gkastraveckas

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?

fietsbob

Of the 7 , one is an old MTB, With drum brake hubs, Snow Cat wide rims (increases tire contact patch width)

And Suomi _ Nokian studded tires .. bought, shipped from Finland, in 1990.

no Ice on streets for past 2 years at sea level so it sits.. at the ready..

Thorn resistant tubes.. when pumped up will be good for the length of the Icy roads period , which is rarely more than a week or 2.





'/,

Hypno Toad

That one summer, when I had three bikes and said "I don't need to remove the studded tires, I won't need to use that bike until fall" ...That was the summer I had mechanical issues with both summer bikes and ended up needing to quickly grab studded winter bike for a commute in July.

Now I have 5 bikes and I don't commute, but I get my winter bikes converted for summer. I want all my bikes in 'ready-to-ride' condition.

kzin

Dedicated mt bike based snow bike.

Also ride year round bike in the winter when I'm confident the roads are clear

Also summer only ss/fixed bike

corvusVelox

Unless you plan to ride for miles across glare ice, you only really need ONE studded tyre for your front wheel. This prevents it from slipping on small ice patches when you're turning. Keep a standard Big Chunky MTB Tyre(TM) on your back wheel the rest of the time and you probably won't be left wanting much else.

I keep the studded tyre in the closet and switch it in when things get icy.

Having done a number of winters now, there's kind of two ways to do it:
-Get a beater which is nearing the end of its life and wear it out. Repeat next year. Personally, I'd recommend a MTB. Did a road bike with 27' road tyres one winter and it DID work. It was just INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS. While it is true that you can slice through snow with thin high-pressure tyres and feel like a humongous bad-ass when you do, I prefer to SMASH through with wider tyres. The trade-off is that you expend a lot more calories and generally fall off the bike much less often. Then you can impress your friends during the summer by sprinting up hills.

-The other option is to get a good '90s steel MTB frame and build it into an unstoppable beast using quality heavy-duty parts. I kitted a Trek 820 out with a sealed bottom bracket, a 5-speed Sturmey-Archer hub, and quality V-brakes. After a whole winter of proper care and regular riding, (125 km a week) it only needed a front hub overhaul.

PaulRivers

That's a highly debated topic, and you didn't mention where you live.

A number of bikeforum members here in Minnesota tried that, and came back and said they had issues with falls or going up hills and went back to having 2 studded tires - your rear tire has no grip on ice. (To be fair others have sometimes said they go without studded tires at all, I would never do that, but opinions are all over the place).

Also for me, my winter riding is on plowed trails. I'm faster and more efficient with a slimmer studded tire (Schwalbe Marathon Winter) than a fat tire with tread, so I'd be going backwards to use a fat tire with tread on the back.

Like I said it depends on where you live. If I live somewhere where ice was infrequent but happened, I could see myself using just a front studded tire and swapping back and forth. But I don't :-) so I use a separate winter bike with studded tires front and back.

GravelMN

I've got a bike that I call The Mutt because it's a little bit of everything. The winter tires and full fenders come off in early April in favor of touring tires and trail fenders. The winter gear goes back on when the hard freezes start in late fall.

Alligator

I use two studded tires. I put them on in early November and take them off in March. I use the same bike year round.

corvusVelox

That's fair criticism. I'm in south-central Wisconsin; I think that's still visible under my forum image... thing. Hopefully. My commute is mostly relegated to regularly-to-intermittently-plowed trails. Maybe it was dumb luck that everything went so well through most of winter- it was only near the end that some new ice hidden beneath a dusting of snow took me down because you guessed it: turning without studs.


Guess the take-home lesson is: "do what is within your means and makes you feel most safe."

PaulRivers

Ah, sorry that I missed your location.

Thanks for writing back. :-)

Wilfred Laurier

It depends on where you live. If you are in a place where the roads are generally clear, but a wet road might be prone to icing up, then your everyday bike with a studded front tire will probably be enough. If you live in a place that gets (*ahem*) real winter, where the municipality must put salt and/or sand down to make roads passable, then get a beater bike to use over the winter... salt will quickly turn your good bike into a crap bike.

corvusVelox

Man, I miss crap like that all the time. Thing is, I started to doubt whether or not that detail was visible to everyone. The forum does weird stuff from time to time.

Another thing I forgot to mention about the studs-up-front issue is that in addition to not being required to tear up and down a lot of steep hills, my rear wheel's internally geared; which means it's kind of irritating to change tyres because I get to look forward to a day or so of repeatedly stopping to fine-tune the shifting. Related to that, here's a question for those of you with more experience: How much danger is there in wearing down the carbide tips by riding on mostly-clean surfaces? Is it crazy to go through the trouble of switching back to conventional tyres for the less-icy parts of the winter?

robert schlatte

I have a dedicated winter bike but not because I need studded tires (knobby tires are generally all I need). I have a dedicated winter bike that is more of a beater because I don't want to get winter road crap on my good bikes.

PaulRivers

I have an Afline IGH. While I don't need to readjust for shifting (if I remember right there's a orange line you line up then it's set right), it's definitely a huge pain to change tires with it. Part of it is that I don't do it hardly ever, but it's a pain nonetheless.

In somewhere like Madison? Yes, I definitely think it's crazy to go through the trouble of switching back to conventional tires for the less icey parts of winter, for the rear tire. Carbide studs have a reputation for outlasting the tire itself.

