Summertime track temperatures have a huge impact on your go kart tires life. We often forget how much of an impact the summer heat can have on a new tyre. As a company, our team paid the price for not remembering this crucial information. For example, we ran a car in the Champ Car series 2 weeks ago with tires that usually last around 20+ hours (they are a 200 on the durometer). Since we failed to heat cycle our tires prior to the event, our tires lasted less than two hours before they grained and corded. The new tires that we put on were not heat cycled first, so the rear tires grain and chunked off within less than an hour.
The track temperature can dramatically reduce the tire life by up to 80% even with heat cycling. Heat cycling your tires is going to add life even if the track temperatures are extremely hot, below is how to properly heat cycle your tires.
Heat cycling and how it applies to all DeCuzzi tires: To take full advantage of the tire's durability and traction, there's a required break-in process. By heating the tires up in a mild and easy environment, this allows them to cool down again and the rubber bonds to become stronger. As mentioned earlier, the weaker rubber bonds in the tread compound are broken. This is good because the tires cool down and reattach in a more uniform manner, which results in more consistent strength and resistance for the tires to break again. This re-bonding process occurs during the critical cool down period of 24 to 48 hours. It's important to heat cycle competition tires yourself, however you must be careful not to over stress the tire (no hard cornering, acceleration or braking during this process). Next, you'd need to remove the tires from the vehicle so they can cool down and re-bond without a load on them.
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