Current issue has an article, "So, Which Tire Warmer Do I Want?", in response to all the comments the first one generated. Out of the frying pan into the fire.... They say if you use, say, Pirelli tires, then you want to use either Bakers or Bickles, based on their previous test of these warmers, and the recommendations from respective tire manufacturers (in this case from Rich Munson at Pirelli). Only problem is, they didn't review the full range of warmers/warmer performance from a given brand. Chickenhawk Pole Positions makes a warmer have two heat settings, 135 F and 175 F. For Pirellis, the 135F setting is exactly in the range recommended by Munson. But we don't know whether they actually hit that temp or not, because RRW didn't test that temp setting on them. In any case, this latest effort by RRW is a bit misleading, IMHO, in that it doesn't provide a complete view of which warmers by which manufacturers will work with which tires, only a partial view. If I was Chickenhawk, I'd be pissed, as it doesn't represent fairly/accurately their full range of product.
What, you didn't know. John enjoyed all the letters he got from the Tire Sox guy so much that he's going to piss off a new warmer manufacturer every few months. Whatever it takes to get good content.
You seriously expect RRW to evaluate which warmers "work" with each popular brand of race tires? They did a pretty comprehensive comparo IMO and gave plenty of info that YOU can use to determine which ones are best for YOU.
Maybe. If I'd only gone by what they published, I wouldn't have bought Chickenhawks. It turns out that the Pole Positions are probably going to work perfectly with Pirellis - but there's no way one could have figured that out from the RRW articles. So at that point, like I said, if I were the CH guys, I'd be pissed. Incomplete information not presented as incomplete is worse than no information at all.
Nah, those ChickenHawk warmers are no good. You should just send 'em to me and get some tire bakers for yo'self!
Really? You'd take them? Gee, Jay, Thanks! Actually, I sent a version of this note to RRW as an editorial, and Mr Editor sent back a very brief reply, saying, "OK, I fired Hannas." Well I figured he was pulling my chain a bit, for being pernickety. But as it turns out I think he may have. At any rate, he's looking for a new associate editor. Maybe I wasn't being too picky after all.
