what do you guys think about - tire pressure monitoring systems?

vash · vash's Garage

my tacoma has a system..the light came on a few days ago..on a trip. i checked all four corners and everything was fine. i was dumbfounded...i bet it is my spare tire. i will drop it, and check the pressure today after work. i am pretty good with checking my tire pressures, and wheel rotation. i have a gauge in every car.

are cars getting too smart? for the typical driver, this is a pretty good thing. if my spare is low on pressure, it was nice for the heads up. at first i hated it. (on my mazdaspeed3)..but i am thinking it is a good thing. i still hate the seatbelt reminder..

could be the TPMS batteries..

jyl · jyl's Garage

I added one to the 911, like it a lot. Interesting to see how the pressure on each corner is affected by temperature. SmarTire system.

The wife's Toyota has a factory tire pressure system. That is a lot less interesting, just a single warning light/indicator, so don't get the geeky fun of knowing the front left is X psi while the right rear is Y psi.

azasadny · azasadny's Garage

I like the TPMS on my MazdaSpeed3.

pwd72s · 10-01-2009, 12:03 PM

My Mustang has one...wouldn't rely on it. I always check air when I wash/wax the car. Tested pressures (Blue point gauge from a snap-on truck) after buying the car, found ranges from 26 to 34 PSI, with no warning on the dash...I prefer 'em to be closer than that.

UconnTim97 · UconnTim97's Garage

The one on our truck works pretty well. It does tell us what tire is low, which is a nice feature.

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

I have it on the GS. I really like it - having some advance warning of a tire going down on a bike is a good thing.

jwasbury · 10-01-2009, 12:33 PM

My '06 Mini Cooper has TPMS...If I'm not mistaken, this is required when manufacturers spec vehicles with run flat tires. Not an expert, but I believe that the system works by using the ABS wheel sensors and monitoring differences in wheel speed. This type of system does not really monitor pressure. In my experience it has been only so so. Many times the light has come on and I find that everything is ok. After this happens 3 or more times, you start to ignore it. It does get me to check my tire pressures more often, so its probably a good thing, but in my experience the false alarms are more frequent than real tire issues.

masraum · 10-01-2009, 12:37 PM

I'd like to add it to my wife's and daughter's vehicles.

legion · 10-01-2009, 12:39 PM

I have one on my Silverado. I can display the pressure of each tire, individually. It is dead-on accurate when I cross-check it with my good tire gauge.

I can also see the trans temp, the fuel mileage, how many gallons of gas I've burned, how many hours the engine has run, how many cylinders it is running on (it can shut down four to save gas).

racer · 10-01-2009, 12:44 PM

There are a couple different types of monitors. Some run off of ABS Sensors (like my Toyota van) while others have a unit mounted on the actual wheel.

If it weren't for the Firestone/Explorer fiasco of a few years ago, this wouldn't even be an issue.

legion · 10-01-2009, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by racer

If it weren't for the Firestone/Explorer fiasco of a few years ago, this wouldn't even be an issue.

I disagree. I had a brand-new car that I bought just before the Firestone fiasco that had a rudimentary tire-pressure monitoring system (It counted the relative RPM of each wheel and if one differred by a certain percentage, it set an alarm). I think that the trend of having them would have happened regardless.

The dirty little secret with that whole episode was that Ford specifically asked Firestone to lighten their tires to make the handling on the Explorer more responsive. Ford had threatened to withdraw its OEM contract with Firestone if they didn't comply. Firestone responded by making a thinner tire composed of fewer layers of rubber.

When the problem was revealed (and some other OEM tires on other vehicles had a much worse record than the Firestone/Explorer), Jacques Nassar threw Firestone under the bus as quickly as possible.

Noah930 · Noah930's Garage

From a personal standpoint, I think it's more useless technology. I can't understand why it's mandated as standard equipment. Then again, I actually look at my tires from time-to-time to see if one's looking low, and can feel (while driving) when a tire's down a few psi. The general populace, however, has no idea there's underinflation going on until they've got about 12 psi left at a corner. For the masses, perhaps it's better to have an automated device tell them something's going wrong.

porsche4life · porsche4life's Garage

My dads Tacoma had that. And yup it would come on occasionally. Lower the spare, air it back up and away you went...

Phrog · 10-01-2009, 01:51 PM

Don't need to drop tire, just lay under truck and reach through the wheel to check and add air. Save yourself some work.
Kevin

jyl · jyl's Garage

To clarify, the SmarTire system puts a sensor inside each tire, banded to the rim. The display lets you cycle through each tire and, for each, see pressure, temperature (air temp inside the tire), and deviation from the optimal pressure (that you specify). If the deviation is too large, the system gives an alert (blinking light and beeper), touch on button and the alert is downgraded to a solid light.

On the 911, I can start the drive with all tires at temperature 60F, the left rear heats up first (presumably because the catalytic converter is right there), and eventually they are all 90F and the pressure has risen 4 psi or so. Geeky fun.

It looks like SmarTire no longer makes a version for cars, but they still make versions for RVs, buses, trucks, etc. I don't see why you couldn't use one of those.

javadog · 10-01-2009, 03:18 PM

I hate the damn things. I have three cars with them and get more errors than real data. Often, the systems just don't work at all, so I get a really annoying blinking icon that keeps the intrument cluster from displaying something else, like the radio station. Not to mention that the senders need periodic replacement.

JR

gr8fl4porsche · gr8fl4porsche's Garage

We have TPMS on our Odyssey and it works perfectly

It is very accurate and tells the psi on each tire - checks every few seconds. An alarm goes off when a tire gets below 25 psi or so.

I want it on every car I drive from now on.

VaSteve · 10-01-2009, 04:59 PM

We are car people so we pay attention to stuff like this. I saw a poster at the DOT that showed tires from 100 to 20% or so of correct pressure. It's hard to visually spot for women and the uninterested/uninformed/clueless. I have seen people driving on near flats and I'll tell them about it. Freak them out though.

p911dad · p911dad's Garage

My wife's 2008 Malibu LTZ(which is really a great little car) has the system. The car sits in the garage for weeks at a time and doesn't get much attention from either of us as she doesn't drive much anymore. Anyway, I took it out the other day and the tire pressure sensor went off as I drove down our street and sure enough the left rear was down to 5 pounds of pressure! It turns out a sheet rock screw had pierced the tread at some point. I took it to the dealer after pumping it back up and they fixed it pronto(gratis I might add!- thanks to Parks Chevrolet on North Tryon St. in the city of Charlotte and their fine service dept.!)

emcon5 · emcon5's Garage

I always thought they were just a gimmick, until:

My buddy stopped by my house on the way to Cabo. His tire system alerted on on of his rear tires, turned out it was only about 6 lbs low. It was not visibly low, and it wasn't handling strange.

We found a small nail in the tire. At the rate he was losing air, we figured he probably wouldn't have noticed he had a problem until he was out on the Baja somewhere.

He never would have noticed without the light.