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new Trak Sport Snow Chains on Tesla Store

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these look like a new option on the Tesla Store. Tesla Accessories and Charging Adapters Model S Snow Chain - Trak Sport


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Why so expensive?

I guess you are paying for the convenience of not having kneel or lie down on a slushy road to reach around the inside of your tires to hook up the Z-chains. Instructions show them mounting entirely from the outside of the wheel. I can't make out what keeps them in place; an anchoring mechanism apparently clamps onto a lug nut.

$414 on Amazon with free shipping.
 
Couldn't help but notice this warning:

Chains should only be installed on the rear wheels of the Model S and only on 19" tires.

I wonder how that applies to the AWD (dual-motor) versions... From past experience, it was recommended to install chains on the FRONT tires of AWD cars, not the rear. Would it be best (albeit costly) to install these chains on all four wheels of the D models?
 
Couldn't help but notice this warning:



I wonder how that applies to the AWD (dual-motor) versions... From past experience, it was recommended to install chains on the FRONT tires of AWD cars, not the rear. Would it be best (albeit costly) to install these chains on all four wheels of the D models?

At a ***GUESS*** the front tire restriction may be a function of lack of wheel well clearance; if so, that typically comes into play when in a turn's wheel-lock position.
 
I wonder how that applies to the AWD (dual-motor) versions... From past experience, it was recommended to install chains on the FRONT tires of AWD cars, not the rear. Would it be best (albeit costly) to install these chains on all four wheels of the D models?

At that price, it is only a little bit more money to just buy a set of Hakka R2's vs 2 pair of those "chains." My experience in a P85D with 4 Hakka R2's this winter is that you would never need chains with Tesla AWD and good, real snow tires. Note: Tesla does not sell real snow tires in North America any more; you have to go aftermarket to get something like the Hakka R2's.
 
At that price, it is only a little bit more money to just buy a set of Hakka R2's vs 2 pair of those "chains." My experience in a P85D with 4 Hakka R2's this winter is that you would never need chains with Tesla AWD and good, real snow tires. Note: Tesla does not sell real snow tires in North America any more; you have to go aftermarket to get something like the Hakka R2's.

Hmm that may be worth it in your neck of the woods, but I'd be on mostly dry roads except for the few days a year I may be in deep snow. Which is going to be over the winter break in Utah/Idaho/Wyoming.

I'd rather buy chains for those few days I'll really need them than drive on a set of loud snow tires 99% of the time I'll be on dry roads. If I wasn't planning on driving halfway across the country, or if I lived in an area that sees lots of deep snow in the winter, I'd consider buying another set of wheels & tires and swapping them out for the snow days.
 
So I ordered these from the Tesla Store on Thursday along with the tire repair kit to prepare for an upcoming trip (over various passes), but they didn't ship.

They didn't ship because they were backordered, and they didn't bother changing it to "sold out" till after my order. They also didn't bother informing me of this.

I haven't canceled the order, but I did ask them for the Mfg. P/N so I could order it from somewhere else. But, they haven't got back to me yet. Maybe they have a quota limit of one email per day per person. I honestly don't know why Tesla can create some an amazing car yet can't run a simple store.

Anyways does anyone know the part number for the Trak Sport Tire chains? I searched on Amazon, but I couldn't find them. I did see a history of them on amazon so it seems like they were there at some point like a poster above found.
 
http://www.trakonline.it/Pages/trak-home-en.aspx

I think these are the guys.

Yeah, those are the guys and I did send them an email yesterday to add the Model S to their website.

They came back with

"in these days we will put on-line the new updated table car model - tyre size - snow chain. In the new table there will be Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X"

I haven't found them available in the US though, and the Service Center didn't have them in stuck. I might go with the Thule K-Summit Chains even though Tesla doesn't officially support them, but I fail to see why they wouldn't work. They're designed for cars with very little clearance.
 
I haven't found them available in the US though, and the Service Center didn't have them in stuck. I might go with the Thule K-Summit Chains even though Tesla doesn't officially support them, but I fail to see why they wouldn't work. They're designed for cars with very little clearance.

