First major snowstorm of the season: old Outback vs. new Tribeca

I have about 1" of clearance between the tires and the well cowl on A4, so I feel a bit of wheel well clearance envy.

me thinks Goodyear Ultragrip Ice Arctic will replace Xi2 when Xi2 wears out to help crush through the ice with studs.

Following in your brute forcing footsteps.

The old OBW had quite a bit of clearance between tires and the well cowl, but probably not enough. The Tribeca definitely seems to offer more in this department.

I'm just using regular unstudded snow-tires here, our province doesn't allow studs on the tires. So far I don't think I've wished I had the studs yet, but a bit of freezing rain sometime later in the winter, and I'll probably change my mind about that.

Yousuf Khan

my condolences

probably :-) the studless really suck in 8F-28F range and goodyear has just widened the grand canyon between the two: they are selling like pancakes around here

Yeah, our province, Ontario, is really completely out to lunch about this. They did a test with studded tires back in the 70's sometime, and determined that they were a danger to the road surfaces of this province, and so they were promptly banned. Well studded tire tech has changed immensely from those old days, but the province is absolutely determined to never allow them on these roads. The funny ironic thing is that there are a few cars from Quebec which do allow studded tires in, and these cars drive around our roads, and they don't do any more damage than non-studded.

Big part of the problem is that policy is mainly created from southern Ontario, especially Toronto, and that area is not quite as severely affected by winter as the rest of the province is. So they think the rest of us are just whining because they don't see the same winter that we do.

Yousuf Khan

slide your studless car into a politician and the legislation will change pronto

that or register your car in quebec :-]

One would think that you get more of a problem in a city around 18F when studs can claw into the softing ice whereas studless "ice"&snow just give up and sliiiiiiide on slick intersection approaches.

Studded tires were common in Pittsburgh in the 70's. People don't switch to winter tires anymore, which studs were legal only in winter. Radial front wheel drive and all season tires has switched thinking.

Today my 99 outback, I tried getting out of lawn. Had to make several rocking motions. Noticed front right spin into grass, but no spin on right front or rears. My first winter with outback.

Greg

I don't think Pittsburg is probably as snowy as it used to be in the

70's either. This time last year, I drove to NYC, equipped with my standard-issue Canadian winter armour: snow tires, winter wipers, etc. But by the time I got south of Syracuse, NY, almost all of the snow had disappeared. They said they didn't even get any snow that year in NYC. I was actually feeling a bit over-equipped while there (like getting off the plane wearing a parka in Hawaii).

Up here in Canada we were also in love with these all-season tires for years, up until recently when the snow tires have made a huge come back. Most cars on the roads these days have snow tires. Most people also have the separate rims to mount & unmount the snow tires easily. Nobody really trusts the all-season tires for anything other than light snow conditions anymore. We just call the all-seasons, summer tires here nowadays.

You probably have the automatic Outback, right? That's a part-time AWD system, unlike the manual Outbacks, which had full-time.

With TZ1/ACT-4 (Active Torque Split) 4-speed automatic transmission:

Watch this video which compares some modern AWD vehicles against each other including some Subarus. The particular Subarus in these videos have the full-time AWD, whereas every other car is a part-time AWD. There's a big difference between part-time and full-time AWD, and I would assume even a Subaru with part-time AWD is equally affected vs. one with a full-time.

Lab testing:

testing: Yousuf Khan

I do have an automatic.

I'd rather have snow tires on snow, but snow and ice, definitely with studs. The old house had stud lines in the driveway in the 70's.

Greg

I think the studs are made of some kind of hard plastic these days, maybe carbon fibre, rather than metal like the days of yore, I'm not sure.

Yousuf Khan

They are definitely still metal. What is improving is the shape of the studs. That and studs retention on the top performing tire models. One or two studs lost over 2 season is the norm. Unless you insist on reshooing too early and retaining the studded tires too long into spring that is