Winter tyres or winter wheels?

Question

I've just picked up some lightly studded tyres - winters aren't too bad here but ice can be a problem. The bike is a hybrid mainly used for commuting, with some early starts. Most of my route is theoretically salted, but not all and not always. I'm planning to mount them this weekend on the rims I've got, so this question is thinking ahead to when I put my normal tyres back on the bike. The bike in question is a hybrid set up with a not-easily-removable child seat, so must do duty all year round.

Does it make more sense to swap the tyres or the whole wheels?

I've thought of several reasons both ways. In favour of swapping wheels:

• Rims, cassettes etc. wear out anyway, so I'll have to replace them at some point (the rims have >5000 km on them).
• I can put the summer wheels back on if I'm going for a long ride on a warm day. (I now have other bikes for this so it's not an advantage any more).
• Over the course of a year it's less work to leave the tyres on the rims (3 season tyres are marathon plus so not the easiest to mount, but not the hardest either).

In favour of swapping the tyres on the rims:

• Save a little storage space.
• Defer some costs.

and the two big ones:

• Will I have to align the derailleur and/or brakes when I switch wheels?
• What effect will running a new cassette on a worn chain have? Alternatively: when do I need to swap the chain if I'm running 2 cassettes of different ages.

What experience do people have of the last 2 points in particular? Is there anything I've missed?

Answer 1

My advice is to run one winter and decide in the spring.

You would want your nicer wheel to be your summer. Use this is an opportunity to buy a nicer wheel-set.

With spacers you can typically get two to align.

If is a hybrid you probably have a mid width rim. Rims take a ranges of tire widths. I would stay with same width unless you are making a big jump in tires sizes.

As for chain change it when it is worn out.

For me once I have a wheel off the bike a tire change out is only a couple minutes.

Once you wear out the current rim you may decide you want another bike with more gears or disc brakes. I would defer.

I know you say space is tight but consider a second beater winter bike. Maybe even a single speed. Road salt is hard on a bike.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you have rim brakes, since you are asking about wear and aligning brakes.

• Winter riding will wear out everything faster. The rims are going to be wet and dirty for most of the time, and the same goes for transmission. It might be a good idea to use any old equipment you don't care about as winter parts. The exception is that better hubs have better sealing. 5000 km isn't that much for rims, by the way.

• Unless the rims are exact same width (or the rotor is aligned exactly the same) you'll have to adjust brakes every time you switch wheels. Possibly the derailleur too.

• New cassette on worn chain will be noisy, wear out the cassette fast and skip if the chain is worn badly enough.

Answer 3

One of the advantages of having winter wheels is that you can spec wider rims for the winter season. Fatter tires should be able to give you more traction in snow and mud. You can then switch to thinner rims and tires in the spring.

Your winter wheelset could be on the cheapside since you're not particularly interested in superlight wheels. You can often find very cheap used wheelsets on craigslist from thieves who steal wheels people upgrading to lighter wheelsets (if you buy the used as a pair, you lower the risk of buying hot goods).

But yes, you'll have to realign your brakes if your rim width changes or if you switch wheel brand/makes. But that's a relatively simple job - as is adjusting your derailleur (which might again happen unless you use the same brand/make rear hub).

You might as well have a dedicated winter chain to go with your winter rear tire/cluster -- or just replace your chain every spring. This'll prevent the excess wear on your winter chain from affecting your summer cluster too much.

Answer 4

Offering a compromise solution:

I had a spare front wheel with a studded tire when I was broke and biking all winter (on a cheap 26" rigid MTB)

I still haven't run full studs four winters in to bike commuting in the upper midwest.

Answer 5

One thing to consider is the effort to install a tire to the rim. Summer tires are thin and supple, so the effort to install a tire is minimal (unless the rim is a "tubeless compatible" rim in which case the effort can be Herculean).

However, studded winter tires can be bit stiff, so you may not be able to install a tire in less than 5 minutes. For example a 10 minute job would mean you need to do the job to four tires per year, wasting 40 minutes per year. Over a period of 10 years, this would waste nearly 7 hours. Depending on the value of your time, this may make having a second wheelset more alluring.

Also you have to consider what to do when a wheel fails. Unless you're an experienced wheelbuilder and have a truing stand, wheel failure usually is slow to be fixed. A second wheelset will allow you to continue riding when the broken wheel is being fixed.

A second wheelset also makes it more alluring to change wheels due to changing conditions. For example if studded tires drop your average speed from 20 km/h to 18 km/h, then a 40 km ride would equal 13 minutes of time lost if unnecessarily using studded tires. I'd say you can swap the wheels in 13 minutes. Even two or three non-snowy/icy consecutive days during winter would mean you save a lot of time if you have the ability to quickly swap the wheels.

Furthermore, do consider that areas with real winter usually use sharp gravel to prevent pedestrians slipping and falling on ice. Many areas erroneously place both pedestrians and cyclists into mixed use paths, meaning the cyclist also has to ride on the sharp gravel. This sharp gravel tends to puncture bicycle tires, so some solution to prevent punctures is needed. A good solution is Tannus armor with some increase of rolling resistance. However, installing the armor is a Herculean effort, for me it took about 40 minutes per tire. So that's 80 minutes of time lost every time you put the studded tires to the wheels. I don't know how hard the armor is to remove but if removal is significantly easier than installation, in 10 years the difficulty of installing the armor wastes 13 hours of your time. I'd say using this armor is a very good reason to have a second wheelset as its installation is so hard.