When someone thinks of snow chains, only one type of product comes to mind: a chain that 'no one knows how' is fitted to the tyre and allows people to drive safely on snow-covered and/or icy roads. But the real question is: how are snow chains fitted? König, with more than 50 years of history and experience, has designed, developed and manufactured different models of snow chains that share the ultimate goal: to enable the user to safely reach his destination.

The König snow chains are classified according to the fitting system they’re featuring, in particular:

• External mounting
• ‘Intuitive’ or ‘Top-down’ mounting
• Traditional or Ground-up mounting

What do they consist of? Let us try to clarify:

The External fitting system is typical fitting system used to mount external snow chains. In König’s case the chains featuring this mounting system are represented by the K-Summit family (K-Summit for passenger cars, K-Summit XL for crossovers and small SUVs, K-Summit XXL for larger SUVs, K-Summit MAX for electrically powered vehicles and K-Summit VAN for commercial vehicles and motorhomes).

As the “External” name suggests, the technology behind these snow chains allows them to be fitted by operating only and exclusively on the outer side of the wheel. This makes it possible to fit snow chains even on vehicles whose internal clearance (between inner wheel profile and suspension system) is zero or close to zero, guaranteed by the lack of any snow chain elements behind the wheel.

The question then may arise - how do they stay on? The answer is even simpler, as these snow chains attach to the vehicle's original wheel nut thanks to a specific adapter (König U-Adapt). Once this is fastened and secured to the wheelbolt, the central body of the chain gets closed to the wheel thanks to the ratchet tensioning. In the meanwhile, the elastic arms get loaded and they’re ready to set their potential energy free autonomously while driving. So the user is just requested to start driving; the König K-Summit snow chain will automatically position itself fully on the tyre tread within the first few meters of driving.

The Intuitive fitting system, on the other hand, is one of the greatest strengths of the chains of the Reflex family ((Reflex Edge for Passenger Cars and Reflex Cross for Crossovers and Compact SUVs) and the Easy-fit family (Easy-fit CU-9 for cars and Easy-fit SUV for SUVs).

All these chains have a common denominator, easily deducible from the name of the category to which they belong: they are the most intuitive and natural to fit and remove.

Mounting them on the tyre is a child’s play, just a few actions and a few seconds. The Intuitive snow chains come already fully assembled from the factory and the user is simply requested to stretch them wide open and fit the tyre starting from the top of the wheel towards the bottom. Once the tensioning system is activated, the chain automatically tensions and centers while driving.

The Traditional mounting system is the most common one in terms of market share, in fact the vast majority of snow chains on the market featuring this fitting system.

The traditional fitting system is based on the flexible cable meant to be positioned on the inner side of the wheel and which allows the chain to slide on the ground, behind during mounting. This fitting system is also calls “Ground-up” as the fitting procedure starts from the lower part of the wheel up to the upper one.

König snow chains featuring the traditional fitting system are available both with automatic and manual tensioning.

The fittingprocess is nearly the same while the difference between the two lays on the tensioning procedure and the requested operations.

What differentiates them is the number of operations the user have to do immediately afterwards:

• König snow chains belonging to the Automatic category, as the name suggests, are characterized by an automatic tensioning system. This system allows the chain to be tensioned and centered by driving a few meters for retensioning operations. The chains belonging to this category are available for Passenger Cars (König CG-9 and König CL-10), for Crossovers/Compact SUVs (König XG Cross), and larger SUVs, pick-ups and commercial vehicles (König XG-12 Pro).

• Snow chains in the Manual category, on the other hand, after the fitting, require the user to make a second car stop in order to manually re-tension the chains before they can proceed. Also, the chains in this category are available for Passenger Cars (König K-Slim, König CB-7, König CD-9 and König CB-12), SUVs, pick-ups and commercial vehicles (König XD-16, König XD-16 Pro and König XB-16).

To help users find the right chain for their vehicle, König regularly updates its online configurator. ​​​​​​​

Simply enter the make, model and tyre size of the vehicle to find out the perfect chain fitting not only the tyre size but also the vehicle wheelhouse requirements. The results of compatible snow chains can then be filtered according to the fitting type (External, Intutive, Automatic, Manual).