Is anyone getting their hands on Heidenau ice tires?? Having a hard time trying to figure out the back order deal not getting any replies from dealers about back order
Man those look fun!
@KartingIsLife see above Q
Hoping to hear back from Heidenau on their plans this week. Basically they only do one run a year for these tires and that’s it.
Update:
Heidenau will start a run of about 700 tires at the end of September.
I’ll be placing the preorders this week.
I’d expect orders placed this week to arrive early October for people
Unfortunately it’s not economical to sell individual sets of four because essentially you’re paying for shipping twice, so get with your buddies and order a box of 16 shipped from Germany straight to your door
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I just found out today that Heidenau are now only doing boxes of four sets (ie 16 tires)​.
Shipping costs are still insane, hoped we’d get a break this year but it seems not.
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Cost on box of 16 tires is $1190​ including air shipping to your door in US or Canada.
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Wowsies! These are by far the best? Sort of like those Swedish/Icelandic? snow tires that dominate?
H something? (Hakkapeliitta)
Shipping is the killer on the price.
They work very well, fit on racing kart wheels and last a long time. I went through quite a few different options before going with them.
We’ve had the same sets on our rentals for three seasons now, so they’ve seen a lot of miles in karts that weigh over 500lbs with heavier drivers in the seat. Karts have plenty of power too, wheelspin all the way down the straight if you keep it pinned, even though they have carbide studs.
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@KartingIsLife… a solution to your winter kart tire conundrum? 
I’d work, but we want people to sliiiiiiiide!
Maybe something for our staff kart though… hmm
This is an interesting point, I wonder if studless tires would perform in this application? I am a skier and drive up to the mountain every weekend during the Winter in any condition. Studless snow tires are now the preferred snow tire over studs these days. We have Bridgestone Blizzak studless snow tires on our Subaru Outback and they are shockingly good. Like, even when everyone is chaining up and sliding around, we hardly feel anything. I have not once (fingers crossed) fully lost traction with them in 4 seasons of use. We don’t salt the roads here in Oregon either so the roads are generally straight up packed snow and ice most days.
I’m sure no tire manufacturer could justify the cost, but I’d love to see someone like Bridgestone make a mini 5" Blizzak under their karting division!
Though, they may not be as effective with such a smaller circumference compared to car tires.
That’s an interesting point. Snow tire compounds are softer… kinda like rain tires.
I really like having the snow tires on the 911. Night and day traction wise.
Studs don’t help with snow of course, but in the case of the kart ice tires, the tread is there to displace the snow and get down to the ice so the studs can do their thing. The ice track, also creates it’s own “snow” in the form of ice shavings from the studs.
As the shavings built up and you had “snow” on the track, it would get into the belt, ride on the sprocket and snap the belt. We tried everything you could think of to avoid it, but in the end moved to chain since we wanted to change gearing and move to a wet style clutch anyway. Yeah, you could pause between sessions to clear the track but nobody like to wait around in the cold.
Traction on the ice is very limited without studs of course. The real big downside is that you can’t really do long, lurid wheel spinning slides without them. Given the ground clearance of a kart you cant really get away with much more than 3-4" of snow anyway.
Which is another thing that’s nice about the Heidenaus ice tires… they are 11.5" tall so you add 1/2" to the kart’s ground clearance over a regular 10.5" kart tire.
Wait… was I seeing someone doing a Scandinavian flick with the karts?
Yes…
Here have some more… These are staff videos… probalbly not going to let the general public attempt 360’s 720s 900 etc.
Epic. I need to come to your operation after hours. I’ll bring libations.
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