Subaru Forester Owners Forum banner

Studs on - it will now not snow in the Philly Metro Area 11/25/2014

('06-'08) 
3K views 25 replies 10 participants last post by  ewong_kaizen 
#1 ·
You are Welcome
 

Attachments

See less See more
1
#3 ·
Have you run studs before?

My dad ran studs one year here in WI (as a mailman on his Jeep, illegal otherwise) and he said that for 90% of his winter driving a snow tire was better because on pavement, or anything but packed ice and snow his braking distances were worse. If he did get into the packed snow or solid ice conditions the studs were great though.
 
#6 · (Edited)
What kind of studded winter tire is he using? I'm curious if it's one of the top-tier ones (as well as what he's comparing them with).

It's been proven for the past decade that, among the top-tier studdable winter tires, the old adage that studs will kill you when it's wet is now far from true.

Instead, there are many studdable winter tires which, even with studs, will stop as well as handle better than comparable-tier "Studless Ice & Snow" tires.

Seat-of-the-pants, one's subjective feeling may well be that you're getting longer stopping distances because the feeling of emergency braking and handling maneuvers with studded tires is not the same as what we're used to with our "normal" tires, but the test data shows otherwise.

From a previous post of mine:

(4) That studded tires are somehow less safe in clear-wet or clear-dry conditions. We've seen in test after test from within the past decade that this is just not true at all. According to old thinking, the studs prevent the rubber of the tires from making full contact with the road, decreasing the contact patch. We can now see that under load, much of the studs simply retracts into the surrounding rubber, which minimally decreases the contact patch. Furthermore, it is now understood that this decrease is offset by the fact that the remainder of the studs that still protrudes helps aid traction through physical interaction with the imperfections in the roadway surface (REF: http://www.autoreview.ru/_archive/section/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=140998&SECTION_ID=7890 as well as previous years' tests of premium studded winter tires versus "Studless Ice & Snow" tires). The end bias is much more dependent on the consumer selecting the specific model that most suits such conditions, rather than the presence or absence of studs.
Prior to this latest test, from about 2010-11 or so, various overseas testing data pointed to the fact that tires of the "Studless Ice and Snow" sub-genre are also typically weaker in terms of clear-road performance, both in the wet and in the dry, as compared to class-leading studded winter tires. At the time - as it is now, - this was postulated to be due to the physical structure (i.e. softer compound, etc.) of the "Studless Ice and Snow" tires being softer than that of studdable winter tires, whose structure needed to be somewhat more resilient in order to support the embedded studs. This past thread from LegacyGT.com held a lot of relevant discussion towards this end: http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/stud-not-stud-tires-123392.html

As I posted in that long-ago thread, if one is going to maintain that modern premium studded tires are somehow "unsafe" on clear roads - wet or dry - one would also then need to concede that a modern "Studless Ice & Snow," even a premium one, is just as unsafe.

The truth of the matter is that as long as we are comparing premium, top-tier, tires, the only downsides of having studs is the toll they exact in terms of NVH, as well as secondary concerns such as legality-of-use (and this includes the duration for which they can be used, legally, on one's roadways, which, in some areas, is not insignificantly more restricted for studded tires than it is for non-studded winters), as well as the more remote possibilities of stud-induced damage to the tire (puncture of the inner tire surface) and stud loss due to excessive wheelspin (note that this is not stud loss at highway speeds, which is just improper installation).
 
#9 ·
Man I can't even rationalize snow tires in Montgomery cty, and now were talking studded?
Then don't. :wink2:

Realize that "winter tires" may well not be best for all winter conditions.

Take a peek at TyreReviews, UK, where this quote was grabbed:

...we've come to the conclusion the best winter tyre for the UK climate (cold, wet pavement, occasional snow), is actually an all season tyre.
Source: 2014 All Season Tyre Test - TyreReviews

Remember the currently most common (and still perpetuated by the lay/non-industry mass media and advertisers) misconceptions of "winter tires: -

(1) Even the worst winter tires will be better than the best All-Seasons in wintry conditions - we've seen that this is blatant marketing lie as test-data suggests that, quite frankly, the worst winter tires perform worse than top-tier All-Seasons in wintry conditions, and that this gap stretches even wider when there is no wintry precipitation on the roadways.

(2) "45-deg. F. and switch" - again, we have quantified data, both from reliable test sources as well as from same-brand-multiple-genre comparisons to suggest that the actual temperature range dips significantly below this point, and that, what's more, it's actually the presence/absence of wintry precipitation on the roadway surfaces that makes the biggest difference in terms of when to switch-over.

