Alternative to snow tyres?

Achamore

Cheap and adaptable alternative to snow tyres:

http://www.dutchbikeco.com/_blog/Dutch_ ... pocalypse/

~ how much are tie-wraps on wiggle !

Acha

nicklouse

no good with rim brakes though.

Buckled_Rims

nicklouse wrote:

no good with rim brakes though.

.......and try repairing a puncture :shock:

tarquin_foxglove

nicklouse wrote:

no good with rim brakes though.

Perhaps you could zip tie the front wheel & have the back one normal.

That way you can control the front of the bike to be able to steer well enough to avoid most falls and 'brake' on the back one.

I've got an old flat barred commuter & a stack of zip ties, hmm.

amaferanga

And I would imagine that once you hit snow-free roads then they cable ties would start pinging off quite quickly.

tptvmbircn

I like the idea, but some good points especially on dry road, on that note, if they are good cable ties my guess is that they might just resist the road but eventually wear down then ping off

Buckled_Rims

Use hose clips instead of cable ties if you have to ride on dry roads

For weightweenies, there might even be titanium hose clips available

powenb

What do you think these http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=18835 would be like for commuting in this weather?

nwallace

Rally Mud Tyres are designed in a manner that gives them a dual use, turn them round and they are Snow tyres.

Might work with some bike mud treads.

tptvmbircn

Buckled_Rims wrote:

Use hose clips instead of cable ties if you have to ride on dry roads

For weightweenies, there might even be titanium hose clips available

haha, good idea though!

roger_merriman

nwallace wrote:

Rally Mud Tyres are designed in a manner that gives them a dual use, turn them round and they are Snow tyres.

Might work with some bike mud treads.

most MTB mud tyres do well in snow, ice you need studs but for snow cross/mtbs tend to do well.

lae

^ yeah I've got cross tyres on my winter bike, they've been good in snow/slush.

A couple of years ago I made some studded tyres out of some old MTB tyres (the old style ones with large flat square knobs) with little woodscrews screwed from the inside of the tyre, then blobbed over with hot melt glue. They protruded maybe 1.5mm from the tyre. Then I lined it with a couple of old inner tubes (and about two tubes of tyre cement).

They worked really well and gave good grip even on sheet ice. They weren't without their problems though - they were hard to fit (I had to wear welding gauntlets to stop my hands getting shredded) and if you lost control and ran into a pedestrian or child then it would rip them to shreds (and you'd get sued). If I were serious about cycling on ice, I'd just buy some studded tyres with hard-wearing carbide studs.


Cable ties is a really good idea though. Shame about rim braking. Perhaps the cheapest way of getting a working zip-tied bicycle would be a fixed-gear (with a very very low gear so as to limit top speed and to give more mechanical advantage when leg-braking) would work - using the front brake on ice is a bad idea anyway. Although then you have the problems associated with only having leg-brakes (namely illegality and lack of braking if the chain falls off/breaks). It's something I might try if the ice gets really bad this winter though.

Getting wheels built with hub brakes is much cheaper than re-framing or converting your bike to run disc brakes though. So that's an option.