
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