I wrote a long post about this late Fri but it's still stuck waiting for moderator approval due to having a lot of links in it... But, long story short, if you search Amazon.co.uk for "Maggi Trak Sport TrakSport217 Snow Chains Type 217" you should find the chains for 19" Tesla wheels for £199. I just purchased a set myself and when added to the cart, the price dropped to £166! I'm not sure why but I suspect because I don't have to pay VAT? Then I was even more surprised to find that regular (2 week) delivery is £41 but "AmazonGlobal Priority" is £22.58 with delivery by Nov 27th! The total with delivery and import fee was $316USD so I went for it and will post if it works out. If it doesn't work out, it's probably going to be an expensive return, but I'm 99% sure they're the same size/brand chains Tesla is selling.
 
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The 217 is the right size, and I'm envious -- that is a fantastic deal. I just paid $386 including shipping from Quality Chain Corp in Oregon. Their customer service guys confirmed the 217 is right and has the right-sized nut grabber for my rial Luganos 19 inch snow tire rims (I know, ther is a better term than that).
 
I wrote a long post about this late Fri but it's still stuck waiting for moderator approval due to having a lot of links in it... But, long story short, if you search Amazon.co.uk for "Maggi Trak Sport TrakSport217 Snow Chains Type 217" you should find the chains for 19" Tesla wheels for £199. I just purchased a set myself and when added to the cart, the price dropped to £166! I'm not sure why but I suspect because I don't have to pay VAT? Then I was even more surprised to find that regular (2 week) delivery is £41 but "AmazonGlobal Priority" is £22.58 with delivery by Nov 27th! The total with delivery and import fee was $316USD so I went for it and will post if it works out. If it doesn't work out, it's probably going to be an expensive return, but I'm 99% sure they're the same size/brand chains Tesla is selling.

Did you receive your chains? Are they the correct fit?
 
Did you receive your chains? Are they the correct fit?

I got them on Nov 27th as promised but didn't have a chance to test fit until today. Tesla's web site says to use the red spacer with "M" length screw. When I did that, the red pads of the chains did not pull up against the sidewalls of the tire as shown in the pictures on Tesla's web site and in every picture I've seen of these chains online. Some red pads (top two in the picture below) were an inch or more from the tire sidewall which causes the chain to ride close to the outer edge of the tire:

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Using the red spacer ensures the red ball at the end of the silver arm coming from the lug-nut holder never gets closer than about 1cm from any part of the wheel hub. The instructions say to choose a spacer where the red ball never gets more than 2cm away from the wheel hub spokes (what they call "the rims"). However, the instructions also show all the red pads of the chain touching the tire sidewall and they show a hub that sits significantly deeper than the sidewall. On Tesla tires, ridges of the hub come out as far as the sidewall, maybe even slightly farther. So getting within 2cm of the Tesla ridges is like getting within 4-6cm of the style of rim pictured in the manual. Therefore, I switched to using the blue spacer and that worked much better to pull the chains on almost completely:

20151130_161956 copy.jpg


With the blue spacer, the red ball can hit the spokes of the wheel hub if you rotate it to point towards the tire sidewall. However, the instructions say to put the lug-nut gripper on the farthest right lug nut with the ball pointing down at the ground. Tighten the red gear-shaped handle as tight as possible, then rotate red ball and handle till red ball points over the center of the tire. If those instructions are followed, the red ball will not touch a hub spoke, though it comes very close in some wheel orientations.

Another oddity is the instructions on Tesla's site say to leave "max 3" links of chain between the center and where the chain locks in to some red plastic. The instructions that came with my chains say to leave between 2 and 4 links of chain, which means you can't pull the center down as close as you could if you went to 1 or 0 links of chain remaining. The instructions are not clear as to where you should count your 2-4 links of chain from, but based on the picture it looks like they want you to count from the underside of the red plastic to the end of the chain. There is always one link that's halfway visible coming out of the red plastic and I don't know if they mean that half link to be counted or not. I decided to count it so I was leaving 1.5 links of chain visible in both my tests. Actually, I seem to have accidentally pulled it till only half a chain link was visible when I installed the chain on the other side:

20151130_161036.jpg


It's also possible that in actual ice and snow things would be slick enough that the chains would pull on completely with the red spacer. I did my tests on dry asphalt. Has anyone run in snow with the red spacer? Did you leave 1.5 links of chain visible between the red plastic and the center bar? Note that I'm not counting the final anchor loop as a chain link.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the chains overall. I won't know for sure how well they work till I have to drive in snow with them, but that could be awhile.
 
