Quoting kartorium:
Quoting teamhightower:
EDIT: BTW - try to keep as much sidewall as you can. That makes a huge difference. You need the tire to 'mold' to the ground as much as you can, so don't go with short profile tires. Unlike studs where you 'go skinny', with studless you go wide to reduce the PSI per tread block and thus reduce melting under the treads.
Interesting. I did not know this, can you link us to more on this, or is it pretty common stuff, like can be found on tirerack and whatnot?
Nope, no data on the net about this as far as I know. I've been rallying street cars on winter rallies for about 25 years and we all sit around beer on Sunday night and talk tires. Conditions from year to year on the same roads varies so you get a chance to try the same roads each way. With studded tires you run as skinny as you can. This puts max PSI on the studs to grip ice. With studless tires you are trying not to put max pressure on the tread blocks since this heats up the ice and causes the water layer that makes ice slick. In case you didn't know, ice isn't that slick, the water layer that friction causes is what makes it slick. So a little wider tire gives you more tread block edges to grip snow/ice without additional heat.
I've done WS50s and loved them in the snow. Ice was good but dry pavement was very scary /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif Hakka 10's with no studs were very good snow tires, but not great on ice. Hakka 1's are a little better on ice. I've heard good things about the compound of the Yokohama ice tires, but don't have any experience myself. My feelings are that any of the dedicated snow/ice studless tires will be light years ahaed of the all-season varients. Nothing beats studs and until they outlaw them that will be my choice.
So, I run the stock size or +1 on stock rims of studless snow tires. I'd run skinnier if I had studs. For what it's worth I run stock width on my gravel tires so they will bite. It's only dry pavement that warrents wider tires.
but remember, YMMV...