Posted in Winter Cycling, figure I could get good answers here as well.

Just wondering what's more common, do you guys have a dedicated winter bike to grab and go when you need it or just change to studs for the season? Or have studs on a separate wheelset and change as needed?

I don't ride in the snow. But we get a lot of rain around here.

I've used a single bike for commuting for years.

I've finally dedicated one bike to winter commuting which means it gets much of the water/road grime/etc, and am experimenting with "commuter tires" on it.

How frequently do you desire changing from studs to studless? I'd find changing tires on a regular basis to be a bit of a pain, so I'd either go with a spare set of wheels for a quick change, or a spare bike.

I'm also a roadbike commuter, but I think most of the studded tires are MTB sizes (and probably appropriate). So, that might also drive one's bicycle choices.

I don't have a dedicated winter bike per se, it's more of a dedicated crappy weather in general bike. It's got some really grippy knobbies and also doubles as my off road fun bike.

I have a dedicated 'winter' bike with fenders that I use whenever the roads are wet. I use the same type of tires but they're 28 instead of 23mm. I have a backup winter bike as well which I've needed for one reason or another in each of the last two seasons.

I switch to studded tires in the winter on my commuters. I have two commuters, one with drop bars and one with flat. I ride the drop bar one most of the year but I turn to the flat bar one in the winter.

I do both. My beater commuter has a set of studded wheels and a non-studded set. I hate to ride on studs when conditions don't call for it. But when the weather is extra nice I'll ride my other commuter, which has slick 25mm tires. They both have fenders, but only the beater has racks.

After buying a new commuter last year, I fit my old commuter with studded tires for the winter. Will be switching them back to smoothies for the summer. But I had thought about buying a separate set of wheels to have handy for a quick change. But now that's not necessary.

Doesn't matter what we do.

When I lived in a house with a big garage, I had a dedicated winter beater.
Now I live in a small flat and I switch front wheel, while using rear tyre with small knobs so it's not too loud on pavement, but not too slippery on snow.

I live in flat lands where roads are plowed and salted. If I lived in a hilly area, I would make sure to have a rear studded as well in the snow.

So it's all very much the case of your particular needs, budget, room etc.

It's good to have two bikes regardless of how you split them up. Right now my winter bike is also my cargo knock around bike, and I do change tires on it appropriate to the season. If I had more winter I'd put studded tires on another wheelset (or just a front wheel) and swap wheels as needed. Just the convenience would be worth it to me.

I think for me, if I needed studded tires, it would depend on how often I expected there to be snow/ice on the ground, and what duration. If there was slick stuff more often than not, I would probably just keep the studded tires on the bike. If I only had one bike, and conditions were variable I'd probably want to swap out the wheelset rather than changing tires all the time. But the ideal situation is to just have two bikes set up for either condition.

Hey New London CT, I'm guessing you've seen Casey Neistat zipping around there on weekends, or you probably know of his dad's restaurant Muddy Waters Cafe.

i have a dedicated winter commuter: IGH disc brake hybrid with full fenders and it wears schwalbe marathon winter studs 365 days/year so it's always ready to go, even if we get a freak ice storm in july

i have a dedicated regular commuter: disc brake CX bike with full fenders and 700x28 conti GP 4 seasons; it sees the VAST bulk of my commuting mileage.

i also have a light and fast Ti road bike that i also sometimes commute on when the weather is ideal (it doesn't have fenders, so i try not to ride it in the rain).


i really, really like having a dedicated winter bike because it allows me to just leave the studs on it all the time without futzing around with tire or wheelset swaps. it was an ideal situation this past winter when our weather was so freaking up and down that i was switching back and forth between my winter bike and my regular commuter seemingly every couple of days. i didn't have to plan anything out, if i woke up and we got frozen precipitation overnight, i'd just hop on the winter bike and go. if it was above freezing or i knew the streets were still bone dry, i'd just hop on my regular bike and go. i like things that are easy like that. in the old days when i only had one commuter bike and did the tire swap thing, i found that arrangement to be far less than ideal, hence the dedicated winter bike purchase several years ago.

Good feedback, thanks everyone. The reason i ask is that i started commuting year round about 2 years ago and after the winter a lot of parts went to hell. I changed what i needed to but don't want to do that every spring. I'm wondering if it's worth it to get a second bike or just switch out wheels. Do you typically need to change out chain, chainrings and cassette yearly?

PatrickGSR94, I definitely know Muddy Waters, good place. Unfortunately I don't know any other cyclists, I would like to get involved in that community though.

heh, Casey isn't a cyclist, he's a film maker and generally a YouTube celebrity. He lives in NYC but has a house in New London also. He made that video several years ago about bike lanes in NYC where he was purposely crashing into various bike lane obstructions to show how stupid the cop was for giving him a ticket for not being in the bike lane. He started posting daily vlogs a little over a year ago and he went from about 500K subscribers now to 2.75M in that time. I just find his vlogs very entertaining mainly because of his editing style and amazing talent for "telling a story" with each video.

And his 1 year old little girl is super cute.

https://youtu.be/z1ywUmzOvQo?t=1m47s

Once I had a bike set up with studded tires on drum brake wheels & I had other bikes ,

I just parked the old MTB set up [Suomi Nokian tires] until needed ..

given my location, its been 2 ice free winters .. ( tires Bought in 1990 are still fine )

it's so easy to change out tires that this is not a tough choice for me. I am a big believer in 2 commuters. I haven't taken the studded tires off of one of them yet but I will eventually.

Here, we don't really have a dedicated winter

All 3: dedicated winter/early spring bike with a separate rear wheel with studded tire but I swap the tire on the front wheel.

