If you look at the structure of this option, then it differs little from the usual spike, which is installed at the factory.

1) This is the so-called cup, or a body in the form of a rivet, with which it actually keeps inside the rubber.

2) This is a steel core, which actually clings to the ice cover, as you can see in the usual structure.

However, these spikes also have slight differences. To begin with, I suggest you imagine a broken socket in the tire, from which a spike flew out. As a rule, it is slightly expanded, because of this, the loss occurred. You can, of course, try to return the "native", if you found it on time. However, it will not always hold on and can fall out almost immediately.

Why am I saying all this, if we consider the body of the repair option, then it is a little thicker than the usual one, this is done so that it does not fly out of the nest, which is broken and expanded. The body is made of either polymers or metal. It is worth noting that even the polymer version holds up very well.

Further, the core (metal needle) is also slightly recessed into its body and is several millimeters lower than a standard spike in rubber. This is done so that he does not stick out, but really sit firmly. This solution allows you to take into account.

Repair option, sits very firmly, many do not fly out before.

Cons of this option

There are also disadvantages, but they are not critical, I will try to list them point by point.

1) The universal steel spike is round, that is, there are neither square, nor triangular, nor any other - only rounded. Therefore, if you restore on a more advanced tire, it turns out that some will cling better to the coating, and universal ones a little worse. However, this is much better than empty nests.

2) Their height is slightly less. And therefore the engagement will suffer, although not so critical! As a rule, the grip properties of universal studs on ice are reduced by 10 - 15%.

As you can see, any system is not without a flaw, but once again I want to emphasize that such repair "plugs" are in any case better than empty holes in the tire. They restore the efficiency of the tires by almost 80%, thereby giving you the opportunity to drive an additional 2 - 3 seasons, and in the version with fresh tires it can even be more.

How to install it yourself

To be honest, it is better to turn to professionals - now almost every tire service repairs winter tires. They already have various kits, which are said for any wheel.

Installation of 1 repair spike will cost about 15 - 20 rubles, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Many tire shops refuse too much worn out wheels.

Another snag is a special gun for installing repair spikes, without it the process will be much more difficult.

The principle of operation of this pistol is simple - we install one piece inside, we lower the special spout into an empty slot. We pull the trigger and put the spike in place under pressure. The process is very fast. There will be a video below.

But we need the work to be done by hand, that is, without resorting to third-party services. This is not an easy task, although it can be done.

Let's think that we don't have a pistol, which means we only have a screwdriver and pliers:

1) My attachment point, especially wash inside. It is also advisable to spray with soapy water.

2) We measure the depth, you need to choose a repair option just below the height of the hole.

3) Using a screwdriver - we expand the hole, and push the case by force, sometimes it is better to use pliers for this, otherwise you will not be able to push it through.

4) The thorn should sit tightly, and, as it were, in its place, it should not be skewed or extended to the surface.

This is the whole process, in fact, many can do it in their garage. After several attempts, everything will go on like clockwork.

Cost and where can you buy?

To be honest, I have not seen a wide sale in the city, but maybe this is our city. But through the Internet, you can find several dozen sellers, and many make them in Russia. So we look for and order exactly there, there will be delivery to the desired address.

They are often sold in bundles of the desired height and width. The smallest kit I've seen is 100 pieces, but basically it's a box of 500 pieces.

Full preparation of the car for winter operating conditions includes the replacement of tires. The most commonly used wheels for this are built-in spikes, which provide increased stability and control of the machine on slippery surfaces.

The loss of individual metal elements occurs periodically, which negatively affects the operation of the vehicle. In such a situation, you will need to restore studs on winter tires with your own hands in order to return the original properties to the slopes and not buy new wheels at the same time.

It is necessary to independently install the stud only in winter tires prepared for this operation by the manufacturer. This is due to the denser rubber material used to make these wheels.

In car dealerships, you can find winter ramps with mounting holes, in which it is allowed to attach elements that increase the frictional properties of the wheels. This method is the most effective and practical. Also, young motorists are often interested in whether it is possible to restore the studs on winter tires with their own hands, because the holes for them have increased after the departure of the old stud. For such a situation, special repair kits are used.

