Get Out on the Highway

They should get them to work a lot better before they mandate them. My wife and my neighbour both have cars with warning lights on for low tire pressure, but there is no low tire pressure.

No its actually business as usual, these are the same people that mandate low water use toilets to conserve water.

Nah, wot ya reeeeeealy want is a system that bleeds off some exhaust gas to top up the tyre pressures automatically....then a system to monitor the system with some lights ..and then a warning light monitoring ststem to warn you if any warning lights are on.... or off but should be on...or on but should be off...and a sensor monitor.....

There is a whole breed of people who think that monitoring something is the same as actually doing something.

Monitoring tyre pressure isn't going to help those people who can't be arsed to understand what the lights mean and evn if they did they wouldn't do anything about them.

It's the MEMs struggling to find an appliction...hey maybe they could incorporate lasers too....?

BTW I hear that MEMS tyre pressure sensors from China have lead in them and will poisin your pet dog if he eats one...

Gee I need another holiday.

A friend of my had a ford truck about 2 years ago.

his warning light saying he was low on lube to his diifferitial?

dealer where he bought it check it out could not find anything wrong with it, I think he actually said they foounfd the problem, that his warning light to tell him his warning light was faulty

LMAO when he told me

but I believe it was just his warning light that was faulty?

two things, it could be true or this is how rumors start?

Every day, I see cars with low tires and the drivers are totally unaware of this. However, when I can get alongside at a stop and tell them, they almost always appreciate it. That's sad, because it takes a really low tire pressure to make a radial tire low visually. I do it the simple way, and check the temperature of all tires each time I fill with gas, using the more sensitive backs of my hands. When I have found one tire warmer than expected (comparing front to rear and side to side to compensate for solar heating and load distribution), I have found that this method is good for a pressure difference of 6-8 psig (15-25% of inflation pressure).

Since proper inflation pressure is a range (depending on things such as load, desired hardness of ride, or desired handling), how are the sensors supposed to work to meet the standard and yet allow for the range?????

Too bad that we are having to add all these things to cars to compensate for poor driver care. However, I suspect that the relative cost of them will be less than the savings in premature failures or accidents. I would worry, however, about sensor failure after we have started to rely on them to always work, and the ability of these systems to detect the signals from only your own vehicle.

--JMM

Good post...

I agree... my son often ends up diving with low pressures, but it's more difficult for him to check and top 'em up as he's in a wheelchair (and a lazy young git ).

My real point is the one I often make ...fix the problem rather than adding on more crap .. lets get tyres that don't deflate, or ones that inflate themselves rather than more sensors.

I've made the point several times that in the UK we recently had some adulterated petrol which was causing breakdowns.... Nothing was actually wrong with the petrol in terms of running the engine... The contaminant was effecting the oxygen sensors and the engine mangement systems were then shutting down into 'limp home' mode... how barking mad is that system?

When you go to the opticians they check the pressure in your eyes with a pulse (jet) of air. I wonder if someone could design a tyre pressure gauge which works on the wall of the tyre.

On the first car I ever owned I started with good intentions and checked the pressures after a few weeks. Two of the tyres subsequently went down, and, I have never checked any of my cars since (with a pressure gauge). Except for the odd slow (and fast) puncture I've found that they stay inflated for the life of the tyre: leading me to the belief that checking them is the main cause of them going down. I'm sure I'll come in for a lot of criticism for this post: try to focus on the first paragraph.

Probably be tricky to measure the pressure from the wall.

The cornea is relatively thin comared to the wall of a car tyre.

The solution is to make wheel/tyre systems which don't go down (unless there is a real puncture) Of all the cars I've owned, at leat 50% have had tyres thay wouldn't hold a good consistent pressure.

It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to produce wheel/tyres that stay up for a year at a time.

Del,

When seasons change, I have found that the tire pressure has changed enough to require attention--particularly when going from summer to winter. Being able to stay up all year long may be OK if the climate is fairly constant, however.

--JMM

Yeh..that's fine ...checking every 6 months would be fine by me. It's just the self deflating rubbish we have to put up with is dangerous and irritating.

My basic point is... fix the problem don't throw more expensive unreliable gizmos at it.

Bloke I know has a Merc... engine management decided to lock him out one day, they had lift it on to a truck and take it away to fix it.... bonkers!

I just bought a new car and it has a low tire pressure warning system, however I think it works on angular velocity not pressure. i.e You initialise the system when you are sure that your tires are at the correct pressure, then the on-board computer monitors the speed of each wheel. If there is a consistent difference, then it alerts you that one of your wheel has a smaller diameter (i.e. going flat) Obviously wheel spin, slippery road conditions could set it off accidentally, but I think the OBC is clever enough to ignore this. Seems like a pretty clever solution to this problem.

Des-eng

The problem with designing idiot proof tire pressure monitoring systems is that they keep making a better idiot.

Yeh I think the idiots these days have to be much more versatile than they used to.

Was a time when just falling off a wall would do.... nowadays ya gotta be much more creative with all that thar tecknowedgy.