Originally Posted By: eljefino
I don't do studs. Cost/benefit analysis. Not the money, the annoyance.
Oh, and these tires have one final trick. They trap snow in their treads, say, from a side street. Then when I accelerate and grab 2nd or 3rd gear on wet pavement, the snow flies off and that wheel loses traction for 1/10 second.
My attitude on the studs thing is this: if the tire accepts studs, it should have them (or run a different tire). The studdable tires aren't designed to have good grip on ice and hardpack without the studs, while a studless tire is. Studdable tires do tend to have an advantage in very deep, fresh snow, as the studs allow them to have a more open tread that can dig better, while the studless tires need the tighter tread to maintain good ice grip.
And funny you mention packing up like that... I have a similar issue with my Nokians. If they're wet and slushy when I park the Jeep and it's cold enough, after sitting for a few hours, they have terrible grip for the first few minutes of driving. They usually grip fine laterally, but it takes basically no throttle to spin them, even on what appears to be dry pavement. After a 1/2 mile or a little more of driving, they're suddenly perfectly fine and grippy again, almost as if they develop a super-thin ice film on the tread that needs to wear off.