The holes for the studs are formed using special equipment, one of the components of which is a drill with the ability to adjust the rotation speed.

Finding the right spikes

There are many types of winter tire inserts. When choosing them, you will need to take into account more than one product characteristic. The distinctive features of thorns include:

• material of manufacture;
• geometric shape;
• departure parameter for the installation plane;
• combined or all-metal construction;
• estimated quantity for installation on one wheel;
• power characteristics;
• mounting configuration.

The most common type of insert consists of a body part (glass), which is in contact with the rubber layer of the wheel, and a core. Glasses are made of special plastic or metal. The core material can be as follows:

• steel alloy;
• aluminium alloy;
• hard alloy substances;
• hard polymer.

Falling out of its seat occurs for various reasons, for example, a weak factory fit or a long drive on an asphalt road. After that, the loss of one or more elements is possible, and the landing nest subsequently increases.

The use of aluminum inserts is acceptable for snowy or ice road surfaces. When driving on an asphalt road, their significant deformation will occur.

One of the most popular forms is diamond wheel inserts. The name was taken solely because of the multifaceted structure of the product, the material in this case is used not precious, but traditional.

Special conditions

The correct choice of studs must take into account the wear of the tire base surface, so the protrusion of the working head is usually 1.3 mm above the rubber.

During installation, you will need to comply with the norm, which regulates the number of metal elements in an amount of up to 60 pieces per running meter of the wheel. In terms of a thirteen-inch slope, the maximum is 90 units, and for a sixteen-inch slope - one and a half hundred.

Piece-by-piece assembly

Independent work will save about 40 ... 50 rubles for the repair of one spike. This cost can be found at professional service stations.

To work in a garage, you can use one of the following methods:

• Manual method. In the work, it is allowed to use a special key to speed up the process, we also take a hammer, a screwdriver and a soap solution. This maximum budget option will suit almost any motorist. Its advantage is that the costs are only in the material.
• Semi-automatic operation. The spikes are screwed in with a low-speed drill or a screwdriver with a special nozzle. Productivity is improved, however, the cleat needs to be held in the correct position so that it fits into the hole without distortion.
• Automatic way. For work, you need a pneumatic gun. Its function is to screw the material into the seat under high pressure. At the same time, the productivity is maximum, but the disadvantage is the high cost of equipment, which does not pay off with single procedures.

When working in any way, the wheel surface is pre-wetted with a warm soapy solution, which facilitates installation. The gun separator is filled with the required number of pins. During the procedure, you will need to keep its working axis as perpendicular as possible to the surface to be treated.

With the manual method, we carry out an independent marking of the points at which installation is supposed. It is convenient to do this with white chalk or a corrector, which is sold in any stationery store. We clean the problem area with fine emery paper, and develop a hole with a short awl. After wetting the selected area with soapy water, we carry out the installation.

After fixing the spike in our hole, we measure the protrusion above the surface using a caliper, and if the value is overestimated by more than 1.5 mm, we plant it deeper. It is convenient to do this operation using an aluminum plate, pressing the upper point through it.

We repeat the operation at each point. If any of the thorns entered unsuccessfully, then it must be removed with pliers.

Conclusion

It should be borne in mind that for repairs, in most cases, universal stud designs with a radius working part are used. This type of product does its job, but the efficiency, in contrast to the original design, is reduced by 10 ... 15% due to the lower possibility of adhesion to the coating.

After installing new elements, the wheel should remain at rest for 10 ... 15 daysto ensure maximum surface coverage in the seat. Even after installing the wheels on the car, a break-in period of 200 ... 300 km must pass, during which it is not advisable to exceed the speed of more than 80 km / h. Also, during this time, you should not use an intense driving style.

The average cost of a repair kit of 100 pieces is approximately 2,000 rubles. Less quality batches from Asia of 500 pieces are offered at a price of 3,500 rubles. However, the service life of the latter will be lower. A remanufactured wheel is usually efficiently used for 2-3 seasons.

Winter tires - durable purchase. The rubber of these tires is strong enough to withstand several seasons of active use. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about thorns. They usually fly out of their nests much earlier than the winter tires themselves have time to become unusable.