This is what I've found, and why I have a 2nd bike set up specifically for winter commuting. I think it's the chemicals they put down in our area for the snow/ice. It completely rusts any bit of steel on my bike, and quickly oxidizes any unpainted aluminum.

The first year I commuted all winter on my regular "good" bike. After that first winter my bike was in such terrible condition that I decided it was now my winter bike and I bought a different "good" bike for summer commuting.

I used to try and keep up with replacing all the rusted parts of my winter bike (chain, rings, cassette, cables, etc) but after realizing that I'd be replacing them every single year I now just run things until they literally break before replacing them. So the bike looks like it's some form of rolling modern art sculpture.

I have had a dedicated rain/winter/city fix gear forever. (It was also ridden year 'round as a fix gear training bike until recent years.) THat bike has seen cyclocross tires and studs n the past. (The studs always went on separate wheels.) 15 years ago, I set up a geared bike that is similar. (1980s sport bikes set up for 27" wheels work really well for this. Running 700c, you have plenty of room for fenders and big tires. Mafac brakes almost always reach the lowered rims with no issues and are still widely available used. The joke used to be - $50, but you had to remove and dispose of the Peugeot UO-8 attached to them. Now those UO-8s are becoming popular. Seriously- Mafacs work well even in quite worn condition. Small play in the pivots isn't a big deal. A lot is quite safe. (This coming from someone who has probably 70,000 miles on them.) My current two rain/winter/city bikes share a set of Mafacs, both as fronts. I use lesser centerpulls as rears. Most centerpulls can be adopted easily to the other position with a quality hardware bolt.

Ben

I don't have a bike that's only ridden in the winter... my fixed-gear MTB has fenders, and I swap between slick and studded tires as needed. A year ago, I made half of the job easier by buying a really cheap front wheel to keep the studded tire on, and I may eventually buy/build another FG rear wheel so that I can avoid mounting/dismounting the Nokian tires entirely.

(If you're really curious, I also change gearing. During the nice months, I run 71", but since the Nokian tires slow me down a bunch even before you consider snow and ice and bulkier clothing and wind, I drop it to 59" in the winter. My rear wheel has a flip-flop hub with an 18T cog mounted on one side and 16T on the other, and I also swap between 42T and 45T chainrings so that I can continue using the same chain.)

Winter (and salt) are pretty tough on the drivetrain. But that also depends on what you use. Up to 8 speeds at the rear has proven to be bomb proof for me. Even the cheapest parts. 9 and more - the things get more sensitive.

Aluminium doesn't rust, but steel chainrings are both cheaper (heavier) and harder to wear, even in the winter. Just clean and lube chain and chainrings from time to time, in the winter especially.

Sprockets - I get cheaper, lower class ones - a bit heavier, but they last one winter - just like the more expensive ones. And work the same.

Chain - decent 6-7-8 speed chain is about 10 euros and it gets done after one winter. So about 2 chains a year for me - one for the November-March, the other for the rest of the year.

Derailleurs - never had problems. A no-name (Chinese) rear derailleur has been on my MTB for five hole years (all year long riding) - cost a couple of euros. Front derailleur on my all year MTB is from 1996 - still working fine. That one is Shimano.


Also, make sure to grease the bearings (both wheels, even the steerer) before and right after the winter. October and March for me.

Derailleur pivot points also - a bit of (new, clean) engine oil works wonders.

Cables - important for high precision 9, 10, 11 speed stuff - for 8 and less gears, it can work OK even with rusty cables and housings.

We're just getting to warmer months here in the UK and my one and only bike broke. So I've bought a nicer bike to commute over the summer and my old bike will become the dedicated winter bike. It already wore a rack and mud guards.

I bet this is how a few people end up with a dedicated winter bike - they upgrade and ol' faithful gets relegated to the rainy season.

I have a winter bike that gets studs on it, and I ride it most of the winter. In the summer it gets smooth tires but rarely gets ridden. It's pretty much a dedicated winter commuter, with IGH and hydraulic disc brakes, and is an upright bike, which makes it a bit slow in the summer.

I actually have 4 bikes set up for winter but that's because Denver's weather is, well, a bit goofy. Denver's snowstorms tend to hit hard and fast, then melt just as fast. While we have had a few winters where the snow hits the ground and lingers for more than a few days out of the last 30+ that I've commuted, that is rare. I've only really had it happen 3 or 4 times. Most of the time, the roads are mostly dry even a couple of days after a snowstorm and they can even be mostly dry a few hours after a snowstorm. So I have a road bike with wider tires that I use most of the time. I have a cruiser style bike (actually a mountain bike with curvy tubes) that has hard pack knobbies that I use for light snow and I have a regular mountain bike with unstudded knobbies or rides in powder snow rides. Finally, I have a softtail (not a full dually mountain bike) with studded knobbies that I use for icy rides and/or when the powder is significantly packed.

When spring comes around...about the end of May...I told you that Denver's weather is goofy...the studded knobbies come off and I switch back to regular knobbies for the softtail. I swap to slicks for the cruiser. The other two bikes just lose their fenders.

I've done all of the above.

Just putting studs on the one bike is the cheapest way to go. Depending on your riding style, it can be a pain to push the studs on a warm, sunny, midwinter day.

The second wheelset method wasn't all it's cracked up to be. You still get greasy from the chain when swapping the rear, and it means carry two different sizes of tubes. Yes, it's quicker and easier than swapping tires, but not by that awful much.

Having a second bike with studs on is the easiest and most convenient. I don't have a dedicated winter bike, but instead, one of my two "commuter" bikes can fit the studs.

In the three-seasons, it's nice having that second bike too. Variety is the spice, and when you wake up to find that inevitable overnight slow leak you didn't know you had, you can just grab the other bike.

Besides, N+1 must be obeyed.