Studs or no studs?

[rfslow]

I know this question gets asked a lot, but it's not always so cut-and-dried as "I drive 100% of the time on snow and ice during the winter season".

I live on the Front Range in CO, so we get a lot of snow and ice, but it tends to melt fairly quickly. There's also easy access to the mountains, where it's always snowy and icy during the winter. I just bought an 05' Outback 2.5i Wagon, and shortly will be taking off the the All-Seasons for a dedicated winter tire. I'm trying to break down my driving and what the conditions would be so that I can figure out what type of tire would be best. And here's what I came up with:

50% driving on cold and dry roads (ex: in and around town, or on the highway between Denver and Boulder, after most or all of the snow has melted off of the roads)
30% driving on steep and snowy/icy roads (ex: driving to go skiing, or up and over I-70 in winter)
20% driving on snowy/icy but flat roads (ex: in and around town after a winter storm)

I'm trying to decide between studded winter tires or just regular winter tires. Any opinions? (I don't drive a whole lot, but that shouldn't really factor into this decision...it just means my tires should last me longer...)

Is there any difference between the studded and non-studded regarding tire life or MPG? I know that studded tires will produce more road noise. Are there any other factors I should be taking into account?

Thanks for your help!

[nipper]

Actually not dirivng a lot does factor into it. It means you can live with the extra noise or studded snow tires.

See what your neighbors use. At the very least a quality snow tire on all 4 and a set of chains in the car to insure against Murphies law.

[Gasar-Magnus]

Simple: get Nokians best studded ( hakka 5) you get superiror ice handling 24/7/365 AND on top of that acctually BETTER handling on wet then with studles friction type of tyre like Nokian RSI or R

[Hooray]

i love boulder



i would go with studless

[bikemobile]

I'm moving to boulder in 62 days !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I would go studless nokian or blizzak if I lived in town and drove mostly flat dry roads.

If you lived in the mountains studs are almost required. The troopers run them on their 2wd chargers. Nuff said.

[Hooray]

^^^^

what are you going to do in boulder

[bikemobile]

State Trooper

[steved]

If it is a dedicated snow tire, I would not hesitate to stud.

I run studs, and we only have snow/ice 10% of the time...but that 10% of the time means bumper to bumper idiots slipping and sliding around. The stability on ice is awesome.

Another way to look at it is that a $400 set of tires is cheaper than a $500 deductible on your insurance.

[Sofaking]

This is easily the most comprehensive study of Studded vs Stud-less winter tires I have ever seen. It was done by WS DOT in Alaska, Vermont and Minnesota. In summary it concludes that under a very narrow band of circumstances studded tires will out-perform stud-less. They also conclude that Stud-less tire out perform Studded tires under every other circumstance, and that for most applications studded tires actually perform worse in non-icy situations. Links GO! - http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/research/rep...orts/551.1.pdf

[subiesailor]

Your not one of those terror program funded cops are you? I was in colorado this summer and had to laugh they had all kinds of Water cops watching dams and such for terrorists LOL. Christ in CA we don't even hardly have cops watching the lakes on busy weekends for drunk boaters let along dedicated water police guarding dams ha ha. CO is a cool place but the amount of public funded jobs was shocking.