But buying new winter tires isn't the only solution to this annoying problem. Studs can be repaired, thus extending the life of your car's winter shoes. At the same time, the recovery algorithm does not represent anything complicated, it is quite possible to cope with this task on its own without much risk to winter tires.

In the professional language, this operation is called re-studding or re-studding of winter tires. Spikes for this procedure are also used of a special type - repair. The difference in their design is not that big, their "cap" is slightly wider than usual spikes. This provides an additional guarantee for a secure stud anchorage in the tread socket. Thanks to its design, the repair stud will not stand out against the background of the "native" winter rubber studs, and the solid material of manufacture ensures long-term service, taking into account correct operation. These facts are confirmed by test tests on domestic roads. You can purchase a set of studs for self-repair of tires in a car store or on a specialized Internet resource.

The replacement algorithm is quite simple: you must secure the inflated tire in one position. After that, assess her condition, that is, decide whether it makes sense to stud her again. After that, you need to clean the tread seats from dirt, dust and old studs. Please note that the residual tread height must be at least seven millimeters, this is necessary for the success of the procedure. After that, you need to moisten the tire with warm soapy water and install the spikes directly. For installation, you can use special equipment, a screwdriver or pliers. Of course, installation with a stud gun will be much easier, but if you adapt, you can do it just as effectively with a screwdriver.

Allow the tires to dry after installation and avoid aggressive driving for a while. Harsh starts and braking can cause loss of studding. If this happens, a second procedure will most likely do nothing. In this case, it is better to immediately contact the service center.

Tire manufacturers have long since adapted to the stringent safety requirements of tires for use in the harsh winter season. For better grip on snow-covered or ice-covered surfaces, winter tires are equipped with spikes - special pins mounted in the tire tread. During the season of operation, a good quality tire will lose up to 20% of the total number of studs - this is the quality bar set by well-known tire manufacturers.

Unfortunately, when choosing winter tires, car enthusiasts cannot always predict how long the studs will last. Often, before the start of the winter season, the car owner is faced with a situation when the tire has become, as they say, "bald". The restoration of studs on winter tires will help to restore the previous handling of the car before the new winter season - a responsible work that is better to entrust to professionals.

Why do thorns fall out?

A tire loses studding for several reasons, the most common of which are:

• movement on "spikes" in the warm season on asphalt and concreted surfaces;
• non-observance of the pressure in the tire specified by the manufacturer;
• driving style of a particular driver;
• purchase of low-quality rubber or used tires.

The need may arise before even the first season of travel ends. Few drivers know that studded tires need to be run in beforehand, having driven about 500 km in a "sparing" mode - this will allow the studs to sink more reliably into the tread, and the car enthusiast will get used to the updated tires.

Choosing thorns

The design of a high-quality stud for a tire provides for a special flange, with which the stud is buried in the tire tread. Ideally, the flange should be double - the fixation of the studs in the rubber will be more reliable. When choosing studs for tires, which you can buy in a specialized store, you do not need to try to save money and purchase the first cheap set that comes along.

Carefully inspect your tires, paying special attention to the studs: to restore it, you need to buy studs of the same type as previously installed by the manufacturer. Remove one stud by carefully unscrewing it from the tread: this will make it easier and faster to pick up new studs yourself or explain to the manager what is required of him.

Spike restoration

The process of reconstruction of studs on a tire looks deceptively simple: next to an empty socket from a dropped pin, a specialist from the service station of the Kolesa company drills a new hole for free, into which a new stud is inserted using a pneumatic pistol. You will also have to pay for such work, as well as for a new set of studs: self-restoring the patency of tires according to the instructions on the Internet using construction screws most often ends in the loss of rubber. A much more reliable option would be to pick up studs for studding tires, buy a couple of hours of service station operating time and enjoy a confident ride through the winter streets.

Self-repairing studs on winter tires is one of the most discussed topics among experienced drivers. Some car owners are sure that this type of work cannot be done by hand. Others, on the contrary, argue that there is nothing difficult about studding. Which of them is right - let's figure it out together.

1 What are the advantages of self-studding rubber?

Wise people always say: "Prepare your sled in summer", and this popular phrase speaks perfectly to the importance of having quality winter tires. Not having "at hand" ready-to-use automobile tires, the driver finds himself a huge headache. After all, many of us begin to think about the need to re-"re-shoe" the car even when ice appears on the roads, and there are huge queues of the same motorists at the service station.

