hey i just got a set of studded winter tires...if i drive them without studs, what loss should i expect in snow and ice grip since they were designed for studs or does that matter..they are nokian with some long name afterwards....thanks for the help

 

Interesting question. Back before they banned studs (30 years ago?) we used to use the same snow tires with studs as without. Obviously the studded tires worked better on ice, but the tires were the same whether we had studs added or not. Today? don't know.

--Mike

 

Hakkapelitta?

The studded modern winter tires are designed with the rubber to be geared a bit more for pavement stability - because the metal studs can do more with compacted snow and the ice.

unstudded modern tires (that hope to have any reasonable ice/snow stability) have a very soft rubber with many many small slits in it to find whatever grip can be found on ice. The performance on ice, snow and pavement is all inferior to that of the studded winter tires. (I'm talking about the best from both categories here, with no compromise in ice/snow grip).

Therefore, removing the studs should have the result of atrocitously poor, if any, ice grip, and deterioated snow grip.