Cold weather memory foam research

[Mortimer Snerd]

Awhile back I asked about how well memory foams perform in the cold. While I got some advice about what brands might do better, there didn't seem to be much collective info about how much cold affected memory foams. So, I ordered some Ace's Doughnuts and did a little research. I put one of them in the refrigerator overnight, squashed it down, and put it next to a similarly squashed one. The one on the right was at 70 degrees (measured surface temp with my temp gun) and the one at the left was at 55 degrees. A side impact of this was that I turned down the temp in my fridge. The pics below are taken at 15 second intervals. The foams are were the same size after being squashed, the difference in the first pic was due to the few seconds it took me to pick up my camera.







I was really surprised at how big a difference 15 degrees made. The room temperature foam was fully expanded after about a minute. It took about 7 minutes for the colder foam to completely reform, and the surface temps were just about equal by that time. I suspect the foams would not have fully reformed before they warmed up, but I may try squashing on and keeping it in the fridge to see what happens. I'm hoping to pick up some Kreepys and the new foams by Xtreme to see how much of a difference there really is between them. Needless to say, I'm not sure I'll be running my foams until the weather warms up here in Crawlerado. It also remains to be seen how much real-world difference this makes. It did take the surface of the foams a longer time to rebound even from small compressions, so we'll see. I'll post anything I find out.

 

[camel_rc]

Interesting. So perhaps a larger foam would be preferable on a cold day?

 

[Tanis]

Your findings are the same as mine with kreepy's. I run other stuff in the winter;-)

 

[yukon635]

ill save you some time and money

cold weather + memory foams = sucky foams

At the last SERCRC comp and it was freezing cold (in the 30's), i had ace donuts in my tires and kreepies in my girlfriends truck. The ace donuts were hard as a rock and the kreepies were a little softer. A few of us that were running memory foams figured to just leave our trucks cranked and the heat running and seat warmers running. Leave the crawlers in the truck until it is almost your time to run so that the foams were soft

 

[Tanis]

ill save you some time and money

cold weather + memory foams = sucky foams

At the last SERCRC comp and it was freezing cold (in the 30's), i had ace donuts in my tires and kreepies in my girlfriends truck. The ace donuts were hard as a rock and the kreepies were a little softer. A few of us that were running memory foams figured to just leave our trucks cranked and the heat running and seat warmers running. Leave the crawlers in the truck until it is almost your time to run so that the foams were soft

I did that for a couple of comps in the fall, but by the time you get the truck out and on course, they have cooled enough to make a significant difference. They do work better heating them than just letting the truck sit outside though, but not as good as nice warm summer days "thumbsup"

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

I didn't figure this would be earth shattering info to anyone, but it seems like there isn't much hard data out there on this stuff. As for larger foams, I'd be surprised if that worked. The foam feels harder when its cold, and I doubt the tires will grip as well. I'll be curious to see how this affects adoption of the new Badlands, as they're supposed to be hugely better with memory foams. I also thought it was interesting how fast the foams warmed up.