"Keep the skinny tires on"
 

A fellow fixed gearer, whose opinion I respect, advised me to keep the skinny tires on my bike through winter (this will be my first one here). But everything else I've read (icebike.com) or heard highly recommended knobbies. What would be the justification for using road tires throughout the winter (it snows a lot in Milwaukee)? Cut through the snow?

And if there's a consensus that winter riding should not be done without studded tires, what options would you have for someone whose only means of transportation is a track bike, which difinitely will not fit ice tires?

i was going to post the same question (just 100miles west). if you don't mind, i'd like to add on a bit

will replacing just the front tire with a knobbie help?

Yup.

And there's no consensus.

the front?
let me know if you find a knobby the fits under that brake
i'm definetly going to get as knobby a tire as i can to fit in the back

I would put the knobby in the back because it's where the traction is

Yeah, the idea is to cut through.

If there's snow, then it seems like a toss-up to me. However, it seems like the knobby tire should go on the front if you're going to mix and match. You want more traction on the front tire, 'cause losing traction there sucks.

If there's ice, I'm pretty sure anything short of studs won't help at all - you'll just be sliding around no matter what.

Big tires could help protect your rims from chunks of ice or concealed debris in the snow, plus you'd grip better in the patches of mud that form during the winter (at least where I'm from).

Don't put the knobby in the back unless it's more important to you to have traction on the driving wheel even while the front is sliding out from under you.

Does anyone make narrow 'cross tires? I don't have a lot of clearance on my Basso and so I'm wondering if I can run anything knobby at all.

i have ritchey speedmax cross tires on my fixie and they work great in the snow (yes it snows down here sometimes) but it's a conversion so i have more room.

vittoria makes a 700x27 cross tire, that's the smallest i could find (saw it on nashbar)

a little OT, but has anyone ridden tubulars in the snow?

thats what i had heard before, and why i asked about just putting it up front. i also happened to pick up a gt for $5. i think it was some sort of a hybrid bike with 700 wheels, but wider and knobbier tires. swaping the front wheel will be a piece of cake. i'll probably wait until i start noticing a problem though (hopefully the first problem won't be a major one).

Those larsen mimo's seemed liked the narrowest cross tire I've seen. Though I haven't seen many.

Yep , I have years of winter riding in the snow with tubulars. I have't ridden in a long while so it should be fun again. I hope.

I also did cyclocross on my bike with 700x25 when I first train for it since I didn't know tire were made for the event.

i tried knobbies on my bike ,they work very well. standard 700s clincher or tubulars work also but keep it to 700 x 23-25.

i have ridden 700 x 19 tubulars and they did their job but under snow you can't see the hidden crack, slit and the whatever.


It takes getting use to riding 700 x x25 in snow and ice.

S/F,
CEYA!

other trick is to put knobby or studded 26 inchers on your fix for the winter. Won't have any clearance issues, and you can put a low enough gear on there that the lack of a handbrake won't matter.

Skinniest 'cross tyre I have found is the Hutchinson Gold Pro, nominal 40mm but skinnier than the other 40s. Fits my Mercian track frame and gets under my Campag Avanti brake caliper just fine. Mind you, on glass ice, that spins like a spinny thing too. We don't get proper snow here, but boy, do we ever get mud :)

as someone who ran smooth tires for HALF the winter last year, I would say go for knobbies. MUCH better. A cheap set of knobbies will get you through most stuff. Studded tires might be nice for ice, but they cost a mint, and cheap knobbies did me fine last winter.

If I decide to ride in seriously crappy conditions, I'll put some rain tyres on. They're still 23, so clearance is ok, and made from a softer compound with a relatively deep profile, so traction should be decent on cold, wet pavement. Snow and ice would still be a problem, but snow doesn't remain on the roads for long in a city, and where it's icy, only studded tyres would help anyway.

Funny thing is, knobbies would fit fine on my (road conversion) bike, but for my recently installed fenders... which I will need in the winter. The maximum that fits under them is like 25mm:(

tufo make tubular cross tyres, so you could if you wanted to.

meanwhile if it were a choice of one knobbie tyre on the front or back, i'd put it on the front.

i'd rather be able to steer around an obstacle and have the possibility of braking with a front brake, than only being able to skid into it.

fsnl
sparky

I stick with 25s for winter too. Especially if you're going to be mostly on roads that get salted / plowed semi-regularly. All of that slushy wet snow that builds up in intersections and road shoulders tends to gum up knobbies pretty quickly, while road tires shed the slop quickly and cut thru pretty well. As was mentioned, if youre on ice, your going to slip with anything other than studded tires.
If you've got a little bit of extra cash, its kinda nice to have a cheap conversion or something for the worst of winter as the elements tend to take their toll pretty quickly on frames and components.

If narrow is the way to go on snow and ice, why do skates have hard, narrow blades? It would seem to me that knobbies would be superior (but only marginally..).

Ya want traction? Put SPIKES on those tires like ice-racing motorcycles do!

knobbies suck for cornering on the wet. suck. i think that the idea is that knobbies work better in gravel and dirt, where the the crap on the ground has some friction at least against itself. for snow and ice this isn't the case. I think that they conditions that would make knobbies work better (packed snow, perhaps) are rare and tend to (at least in the case of packed snow) be slipperly as hell with or without knobbies anyway.

I mean this is at least how I arrived at my conclusion last year to roll my 23s through the winter. There were maybe two days where conditions were too slick for my setup and I'm unconvinced that knobbies would have made it better while they definitely would have been inferior to 23s in the 'normal' conditions of winter -- wet pavement and some slush.

I rode to work every single day last winter except when it rained and my 23s were fine. Ask me about how Look pedals get screwed up in the snow and ice sometime, though. :(

Umm... because the point of the blades is to concentrate enough downforce on the ice to heat and melt it, allowing the skater to slide along on a cushion of water. You'd have to get some pretty skinny tires for that to be a serious concern.

Personally I've ridden both skinnies and knobbies in the winter. My experience is that the skinnies get me around just fine from point A to point B, but if you actually want to go play in the snow, get knobbies.

Packed snow is very common in my commuting environment, and that's where the knobies were most useful. they were not any better or worse on ice than smooth tires. If melted snow is more common than packed snow, they are not worth it, but if packed snow is a common occurrence, and if hills are involved, knobbies are a big improvement. If ice is very common you might want to suck it up and buy studded tires.