TPMS

[jjrbus]

Getting a bit ahead of myself here but am window shopping for tire pressure monitors. It appears that going from a 4 tire system to a 6+ tire system is a large jump in price. So am looking at monitoring the rear 4 tires.

I see some cheap (under $100) Chinese systems, but can find little reviews or feedback on them. To keep things simple I would need to use the type with the external type senders.

Something like this. http://www.dhgate.com/product/tpms-car-wireless-tire-pressure-monitoring/180353517.html?utm_source=pla&utm_medium=GMC&utm_campaign=zhlovezhp&utm_term=180353517&f=bm|180353517|112010-VehicleTools|GMC|Adwords|pla|zhlovezhp|US|112010013-OtherVehicleTools|c||0LRF|&gclid=CPuJiMbWoMUCFXQV7Aod3AwA6g

Any thoughts, opinions, experience, input or wisecracks greatly appreciated. JIm SW FL

[jjrbus]

A year has passed and I am getting around to this!  I decided on a 4 tire monitoring system for just the rear duals. After reading what I could I decided on a Carchet system, there is a bit about them on the internet.  The batteries are user replaceable and the removal tool might work on the duals? This system will also monitor temperature.  Had I done this a few weeks ago I could have ordered from China and saved a few dollars.

It would be nice to have an 8 tire system to also monitor the airbags, just too much money for the little use it will get.  If it saves me from ruining one tire it will pay for itself. If it is junk that ends up in the trash, oh well live and learn.  

You get what you pay for so we will see how this works out.       Jim 

[jjrbus]

While I am at it, I have had a bad experience with the color changing valve stem caps and would not use them on tires, but have decided to try 2 on the air bags.  They come in different pressures so I opted for the 46 lb ones.   May not be the right pressure but should indicate if the bags go to 41 lbs or less.  I have never run less than 50 in them so should be ok as an indicator?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/290651601393

[jjrbus]

218 views and no input?  Amazing!    Jim

[cdt5058]

9 minutes ago, jjrbus said:

218 views and no input?  Amazing!    Jim

Hey Jim, do you happen to have a link to the Carchet TPMS that you ended up buying? A good friend of mine suggested that I get a TPMS when I first bought my Sunrader. It's not high up on my mechanical/cosmetic fix list, but it would be nice to have a link to a product.

All the 6-sensor TPMS on AliExpress are costing over a few hundred dollars. Might as well just get two of the 4 tire monitors and a cigarette outlet splitter. Then you could monitor all the tires and the airbags.

[Back East Don]

This is one of those, to each their own kind of solution.  I have a pressure monitoring system, me.  I check the tire pressure before I head out anywhere and again before I head home.  Takes 10 minutes or so but gives me enough peace of mind.  Won't help me if I pick up a nail and such but I haven't had that happen in many years.  Over time I've figured out which tire is likely to lose a few PSI over time.  It is an item just not that high up on my priority list.  Have you had that much trouble with tires?

[jjrbus]

Amazon or Ebay for the link.   

When aftermarket systems were $100's of $$$$$  I did the same thing.  But now systems are dropping in price and like computers seem to be gaining in quality by leaps and bounds.

I bought a brand new set of tires for the Toy, within the first week I had a nail in one of the duals!  Fortunately because they were newly mounted I was checking them often watching for pressure loss and did not end up driving on one dual or destroying the one with nail in it.

They are toys, I like playing with toys

[naganthunter]

Just another doo-dad to install in the cockpit.  Sigh.

Count me in.

 

[jjrbus]

Here is a pic with a dollar bill for size comparison.  I will not have a chance to install it for a bit.  From the initial inspection nothing about it screams cheap Chinese junk. Appears to be well made.  The directions are best described as in English, but not American!    Jim

[jjrbus]

I was not going to comment further on this, but there are 283 views!   Must be many lurkers who are interested?

