winter road tyre recommendations

[mrcharly-YHT]

There is a certain irony here. Whenever the motons crash in wintery conditions, we remind them that speed shouldn't be their main priority!

lol. Quite.

In my case, my problem is twofold:
1) I'm a slowish rider at the best of times.
2) I have a 50mile round trip commute.

So it's not so much a case of wanting to be a speed demon, but wanting to avoid exhaustion and get home at a reasonable hour.

[Somnolent]

Only listed under very odd size (584)

http://www.suomityres.fi/hkplstud.html

The 106 seems to be their road/700c tyre now.

[edit]  I have the distributor's pricelist. the A10 is listed on that (16,30 euros each, delivered, if you order 1000).

There's a gent over on CC planning to order a bunch of A10s from Finland.
http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/nokian-32mm-studded-tyres-group-buy.91640/

[Cudzoziemiec]

Marathon Pluses are brilliant if you can fit them...

I find them very skiddy, quite a hard compound I think. The best for grip I've found are Michelin World Tours, but they're heavy, slow and puncture if you look at them sideways

More odd stuff. I have a Michelin World Tour on the back of my hybrid and I find that on muddy or leaf-covered roads it gives less grip than the Continental Touring 1000 on the front (I'm not sure if this is made any longer - I have a feeling it was already old stock when I bought it a few years ago). I also prefer the Contis on gravel and dirt roads, which is what I originally wanted them for. I agree the World Tour is heavy and slow, OTOH it is cheap.

[giropaul]

They definitely knock something off your speed. The best bet (if you have the facilities) is two sets of wheels, one with winter tyres and one with normal ones. Swapping tyres is a faff. Swapping wheels less so (apart from rear wheels with disk brakes which are a pain to line up.)

I found that the difference between winter, semislick and road slick was a minimum of 5km/h each.

..d

Robert Millar (and others) used to use a tubular inside a heavy pressure tyre in winter, to avoid visitations - but mostly just to make it harder!