Got to use the chains in snow today and they worked great. We had to get to the doctor to take care of my sinus infection and it was sort of half hail, half sleet when we left. After a few miles the road became white and I could feel we were slipping a bit so I pulled over. Took my wife and I five minutes to put on the chains which included me explaining what to do to get her side started and me finishing the tightening. I found that with the blue spacer and two nuts equally far to the right, putting the lug-nut holder on the lower right nut hit the ball on the rims as I tried to tighten it, so I had to put it on the upper right nut. The instructions say to put it on the far right nut but not which nut to use if two are equally far right, so I think either should be okay but I kept the silver handle rotated a bit right of straight down just to make sure it would sweep a large enough distance to sit over the center of the wheel when I did its final tightening swing. If you're confused what that means, watch this video on how to put on the chains and it might make sense:

Maggi TRAK Sport - Ladder track snow chains - HOW TO FIT - YouTube

When we walked out of the doctor's office a guy was leaning down looking perplexed by the chains. We explained how they worked and he thought they were pretty cool.

We drove about 18 miles total at up to 30mph but rarely over 22mph. In fact the chains developed a really annoying vibration above around 20mph when we first put them on which seemed to be sort of harmonic with the car - it wasn't as bad going over 25mph. After 10 or more miles the vibration wasn't too bad at that harmonic speed. I don't know if we were wearing rough spots off the chains or maybe they clogged with snow to smooth the ride...? Examining the chains afterward I don't see any major wear though the tips of the little spiked embedded in the plastic look smoothed off a bit.

On the way to the doctor the snow was fresh and falling, getting to 1-3 inches deep at most. On the way home all the roads we passed had been plowed which created some sections of wet pavement and some that almost seemed worse than unplowed with 4-5 inches of slush. I'd say we were on wet pavement for maybe 6 of the miles with no noticeable damage to the chains. We passed a car that had slid off the road into ditch and ended up following a lot of very slow people who were apparently afraid of sliding without chains. One pickup in front of us fishtailed badly around a corner and later an SUV was getting towed up a hill by an emergency vehicle. I only felt us slipping a couple times and it wasn't bad.

When we got home we found we'd been following a guy from a few blocks down the street in a sedan without chains. He stopped and asked if we could drive him home because he wasn't sure he could make it, so we did.

Anyway, here's some pictures from after the trip just before removing the chains:

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The manual says to leave at least 2 links of chain between the silver handle at the center of the tire and the red plastic at the center of the tire the chain goes through. I actually left 2.5 links but by the time the trip was done, there was only half a link. Apparently the tension of the black elastic that goes over the red hook near the edge of the tire rim was enough to pull the chain out as far as it could go through the hole in the red plastic. It didn't seem to be a problem, but I don't understand why the manual suggests leaving at least 2 links of chain visible if it's going to get pulled out so no links of chain are visible...

Also notice the red plastic on the far right of the last picture is kind of crooked compared to the black bar. That seems to be normal - at least it seems to happen on both tires and there's enough looseness in the design that it doesn't seem to be causing a problem.

And here's the chains after washing them in the shower as recommended to get rid of salt (although I don't think we use salt around here):

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It's kind of hard to tell they've even been used. I didn't look at them carefully originally so I'm not sure if those little metal studs in the plastic were originally rounded like they are in the second picture, but they probably were. You can see some wear (tiny scratches) on the edges of the red plastic in the 3rd picture. It doesn't seem too bad but it might be a problem if you need to use these really often. I think if anything is going to fail first it's probably going to be one of the red plastic pads or the black elastic that holds the central chain. Supposedly you can get spare parts without buying a whole new set of chains. That black elastic is actually the part that worries me the most because elastic doesn't normally last forever and this one is pretty thin and attached through a chain link that's been soldered closed around the elastic. It would be very difficult to cut that chain link, replace the elastic, and re-solder. Probably easier to replace it by adding a tiny carabiner-style chain link holding a new elastic.