(3) That a narrower fitment is outright better for winter applications - here, the latest test data suggest that one needs to dissect more carefully exactly what one desires from the tire in terms of performance characteristics, and that a two-size change in width, provided that we keep the same tire, may be the first time that we can see real-world differences.

and the 4th, which I'd already listed above:

(4) That studded tires are somehow less safe in clear-wet or clear-dry conditions. We've seen in test after test from within the past decade that this is just not true at all. According to old thinking, the studs prevent the rubber of the tires from making full contact with the road, decreasing the contact patch. We can now see that under load, much of the studs simply retracts into the surrounding rubber, which minimally decreases the contact patch. Furthermore, it is now understood that this decrease is offset by the fact that the remainder of the studs that still protrudes helps aid traction through physical interaction with the imperfections in the roadway surface (REF: Âûéòè èç ðåçîíàíñà as well as previous years' tests of premium studded winter tires versus "Studless Ice & Snow" tires). The end bias is much more dependent on the consumer selecting the specific model that most suits such conditions, rather than the presence or absence of studs.

:wink2:
 
#10 ·
100% agreed @TSi+WRX! my "rationalize" comment is more based on the norm usage in our area and conceptions rather then the effectiveness of a good combination. and why i now chose to use all seasons...all season. and often quote #1 basically for people that love that claim.

when i did have mult setups i followed what i think #2 is getting at as far as more of a presence/absence rule of thumb, rather then the common, snow fell...whens march idea. but living in PA (probably similar to your OH) gets quite frustrating. and i can achieve the same benefits just by altering the way my mind, left foot, and right foot behave while sticking with my all seasons that ive become very used to going on my 6th set in a row.
 
#12 ·
I have a Finnish review here of 12 studded and 8 non-studded winter tires from 2013, but I don't remember where it came from. In their tests, the best studded tires only had about an 8% longer stopping distance from 80km/h on wet asphalt than the best non-studded, and were 15% better than the worst non-studded. Five of the top seven tires in their wet braking test were studded. Non-studded did better on dry asphalt, but the difference between best and worst performance was less (2m vs 7m). Noise was where the studded tires fell way behind, for obvious reasons.

Interestingly, the studded Hakka 8s beat the unstudded Hakka R2s on both their wet and dry asphalt tests, but only by 20-60cm.

Either way, if their nuimbers are to be believed, studs don't make much difference to braking on wet or dry asphalt any more. But they did reduce stopping distance by 40% on ice compared to the worst non-studded (doesn't appear to give the temperature they tested at).
 
#13 ·
^ Exactly - we've seen this time and again on various tests from the past decade, if not more. :smile:

It's really more about which specific tires are being compared more than anything else - there are going to be better/worse performers for any of the various tasks, depending on the specific tires chosen for the comparison.

Similarly, we also seen exactly what kind of margin various tires may produce - which leads to the very real-world conclusion that buying "the best" is really only worth the paper the words are printed on in a bench-race at the local bar. :wink: Realistically, buying any of the top-tier performers - remembering to match the tires for your expected conditions and driving wants - will produce as good of a real-world result as anyone can possibly expect.
 
#16 ·
^ That's what I suspected - it's really amazing how far technology has come, and even more so just how much technology jumps with each season (look at some of the data I cited back before the turn of the decade, and look at that from 2013/14: there's quite a difference).

And hey, no worries about the knowledge transfer. It's why we're all here! - to learn from and share with each other. :smile:
 
#17 ·
OP, I'm in the philly area as well and I'll keep an ear out for you as you come down the road! Pretty sure its illegal here, but definitely better than running on bald tires like I see a lot of people here.

And FWIW, I'm in Montgomery County too. During last wednesday's storm with about 4-inches on the unplowed roads, I got to do a back to back comparison with my wife's new 2015 Forester on stock allseasons and my 2010 Forester on Performance Winter Tires (Michelin Primacy Alpin PA3). The 2015 was absolutely scary compared to the 2010 which i'm attributing to the tires. It pushed through the turns and kept sliding. Didn't intend to get snows for the 2015 because it's the wife's car and she doesn't drive much, but after seeing how crippled the car was i'm not so sure.
 
#23 ·
A couple of side bar comments

a) My subaru may be my "daily driver", but I do NOT DRIVE THE CAR every day.
I bicycle to work, my wife walks to work, the kids walk to school. So the care gets driven on Saturdays...

b) If I get tired of the "tire roar", I have a second car to take (a 1992 MKII VW Golf)

c) I had several sets of studded Nokia Hakkas on my old 4Runner. So I am well aware of what studded tires do and don't do. They don't make you a hero driver - except under certain conditions - when the DO make you a hero driver...
 
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top