Vortex Tire Warmers

Ok!! Sorry guys for promising info on these and not getting arount to it till now. I have been using them for a full race season at this point and I will say I like them quite a bit...

One thing that people don't understand is actual temperature of tires. They think hotter is better and that's just not true. I don't know what temp the MotoD and some of those cheaper brands get to but I've heard time and time again "my MotoD warmers get so hot, feel how hot my wheels get".

While yes, its important to get heat in the wheels, but its about how get the temp into the wheels. Overheating the tire in order to get heat in the wheels is the worst thing you can do...

I race 2 different bikes and have 2 sets of warmers. The Vortex and a set of Suzuka. I have had my Suzuka set for 4 years now and they have been great. They build temp fast and consistent and will get the tire to 180 in about 30 min. They have a reflective lining inside them which is what helps them build heat faster because the parasitic loss is lower. But that lining is not very durable and crumbles quickly.

The Vortex are built almost identically to my Woodcraft set that I replaced with the Vortex, except no stretchy side skirt and no extra plug to prevent accidentally leaving them on. No reflective lining so they build heat a little slower, but nothing an extra 5-10 min doesn't compensate for.

I had a HUGE grip issue at a race weekend this year where my bike was trying to kill me. Turns out the regulator failed and it was heating my tires to 220-230. FYI, your tires should get no hotter then 180 off the warmer. My tire was so hot on the warmer that the pressure was high but the volume was low. When I would go out in a race the tire would flex so much that I had no grip but at the same time when I would come in the pressure would be right because the tire was overheating. So my adjustments were all going the wrong direction. Anyway, long story short I almost died and then I couldn't figure out what was wrong and I was so aggravated that I was threatening to throw wrenchs at my suspension guy.

The point of the story is that this problem got me thinking about how the warmers performed so I set both bikes up in my garage on warmers hooked them up and took 3 temp readings (left center and right) every 10 min for an hour...

...this will continue on my next post.

The Vortex warmers heated up slower but much more evenly. Consistent numbers left to right, center always gets hotter (because of the pressure of the warmer on the tire) but left and right sides were even and checked at different parts of the tire.

The Suzuka was a bit sporadic with 10-15 degree fluctuations through out the tire.


FYI all tire temps were taken with an actual tire pyrometer, not a temp gun. Temp gun works for surface temps well but NOT tire temps.

Basically my opinion is this.

The Vortex warmers are built very well and puts down consistent and even temps.

It doesn't have the bells and whistles that the Woodcraft warmers do, but when I had my wood crafts those fancy stretchy side skirts were nothing but problems with the stitching and Velcro. So I don't miss that at all..

One think to watch is the Low/High switch is in a poor place. It's easy to bump and turn them on low. When you take them off and set them on the ground the switch easily gets flipped, so you have to consciously check it.

Bottom line, its a great product that appears to be constructed well, competitively priced, seem to be very durable (I am not hard on them though), and my replacement set for the Suzuka Warmers for 2016 will be another set of Vortex.