Read the literature and what is posted on the internet I decided to put the one's for the rear tires on the inside and the ones for the front tire's on the outside duals, makes sense to me Of course I ended up with them on the wrong side and had to redo, must be the metric left and right

The retaining nuts are referred to as anti theft nuts. I made a decision to leave them off the inside duals as they would be very difficult to to use. Doable? maybe, but not by me! I put a couple of the senders on and one picked up the signal right away, and you guessed it was on the outside dual. I installed 2 more on the passenger side and within a reasonable amount of time they started sending  temp and pressure.

Still the inside dual on the passenger side is not working, I am hoping it is not a blocked signal.  I removed it and put it on front tire and still reporting 0, I thought maybe battery but it is reporting temperature.  I took it off and shook it and tried on other front tire, still reporting 0.  I must have got a defective sender or maybe when I drive it will work?  

I put the lock nut on the outside duals, the installation tool did not work well for this as they are backwards to intended use, but a 1/2 inch wrench worked fine.  I did not spend a lot of time trying the installation tool, it is very hot out and I am working in direct sun so gave up quickly.

Got busy with some other things and maybe 15/20 minutes later the non functioning sender came to life.  I moved it around on tires, even tried it on the spare and it is ok for the moment.  I rearranged the senders so they correspond with the display screen and drove home about 10 miles at 50 MPH and it lasted that long. The trip home was a new fuel filter fiasco so lost interest in the system.

At some future time I will go through the manual and figure out the programming and such.

At this point I do not tell they are junk or I have wasted my money.  Not ready to recommend to a friend I want to see them function for some time before I do that.

                                                                                                                                                          Jim SW FL 

[jjrbus]

OK so I drove around a bit and monitored the system and it seems spot on. Put them on tires, switched tires, let air out put air in and everything was OK.  Now 3 of the sensors stopped reporting? There is no trouble shooting in the manual, so will experiment with them a bit. I emailed Amazon and quickly got a return authorization.  Jim

[jjrbus]

Mmmmmmm, I had a few minutes xtra today and out of curiosity put the system on my truck, drove to town and it worked flawlessly?   Not sure what to do  now.    Jim

[Totem]

no brainer.... the product uses blue tooth which cannot get through the coach and all that furniture but can easily range 3-4 feet on just a truck going only through the thin metal of the body panels. Blue tooth tech is best left for cell phones and cordless speakers or key finders where you already know where the key is; wave your arm in front of it or walk 6 paces and it can cut out..

You may get away with it working in your rv, but not in the dash; try putting the monitor dead nuts center of the rv and have wife monitor from the back. personally I am with Don and your other strategy; i use pressure caps on my bags and for the tires i check em with the dually air gauge from time to time.  I also look for center sag on my pre-course check between the rear duals; they shouldnt be squished so that they are touching or anywhere near. my eyes work better than bluetooth.

for the record i still would like to put an auto shutoff mini compressor on the bags... because monitors wont fill for you and who doesnt need a compressor for tires when they are low...or a beach ball etc

Edited July 6, 2016 by Totem

[jjrbus]

You've got me.  What does blue tooth and furniture have to do with senders or receiver going bad? Using your information TPMS systems sold for tractor trailers, tow vehicles with 5th wheels and motor homes with toads cannot work?

[jjrbus]

I looked up blue tooth range and it is from under 10 meters to 30 meters, depending on class.  Out of curiosity I took 2 of the senders off the Ford and drove, I drove for 30 miles and the monitor was still showing pressure in those 2 senders!

Me thinks something is amiss?                                        Jim

[Totem]

yep. nothing better than eyeballs and runner up would be pressure caps ; which i am not a fan of that much either because they leak or cause you to have to toque the hell on the brass to tighten them. what would be cool would be if someone invented a stem cap meter that had a shrader valve above the meter so that it didnt have to come off to fill. now that would be cool.

 

Ive seen blue tooth products claim those sorts of ranges.. unfortunately they are idealistic not realistic when we are talking about a pressure cap that is using a watch battery... class 3.

