Tire Warming

[likeapuma]

Forgive me if it's been asked before, but I searched and came up empty...


Was just wondering how long it takes for a tire to properly warm up under normal riding conditions if at all.

I read in Sports Rider that going back and forth actually doesn't do all that much as opposed to rapid acceleration and deceleration.

Never says how long it'd take a tire to warm up just riding around...not warm like track-stick, but warm enough to have confidence on most street corners

If I sound like a fool in trying to ask, sorry...I might be slightly illiterate!

 

[goblinsix]

It all depends upon the tire compound.

Correct, weaving back and forth does very little to warm-up street tires. Zig-zagging is a NO NO on the track. Usually just riding the bike will warm up the tires. But temperature, tire compound, road temp, and moisture are all going to come into play. I guess that for street riding the best thing to do is to simply go ride around and they will warm up. This is the reason that race tires on a bike for the street aren't good. It takes A LOT to warm up a race tire. Which means it will be slick 95% of the time. Same thing with race brake pads.

 

[Lamb busa]

12-15 miles of continuous riding. The most that Lamb has ever raised his tire pressure (checked while cold compared to checked while hot) on the street is 2 psi. So, even when you warm your tires for the street, you're just getting them into the sticky warm zone. As a way of comparison, the same tire used on the track can raise the temps 4-5 psi. Thats the reason you lower the pressures for the track. That and a slightly larger contact patch. Now, the initial cold pressures can determine how fast a tire can come up to operating temperature. More friction on the road, lower initial pressures, should cause the pressures to come up faster and vice versa. Certainly, how much one uses the brakes can also effect how fast the pressures come up. Warming the rotors which are connected to the rims helps the heat disperse across the bead of the tire. Lamb is just using the psi scale as a "real world measurement" of the air inside the tire getting warmer and causing the molecules to speed up.

Anyway, 12-15 miles of continuous riding is a good starting point.

 

[likeapuma]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Lamb.

I understand it's all dependent on the circumstances such as compound/road temp...was just looking for a estimated time frame

Thanks to both of you