It seems like everyone but me has an easy way to put air in their tires to adjust pressure, my way up until the last track day was a simple bike pump. My dad proceeded to break the head off of it… so that is no longer an option. I don’t want to carry an airtank on the kart stand, or have one to bring to and from the track.
Was looking at the Milwaukee M12 inflator, as all my other impact tools are Milwaukee. Anyone have experience with this? Or have a tire inflator they would recommend that is karting friendly?
They’re great. I have been using a Bauer one from Harbor Freight for a few years and it works great. I also have a Milwaukee one that’s a bit bigger and nicer with a digital display that works equally well.
I use dry air in an air tank from home. Otherwise, heat or no heat, you’re pumping all the humid air straight into the tire. Even with my large compressor and large tank at home and with 100’ of line, enough humidity still gets into the tire to fog when I am deflating after seating a bead if my desiccant has saturated.
All of them are pretty sweet. I’ve borrowed a couple at the track. Only thing I don’t like is most of them have a thread on or clamp on valve. I’d have to cut that off immediately and fit a normal air chuck.
Otherwise just pick whatever flavor of battery you already own. For more punch and longer run time I’d go 18v if you can. In case you need to seat a bead at the track.
Using dry vs. ‘wet’ air in a karting tire is largely overblown in my opinion. We used to use nitrogen all the time but have been using normal air for years now and with the wheels we use nowadays, the pressure gain is pretty minimal compared to what we saw with older wheels. Especially with low volume wheels and 10 psi of air in the tire.
I love my Dewalt but it’s a little chunkier than some of the handhelds. That said, I can blow up a trailer tire to 65 pounds with it in a pinch - that’s pretty badass. The 12V adapter is utterly worthless though sadly.
And I have that one because I have a pile of Dewalt tools so not a recommendation any more than just use what you already have for convenience.
The M12 will be more accurate at the lower volumes and pressures for kart tires, and will work well for kart stands, bicycle tires, sports equipment, and similar small volume things. It will struggle with car tires, and won’t seat the beads when trying to mount tires.
The M18 (what I use) will seat the beads on freshly mounted tires, fill the tires on my truck and trailer, and go multiple karting days without needing recharged. I used one xc 8.0 battery over 3 days at Stars recently and mounted 4 sets or tires and topped off each day with it and I think it only was at 1/2 charge. The downside is that it’s meant for larger volumes so it’ll overfill small things.
Wife bought me one of those air hawks off TV 10 years ago. I caught hell for it at the time from fellow racers.
First thing I did was cut off the chuck on it and replace with one I liked. The M18 being able to bead seems like a winner to me. I still bring a compressor to bead tires, so this gives me an excuse to spend some money and save some room
+1 on seating beads with the Milwaukee, sometimes you need to work the tire on the wheel so it will start to make pressure, but once it does you are good. It hasn’t let me down yet!!
