How often do you check your tire pressure?

[Gillbot]

When the tire pressure light comes on the dash.

 

[Ferzerp]

Honestly, I hate TPMS.

1) The batteries in my four are all dying/dead, so I get the error light on my dashboard constantly. They're not cheap things to replace, and I think they even added to the mounting cost for tires.
2) The car only remembers four, I want eight to have two sets of tires. Otherwise, it'll need reprogramming each time ($$), or spend an entire season with the light on.

You have a *horrible* implementation of TPMS in your vehicle then. There are various ways of making batteryless sensors (you have the motion to charge them, or they can be charged via induction), and you seem to have one of the cars that instead of just accepting the sensor that is located in the correct spot (the range on these is tiny), they have keyed it to a serial number/other ID.

Those are totally faults of your car manufacturer, and not the technology.

 

[bruceb]

I check them about once a month. And I agree, that while TPMS systems are nice to have, they do require maintenance. In some cases, the sensor in the wheel gets replaced say every 3rd tire replacement. This is either because they are easily damaged by tire installing machines or as mentioned, the battery dies out. Also, if you decide to run other than factory air pressure, then the sensor needs to be taught what the new proper pressure is. And in some cases, if a tire does go too low and trips the dash indicator, it must be reset after the tire is back to proper pressure. You can thank NHTSA for all this crap, after the fiasco with some pickup trucks blowing tires. NHTSA has mandated this system on all new cars and light trucks.

 

[MotF Bane]

You have a *horrible* implementation of TPMS in your vehicle then. There are various ways of making batteryless sensors (you have the motion to charge them, or they can be charged via induction), and you seem to have one of the cars that instead of just accepting the sensor that is located in the correct spot (the range on these is tiny), they have keyed it to a serial number/other ID.

Those are totally faults of your car manufacturer, and not the technology.

Well, then, I hate my vehicle's implementation of TPMS. Better?

 

[LTC8K6]

I didn't know there were any sensors that did not use batteries.

 

[Ferzerp]

Quite, because TPMS in general is very useful You're often warned of a tire issue in time to drive it to a tire shop before it results in a dangerous road-side tire change, and on he ones with actual readouts, you can more effectively keep your pressure in the optimal range. No one likes dealing with manual tire pressure reading all the time, so it doesn't happen nearly as often.

 

[Ferzerp]

I didn't know there were any sensors that did not use batteries.

They're less common because it's more expensive to implement, but keeping something like that powered is pretty trivial.

 

[CraigRT]

When the tires look low.
Otherwise, it's pretty much always been what I expect it to be..
I have a pretty good eye for seeing when a tire looks low though. Can tell about 5-10lbs below normal, visually.

 

[Ferzerp]

When the tires look low.
Otherwise, it's pretty much always been what I expect it to be..
I have a pretty good eye for seeing when a tire looks low though. Can tell about 5-10lbs below normal, visually.

You think this, but what happens when the angle of the ground is such that you have a low tire, but it doesn't seem so? We notice the opposite more often, that the tire supporting extra weight looks low when it isn't, but it's the opposite which is a problem.

No one only parks on perfectly flat surfaces.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I check them about once a month. And I agree, that while TPMS systems are nice to have, they do require maintenance. In some cases, the sensor in the wheel gets replaced say every 3rd tire replacement. This is either because they are easily damaged by tire installing machines or as mentioned, the battery dies out. Also, if you decide to run other than factory air pressure, then the sensor needs to be taught what the new proper pressure is. And in some cases, if a tire does go too low and trips the dash indicator, it must be reset after the tire is back to proper pressure. You can thank NHTSA for all this crap, after the fiasco with some pickup trucks blowing tires. NHTSA has mandated this system on all new cars and light trucks.

One could argue that you could blame the idiot truck owners who never bothered to check their tire pressures.

I noticed a guy in a CTS earlier this week with a low rear tire. He got on the freeway in front of me, it was very obvious that the tire was low. Wonder how far he made it, I can't imagine a tire lasting too long at freeway speeds with that little air in it.

 

[JulesMaximus]

When the tires look low.
Otherwise, it's pretty much always been what I expect it to be..
I have a pretty good eye for seeing when a tire looks low though. Can tell about 5-10lbs below normal, visually.

My wife's car has a TPMS and I can't tell when one of her tires is 5lbs low. She complains that the light is lit so I go check all 4 and usually find that one of them is in the mid 20psi range but it is impossible to tell by looking at them.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I have tall and soft enough sidewalls that I can usually tell visually when they lose more than a few PSI. With lower profile and stiffer sidewalls, it's much harder to tell. When I had my first car if you set the tires to 34,35,36, and 37 PSI I could tell you which was which without using a gauge.

 

[LTC8K6]

My wife's car has a TPMS and I can't tell when one of her tires is 5lbs low. She complains that the light is lit so I go check all 4 and usually find that one of them is in the mid 20psi range but it is impossible to tell by looking at them.

I hate the simple version that doesn't tell you which tire it is.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I hate mandated TPMS. If you want TPMS, fine, but don't force me to have it because some moron ran his tires low, had a blowout, and crashed. His stupidity shouldn't make my new car cost more. Same thing with the backup cameras.

Granted, I've never owned a vehicle newer than 2002 (my current one) so it doesn't apply there, but eventually I'll have to deal with it.. I might just yank the bulb in the dash

 

[jlee]

I hate mandated TPMS. If you want TPMS, fine, but don't force me to have it because some moron ran his tires low, had a blowout, and crashed. His stupidity shouldn't make my new car cost more. Same thing with the backup cameras.

Granted, I've never owned a vehicle newer than 2002 (my current one) so it doesn't apply there, but eventually I'll have to deal with it.. I might just yank the bulb in the dash

In VT, a vehicle won't pass its mandatory annual inspection if TPMS isn't working.

 

[Baked]

When the check tire pressure light goes on on the dashboard.

 

[SparkyJJO]

In VT, a vehicle won't pass its mandatory annual inspection if TPMS isn't working.

I live in Ohio where (except for a couple cities) we don't have any real inspections, so moot point for me

I wonder if there is a way to take the dumb things, permanently set them to report the proper pressure (via soldering a resistor or whatever), then throw them in the glovebox or something

 

[Shawn]

I check when my tire pressure light comes on.

 

[jlee]

I live in Ohio where (except for a couple cities) we don't have any real inspections, so moot point for me

I wonder if there is a way to take the dumb things, permanently set them to report the proper pressure (via soldering a resistor or whatever), then throw them in the glovebox or something

I've heard of people putting them in PVC "capsules" with a valve in it, and then setting it to the appropriate pressure and tossing it in a vehicle somewhere..avoids the annoying flashing light if you run wheels that don't have TPMS sensors.

 

[LTC8K6]

http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4679510&postcount=6

 

[jlee]

http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4679510&postcount=6

Bingo.

 

[SonicIce]

lol the monitoring system sounds like it takes more work than manually checking

 

[LTC8K6]

lol the monitoring system sounds like it takes more work than manually checking

What work? Looking at the dashboard? It displays a little picture of a car with the pressure at each corner if they are all okay, or:

 

[bruceb]

I agree, we should not be forced to have features on cars we do not want, just because 90% of the drivers out there are too stupid to check common sense things on their own. But the government said we have to have them. They are nice, in that you can depend on the sensor to tell you the pressure and you need not do it manually in bad weather. But the cost of maintaining them is not cheap. And you can't really disable them easily. On some cars the tire pressure may also be used in conjunction with wheel speed senors to tell traction control and antilock brakes how to perform. If that is the case, disabling it would be a bad idea.

 

[Ferzerp]