As a result, the possibility of getting into an unpleasant situation on the road increases significantly. That is why the principles and implementation of rubber studding with their own hands must be known to every motorist. In addition to saving time, a person who knows how to perform spike wins also by saving a decent amount of money. Judge for yourself - with the growth in demand for studding, the cost of this service at the service station increases significantly. The driver has no choice but to overpay. And if you calculate how much you will have to pay for post-studding in subsequent seasons, then the savings are 6-9 thousand rubles. becomes more than obvious.

It is worth noting that many drivers are categorically against wheel re-studding, as they are sure that along with it they will have to modify the arch: make it a little larger and install, which cost a lot of money. This position of some motorists is not entirely clear. The fact is that if you insert a wheel stud, it will stick out above the tread, but its height will be very low. This will not affect the performance of winter tires after studding.

As you can see, do-it-yourself rubber studding gives us obvious advantages. Therefore, we will consider the features of the installation of wheel studs in more detail.

2 Features of mounting studs

As practice shows, the most suitable for studding are tires that already have ready-made holes for installing wheel studs. The presence of these holes can be found from. In addition, the holes are clearly visible visually, are large, so that beginners will not be able to damage the rubber.

For studding and studding of wheels, you need to stock up on a pneumatic pistol. With its help, wheel studding will be quick and efficient. In the process of studding, it is worth paying attention to how far the stud protrudes from the surface of the wheel. It is best if the tip of the latter does not stick out higher than 1.5 mm from the tread. Otherwise, the spike will fly out of the hole very quickly. After you have found the pistol, you need to decide on the terrain in which you drive.

If most of your time you drive on a relatively flat road, then single flange type studs are suitable for replacement. If you use a car in mountainous terrain, then the best option would be to install double flanged wheel studs.

Regardless of whether you are studding the wheels for the first time, or doing it again, you will need a solution of water and soap. The water must always be warm - this will greatly facilitate the passage of the spike into the rubber. The principle is as follows: before studding, the outer side of the tire is wetted with a solution, after which the studs must be inserted into the holes of the tire. Particular attention should be paid to working with a pistol. Before the studding, the cage of the pneumatic device is filled with studs. After that, we get to work. In this case, the position of the pistol itself is very important - it must be held strictly vertically in relation to the surface of the tire.

When installing studs, you need to be extremely careful. After they enter the tire, they must be measured. If the spike has entered the wheel, but more than 1.5 mm of the entire spike body remains above the tread, then you need to take a small piece of aluminum sheet, put it on a self-tapping screw and hit the metal with a hammer. If after that the spike does not enter the tire, then it will be necessary to re-stud, that is, to reinstall the new element. In this case, the old thorn must be thrown away, since it will no longer be suitable for work.

3 Studying in-house - tools and algorithm

Before proceeding to do-it-yourself wheel studding, you will need to prepare inventory. In addition to an air gun and soap solution, we also need:

• a set of identical screws;
• sandpaper # 2 or # 3;
• several medical plasters;
• awl;
• proofreader or chalk.

After preparing the tools, the wheels can be hissed. First, with a corrector or chalk, mark on the tire the places where it is necessary to insert the wheel studs. Then we put the spikes into the separator of the pistol, and we mount a self-tapping screw into its barrel. After that, we clean the marked place on the rubber with sandpaper. With an awl we make a hole in the tread, after which we need to wet the rubber. After that, we proceed to the main stage of studding - the installation of studs. Be very vigilant and try to check the height of the stud protruding over the tread as often as possible.

It is worth being extremely careful even after wheel studding. It is strongly discouraged to use treated rubber immediately! It is best to wait a few days for the tires to dry completely. The first week of operation should not be driven at a speed exceeding 60 km / h. During this time, the spikes should finally fit into the holes allocated for them. We advise you to avoid sudden jerks - it is at these moments that the risk of the stud flying out of the wheel is greatest.

As you can see, re-studding car wheels with your own hands is not a difficult job and almost everyone can do it. The main thing is to be careful and not rush, otherwise you will not be able to hiss the wheels.