If you're looking for a "faster" rolling tire, both the Schwalbe Marathon Winter and the 45nrth Gravdal are designed to keep different amounts of studs on the ground depending on how much air pressure they have in them. With high pressure they roll faster and have fewer studs contacting the ground when going straight (just the middle row of studs). At low pressure they roll slower but all the rows of studs come into contact with the ground. So...if you're concerned, you could ride at high pressure most of the time and low pressure only when road conditions get bad. The Schwalbe Marathon Winter is the faster tire, the 45nrth Gravdal is a little slower but a little better grip on snow and ice. (They also sell a Xerces which is thinner with fewer studs but a few posters thought they were absolute crap for effectiveness so I hesitate to recommend them, whereas I personally use the Schwalbe Marathon Winters and they are great tires).

tldr: Carbide studs should hold up fine even when ridden mostly on bare pavement, but you can make double sure if you want by running high pressure most of the time and low pressure when there's a lot of ice, which would mean the outside row of studs only contact the ground when there's a lot of ice. Honestly I kinda went on familiar spiel with the pressure thing, the studs themselves should be fine even if ridden nearly exclusively on dry pavement - as long as they are carbide, not the cheaper crappy steel studs.

digibud

I have a carbon road bike for summer use. I have a mtn bike with studs for winter icy road riding. I have a fat tire bike for winter trail riding and I swap wheels for summer mountain rides as my fat bike is carbon and I keep a touring bike for...yeah...you know...touring.

fietsbob

I got a old Stumpjumper MTB with a Broken dropout

Piece at a time .. I Built Drum Brake wheels , using All Weather Sports Snow Cat Rims . [45 wide]

For a While I'd Change to the studded tires, overnight when it was to get Icy.

now I have other bikes , so I left the studded tires on. Finnish Nokian same set I got, imported direct ,

20+ years ago.. At Sealevel now Icy days are rare.. climate change , un predictable..

hit 27F last winter but it was 'dry' with clear skies ..





./.

Archwhorides 

I have been riding a Shimano Alfine 8 speed IGH belt drive year around. Previously I used the Schwalbe Marathon Winters in a 35mm width and that was a decent tire, although pretty heavy. On my current bike, the fender clearance is tight, and I can run a 32 mm maximum width slick during the warm season, and a maximum 28 mm studded tire in the winter, which doesn't give me many studded options (only two that I am aware of). The last two winters I rode the 28mm 45 Nrth Xerxes - in the Kevlar version it is a pretty light tire, and I pumped it up to 60 psi in nice weather to ride on the center ridge, and reduced the pressure to 35 psi when ice and snow are on the menu. The two row Xerxes studs do a decent job unless the path is rutted and refrozen (or some other extreme nastiness requiring four stud rows). In summary, I'm on a single bike and set of rims year around, I change out the tires one in the late fall and once in the spring, and I play around with tire pressure during the snowy months, no major complaints.

Bat56

One summer bike

One winter bike

One rain bike that goes out year-round with wheel swaps.

Jim from Boston

Dedicated winter bike or change tires?

I have:

One nearly year-round dry, clean-road bike (carbon fiber road bike, except for deep winter with lingering salt)

One year-round wet, dirty-road bike (aluminum road bike, just recently acquired)

One winter bike for anything (steel mountain bike with Marathon Winter studded tires always on, for the least possibility of ice; I could use it for trails without the studs, but I don't do that kind of riding).

The first two bikes are smooth, easy riding, and easy to carry upstairs; the third is a heavy and significantly tougher ride. The only other bike I would consider would be a folder for travel, but since I usually drive to places, that's not a strong need.

I recently posted to this Road Cycling thread, “Who's Completely Happy with Their Bike”

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inpd

Most of these threads are on people who are trying to improve an existing bike or buy a new bike.

But who is perfectly happy with their bike? Who is *not* looking to make any changes to their existing build and just ride it. What is the build?...

I don't intend to change it for a long time. Anyone else in that boat?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

… I'm very happy with my Specialized S-Works for dry weather riding, but my Cannondale Mountain Bike was pretty heavy and cumbersome as a Wet/Winter beater. So I recently bought a Specialized Diverge Elite aluminum bike [with 30C tires] as a wet weather beater, and it rides nearly as nicely as the S-Works, so I'm very happy with the Diverge.

Now, the Cannondale is reserved completely for miserable studded-tire riding,and now I'm happy about that, and my riding needs are completely met. I liken my three bikes to a Lamborghini, a Humvee, and a Lexus.

DaveQ24 

Old thread but l'll bite - now 2 dedicated and a hybrid that is going to have studded tires. I like having options.

JonathanGennick 

I had intended once to have a dedicated winter bike, built liked that bike enough to ride it in summer too.

Robert C

No . . . Way!

You cannot predict when an ice storm will hit. Last thanksgiving I was at a friends house. It was foggy when I arrived, when I left the temps had dropped and I had a ride of several miles, all on Glare Ice, going home.

If you live where ice storms happen, expect them to happen. Put the studded tyres on before you need them and take them off after the winter storm season is over.

ThermionicScott 

I split the difference, myself. I bought a cheap used front wheel from the co-op and keep a studded tire mounted to it. The rear tire gets changed in fall and spring. (This bike being a fixed gear, I also flip the wheel around to change the gearing -- lower gearing for snow and ice and all that.)

Staypuft1652

Homemade studded front tire last year, in north dakota, worked well, not efficient, but worked well.

Chandne

I use a cross bike for the mucky days in the winter. I use my Roubaix and Tarmac the other times. My cross bike is pretty much dedicated for the winter.