Originally Posted by
PaulRivers
That's pretty cool.
I would say, though, that if you change your mind and do much street riding, you should *really* replace the studded tires with the quality ones (Nokian, Schwalbe) with carbide studs. If you do much research here, there's post after post after post from people who had the cheap Innova tires with steel studs, then after less than a year of riding wiped out and realized the studs had completely worn down to the tire.
On the tires with carbide studs the tires itself will wear out before the studs do.
The free Innova studded sound perfect for what you're talking about - cheap studded tires for offroad (and ice) riding. The steel studs won't wear nearly as quickly if they're not subjected to riding on pavement. Sounds good - as long as there's no or very very little road use.
That happend to me. After less than 2 months of use the Innova tire on the rear (I already had to replace the front with a Nokia as the bead had failed. The bead failure would have been covered under warrentee, but there was at least 2 week back order plus shipping from the west coast adds an other week. I could not be without my bike for 3 to 4 weeks). The front Nokia W106 held on just fine, but the rear tire got not grip on any sort of ice. I went down hard and got lucky I didn't bread anything. I could barely more my arm and shoulder for over a week. After that the pain went away quickly and there were no long term problem. After that I bought a 2nd Nokia and after two full winters on the Nokias you'd be hard pressed to tell that they were used at all. Carbite studs are AMAZING. Steel studs last about 30 to 60 days on pavement.
Happy riding,
André