Heidenau K60 Ranger tyre review: a quality 50/50 option worth the money?︱Cross Training Adventure

Our Heidenau K60 Ranger tyre review! It costs more than most of the competitors in the 50/50 adventure tyre range - is it worth the extra money? It's an adventure tyre made in Germany that has good longevity, a reasonable price and a good balance between road and off-road performance. The Heidenau K60 Ranger appears to tick all the boxes. Let's look at the pros and cons. First? A quick bit of history. Heidenau started production in 1946. From 1959 they specialised in motorbike tyres. When most tyre brands have moved manufacturing to Asian countries, Heidenau insists on production in Germany where they can maintain German levels of quality control. For a relatively small factory they produce an incredible range of 550 types of tyres including the Heidenau K60 Ranger. The K60 Ranger is the off-road cousin of the well known K60 Scout tyre. Heidenau claims the K60 Ranger is for 30% road and 70% off-road. Welcome to Cross Training Adventure, we are into all things dual sport and adventure on the east coast of Australia. It all depends on how you ride of course. We sold our DR650 before completely wearing out the Heidenaus but we were on track to achieving similar results. What are the potential negatives? Keen on adventure riding in Australia? Check out our vids. The Heidenau Ranger has a very stiff carcass which reduces the chances of puncture or damaging your rims. Apparently the Heidenau K60 Ranger tyre is stiff enough to allow you use it completely flat if you have to. On-road? That stiff tyre carcass does make tyre changing more difficult than other brands. We think it is probably closer to a 50/50 tyre nowadays. At some point most of us will have a tyre with a a production fault. Knobs peeling off. Cracks in the rubber. Unbalanced. That should be incredibly unlikely with Heidenau. Off-road performance. The Heidenau K60 Ranger is good until you get into mud, soft sand or deep gravel where an aggressive knobby will work better. But we found that reducing the air pressure to 15psi on the DR650 led to quite a bit of traction on soft surfaces. There is a broad range of adventure tyres with aggressive tread patterns today so we think the Heidenau K60 Ranger is almost the perfect balance for road and off-road riding. The positives? German production. Surprisingly good. Much quieter than the more off-road-oriented tyres we have been using, like the Motoz Rallz. We could notice some noise at 80kmh and then at highway speeds the wind noise took over. They felt smooth with plenty of grip on dry roads. Wet roads? Heidenau say they use silicon in the tread compound to provide better grip along with longevity. But we simply aren't game to test any tyre on wet roads. We hear mixed reports from other riders in this respect. Longevity? Check out our reviews of various adventure bikes and dual sport bikes. We researched this and a rough estimate is 6500 km or 4000 miles for the rear tyre. 16000 km or 10000 miles for the front tyre. Long tyre irons and lots of lube needed! Personally I just pay the motorbike shop to do it instead. The price of the Heidenau K60 Ranger? All three are equally dodgy. We are the 27th most watched dirt channel in Uzbekistan. We have won the polished turd award five years in a row. And we have a world record 25 class action lawsuits for inaccurate information. We think the whole motorbike scene is getting too commercial. So called dual sport riding reviews are just glossy ads nowdays. Everyone is trying to sell you stuff you don't need, convince you to buy the latest model with anodized coffee cup holders for your trips to the coffee shop. So subscribe. Or don't subscribe to our Cross Training Adventure riding channel. The main thing is get out and ride while you can with dual sport riding or Adventure riding in Australia, Canada, Vietnam, Romania and beyond! So check out Cross Training Adventure. I'm not sure about other countries, but in Australia the Heidenau is about 20% more expensive than its competitors. It certainly lasts longer than some which will offset the price. There's also the quality factor where I suspect some riders will be happy to pay for a tyre actually made in Germany. Have you used the Heidenau K60 tyres? What did you like about the Heidenau K60 Ranger? What did you hate? Let us know in the comments. We will be summarising useful opinions in the pinned first comment. If you like dual sport riding in Australia then you might like our adventure riding vids. This is one of our three channels, there's also a Cross Training Trials channel, and a Cross Training Enduro channel.



#crosstrainingadventure #adventureriding #adventurebikes #dualsportriding
#dualsportbikes