heideneau k60 initial report
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2012 11:13 am
Kind of a big question for thumb boarding on the phone Fred, but I'll give it a shot.
As you know I bought the first pair of Heideneau K60 tires that went out the door of your shop and installed them on my KLR just before my mid-Sept road trip. I also installed new HD tubes and ran them at 25 pounds air front and rear on a heavy KLR w/ gear (9" touratech panniers, 34 ltr caribou trunk, 20" wolfman dry duffle, wolfman tank panniers, and nerf bar bags, all full, plus the weight of the guards, plates, skids, ctr stand, etc).
I did 2300 miles across NM, Co, Wy, Ut, Az in 8 days, all dry road highway miles. The tires handled very well, the mountain curves were very stable and showed no signs of giving me pucker factor. They seemed to deal with asphalt tar snakes as well as any tire I've run, and better than my usual D606s. At trip's end I noted a slight flatening down the center 1" of the rear tire, none on the front, and zero saw-toothing on the front. Both still had most of their injection moulding hairs (except in the middle) even though I had been pushing them pretty hard in the curves.
The next weekend after I returned to Albuquerque I did about 150 miles of equally mixed pavement, fine gravel, and dirt two track. I dropped pressure to 15 pounds front and rear and found they tracked very well in the gravel & dirt, and even at 15 they were very stable on the highway at speeds up to 80.
When done with that I took the bike into the desert to run some sandy singletrack. I expected the front tire to begin washing out, but it didn't. I only spend an hour in sand (1~3" deep) and the K60 seemed to handle as well as my previous D606s (for a heavy KLR in that environment).
This Sunday I plan to run them over the forest roads from Albuquerque to Chama, and return on the highway. A fellow rider knows some single track in the forest and I may get off on a little of that for testing, even though the KLR is NOT suited to tight forest stuff. Most will be rocky two track and fine gravel.
I've yet to get into deep mud with the K60s, so the jury is still out there. At this point I don't foresee going to a different tire when I wear these K60's out (which looks like it will take alot of miles). I do however plan to do D606s on my DR-Z, when the Kenda Trackmasters wear out.
Randy
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Hink
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 8:08 AM
To: KLR List DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com>; SniperOne
Subject: Re: [DSN_KLR650] front tire
So what s your impression of the Heidenau K60 by now?
Fred
http://www.arrowheadmotorsports.com
From: SniperOne
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 7:56 PM
To: KLR List
Subject: RE: [DSN_KLR650] front tire
The Heideneau K60, Mefo Exployer, and several others are also engineered to run the opposing V pattern described. For similar reasons of why it works in the loose stuff, it also helps with water on the road.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Hink
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 7:45 PM
To: mailto:DSN_KLR650%40yahoogroups.com; davey
[The entire original message is not included]
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