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I use Spike Spiders on my Prius as well. One thing to keep in mind: re-torque the bolts on the mounting disks whenever you get your car back from service. The guys at the service don’t always use the proper torque when they reinstall them after they rotate your tires. I didn’t at first, and the whole disk plus the spider pulled off one of the wheels in the middle of Highway 4 on the way up. Luckily I was able to retrieve it and remount it, but it was a chilly, messy affair with passing cars spraying slush on me (many thanks for my Aussie drover’s coat!).
I also have Spyders for our Prius. I’ve only used them once but they went on and came off easily. We kept our old 96 4×4 as a winter standby.
I have the Thule K-summit chains. They provide excellent traction. They are super easy to put on (2-3 min/tire) but had a little trouble removing the clamp for the lug. Just carry a pair of channel locks and you’ll be fine.
I used my Spikes Spiders when I came up on the Sunday after Christmas. They went on fairly easily ( less than 3 mins) and came off just as easily. I normally would have just been lazy and not put on chains to navigate the BTV neighborhood to get to our house. But they were so easy to slip on and off.
The most time spent on these chains was in installing the mounting disk and getting the right combination of spacers prior to coming up. The ownly downside is needing to keep the mounting disk on during the season.
The vendor had sent the recommended spacer combination recommendation, but I still needed to make a change for Expedition.
One thing I would recommend if you decide to order a set, is to physically determine the lug nut size for your vehicle as my chains were sent with a standard size lug nut for my car, when I actually needed a larger size. After contacting the US authorized vendor, he sent me the correct size via express mail.
So far, a great product.Just ordered a set of these for my Expedition for the reasons the other poster mentioned. Regular chains are a huge pain to put on just to get to Hwy 4.
I’ll let you how it goes after I get them.We had Spyders for our Honda Odyssey mini-van and I highly recommend them. The traction is pretty good- not as good as chains, but we never had a problem with control.
The main reason I recommend them though is because they’re so easy and quick to put on. If you’re coming up the mountain at night and you know you SHOULD put chains on for that last half mile, but you think you can make it… with spyders you just do it because it’s so easy. There were lots of times when chain control was up for just a few minutes or a mile or so- with chains I would have been far more likely to get through it rather than deal with putting them on and then taking them off.
After driving a 4wd for many years I recently purchased a Prius and now I need to get more serious about doing something about traction in the snow. I recall people liking the spikes-spider type and I see now Thule has something similar. I had Z-chains for my Pilot but did not find them to be as easy to put on and off as they were advertised to be. Looking for recommendations. Thanks!
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