Quick tire pyrometer question

[Erik Frank]

After a recent problem with blistering tires at a road race event, I'm now very interested in monitoring tire temps and developing some correlations between tire wear, tire failure, chassis setup, and temperature.

Thus, I am looking into purchasing a tire pyrometer and I am interested in opinions about infrared (non-contact) vs. the probe style. The infrared guns look like they have a fast response, but they don't have seem to have the accuracy of the probe style.

Is an infrared gun good enough?

With the probe style, how quickly do these devices log the readings? Specifically, how quickly can you sample three temps across all four tires, without the tires losing too much heat from the track session?

Any brand reccomendations? I'm aware of the Longacre stuff. Any others?

thanks,
erik

[Bob Chiras]

We have contact and infrared from Intercomp and we get the same readings with either device.

Great service and great product quality. They also spend a ton of money each year supporting karting. As such we support them by selecting their products.

[Gary Robinson]

Hi Erik,

When I was racing GTP, the AVON and Goodyears engineers swore by the analog
probe type. Probably more because at that time the infareds were not as goood as they are today. A probe type enables you to get below any pick-up on the tyre to get a slighty more accurate reading. As a practical application, the infared is so much faster and easier, (especially with two karts!) What you are really looking for is comparisons. Most of the infareds are made by Raytech. The laser pointer version is a nice feature. 'Bout $100 lot of places.

Gary

[Todd Godwin]

I think it depends on what you want to monitor and whether you want the memory functinos. The IR gun is quick and easy but it only reads the temp of the surface of the tire (if the tire is covered in dirt, grass, rubber pickup etc., your readings will be affected). Also, I haven't seen an IR gun with a memory. I have a Longacre probe type with memory. It is less sensitive to buildup on the tire as you actually stick the probe into the tire. Mine also stores three temps on each tire.
A resource you might want to get is Phantom's Tire Temp video (www.phantomchassis.com). Although its primarilly for oval karting he goes over the different tools and gives quite a few tips of how to use them and what to look for (and a good portion of it is probably relavent to sprint also).

[Erik Frank]

Thanks for the help guys. I bought an Inter Comp probe type.

-erik