Officially Class 3 radios have a range of up to 1 metre (3 ft).  of course the true measurement of class one and class two are in actuality 0 -30 meters not 30 meters. meaning as a radio based device they must accept any and all interference and not cause interference to be licensed; hence why we like to measure our own tires by gauge or show cap.

[jjrbus]

So all the tractor trailers, tow rigs with 5th wheels and 40 foot motorhomes with toads sporting TPMS cannot possibly be working? 

I went trough this with a Brake Buddy with remote indicator, the fix was simple.                                      Jim

[Totem]

then perhaps its the extreme quality of your unit that makes it perform so perfectly and surely not that its failing to live up to the hard wired systems you mention.

Also your cap top mounted system must truly be fun to add air to; not to mention the torque stress applied will do wonders for its performance in future fillings.

essentially they are glorified cap indicators that radio (poorly) the base station.

Industrial toad setups are not screwed onto shraders on tire stems (whose purpose is to inflate the tire.)

Edited July 7, 2016 by Totem

[jjrbus]

What hard wired system are you talking about?

[jjrbus]

Now that I have had some time to Toy with these, I am starting to like them.  First thing they do not like being moved to a vehicle with different pressures for testing.  They seem to have a sleep mode and may or may not come on without moving.  I aired up 2 tires when system was asleep and they reported but the other 2 snoozed on.   They do come on once the vehicle starts moving.  The claim is 12 MPH but I do not see consistency in the activation speed. Adding or removing air is no more difficult than getting a regular cap off on the inner dual and the outer needs a 1/2" wrench to loosen the locking nut, I skipped the locking nut on the inner dual. Nothing seems to interfere with the signal from the caps, of course this is with limited use, I don't see what will change when traveling?

For regular valve caps on the inner dual I used a piece of PEX slightly drilled out to remove and install caps.   On these a piece of 3/4" PVC pipe is the perfect size to aide in removing or installing  inner cap!

Once on they seem to be accurate and in testing they will report pressure loss quickly. I simply loosened the cap and let pressure out for test.   I would not trust temperature as there are too many variables but might indicate if a bearing or brake was hung up, not sure on that.

 Would I recommend these to a friend? Not my Troll friends that can look at a tire, tell how much pressure is in it or sense when a tire is losing air when going 65 on the interstate!    Everyone else might like to play with them. 

[bodasefus]

I have used TPMS on my motorcycles for many years...  Iooked on Ebay and for about $130.00 you can get a 6 tire management system and will get one for the ToyMH...  I also run a product called RIDE-ON in my tires...  It will not mess with the TPMS and will keep the tires in balance but also if a nail is picked up,,, it will seal it...  when you pull the nail out and the system goes "PHSSS" ( a bit of air escaping) and it is sealed...  I will also use this in the tires for the MH...  The Ride-On has saved my bacon several times on the bike and I am sure it will work great for the MH tires...

[Totem]

ive seen the slime and hydro based balancing tech such as Ride-On before. many people swear by it.

Personally I just take a spare (6 lugs all around) , a can of fix a flat and run dyna beads (aka tire sand) in my tires for on the fly balancing. I usually have a butyl tire patch kit also on board but the main plan on blow out is to replace and on puncture to plug for me.

[Nam]

i just installed this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CARCHET-Solar-Car-TPMS-Tire-Pressure-Monitoring-System-6-Sensor-LCD-Display-/263071646737?hash=item3d404ac411:g:r4gAAOSwAO9ZW8iW&vxp=mtr

Ebay has 1/2 price of Amazon. Will snap some pics when I get home. It's easy to install...took me about 1 hr. for six.

Question: what's everyone running at what PSI on tires. I run 50PSI all around and it seems bumpy. MFG recommends 26PSI all around I think. Mine is 1990 Itasca 321RB. The middle pic shows the repeater. I don't think we really need it since the MH is so short but I installed it anyway. I like it so far. Won't show anything until driving pass 12MPH

Edited July 7, 2017 by Nam