Tire Pressure Monitoring

Remember the Ford/Firestone SUV/tire roll-over accidents?

Long-ish but interesting article on tire monitoring.

http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=6168

"...Tire pressure monitoring – already widespread in Europe – will begin to be required in new passenger cars in the United States starting this November when the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (better known as TREAD) Act's mandate goes into effect. According to law, U.S. automakers must put tire pressure monitoring systems in 10 percent of their 2004 model passenger vehicles and light trucks. That will rise to 35 percent in 2005 and 65 percent in 2006. After that, it's expected that all U.S. vehicles will have the systems, although the 2005 ruling will set the long term rules...."

Lovely, another crappy system that, at some point, I will have to pay for in increased vehicle prices because of another person's incompetence, ignorance or just plain laziness. When will it ever stop?

Skid

hmm, I know humvees have them, they can even inflate and deflate the tires while on the move! I don't know how they work, no doubt the humvee system is costly..
but how about a simpler indicator system only? the radio beacon transmitter on my cat's collar is easily small enough to fit in something that could be screwed onto/ into the tire valve -- how about something similar that would transmit pressure info to a reciever on the dash?

I thought about getting a tire pressuring monitor system installed when I get new wheels and tires, but instead opted to save the money and just do it myself. They are pretty neat though.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/runflat/tirepressuremoni.htm
http://www.tirerack.com/accessories/smartire/smartire2.jsp

I think it's great in combination with one of those systems which keep the car going for another 100 miles when the tire has run flat. I think it's called Pax? In that case you don't notice when your tire goes flat and you need a warning that it's time to get a new one.
Having said that, I rented a renault Clio on holiday last week and the right front tire was punctured. I hadn't noticed it but a driver passing me signalled for me to stop and by the time I had pulled over the tire was completely flat and I had great trouble steering. I got lucky because he warned me, but I hate to think what would have happened if it had gone completely flat whilst I still would have been doing 120Kmh.

My mum has valve stem caps that she purchased that show green when the pressure is OK show yellow below 30 and red below 26 pounds.

Just a quick glance at all four before driving off takes care of checking tire pressure on a more than daily basis.

I just check mine manually once or twice per month, but the automatic systems are a neat idea.

I understand that automakers have come up with a way to program it into the ABS computer, so no additional monitoring hardware is needed beyond what is already there for the brake system. The ABS-linked system isn't quite as good as a dedicated system, but it should add virtually nothing the the marginal cost of producing each car (beyond the development cost).

Wow...that would have been great to have yesterday. I was in an area so remote you can only find it by GPS and found that the Fu&#$in truck had 3 flat tires...then the tire pump broke. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif