small suv good in snow

[BenedictGomez]

HAHA I've had the same issue. My sensors only seem to go off when its 10 PSI under... by that point I can practically feel the difference... its useless (as someone who cares a lot about tire pressure).

This is my first vehicle with TPMS, but I've been checking the tires each day on the dash readout, and they seem to bounce between 34 and 36 each day, which doesn't inspire confidence in me in terms of accuracy. Unless the air temps can make them vary each day by a pound or two.

Quebec is mandatory winter tires so n is mayhem in garages come winter time.

Wow, I've never heard of such a thing. Do police actually walk around checking tires and write tickets?

Where's the innovation for treadwear, which can be far more serious than air pressure?

There is no need to check tire pressure every day. That is plain paranoia.

Another great point, and more evidence that this whole TPMS thing is a money-making, incestuous government/lobbyist created scam.

There's no gadget or government mandate to "monitor" tread wear (which could easily be done), even though bald or balding tires are responsible for EXPONENTIALLY more accidents than underinflated tires.

 

[Smellytele]

This is my first vehicle with TPMS, but I've been checking the tires each day on the dash readout, and they seem to bounce between 34 and 36 each day, which doesn't inspire confidence in me in terms of accuracy. Unless the air temps can make them vary each day by a pound or two.

Think deflategate!


Another great point, and more evidence that this whole TPMS thing is a money-making, incestuous government/lobbyist created scam.

There's no gadget or government mandate to "monitor" tread wear (which could easily be done), even though bald or balding tires are responsible for EXPONENTIALLY more accidents than underinflated tires.

They check my tread wear once a year when I have my vehicle inspected.

 

[yeggous]

This is my first vehicle with TPMS, but I've been checking the tires each day on the dash readout, and they seem to bounce between 34 and 36 each day, which doesn't inspire confidence in me in terms of accuracy. Unless the air temps can make them vary each day by a pound or two.



Wow, I've never heard of such a thing. Do police actually walk around checking tires and write tickets?



Another great point, and more evidence that this whole TPMS thing is a money-making, incestuous government/lobbyist created scam.

There's no gadget or government mandate to "monitor" tread wear (which could easily be done), even though bald or balding tires are responsible for EXPONENTIALLY more accidents than underinflated tires.

I am blown away by the level of government nanny state paranoia associated with basic safety standards. You can put the tinfoil hats away. The government is not out to get you.

 

[Tin]

How to make any vehicle ready for winter!

 

[Jully]

How to make any vehicle ready for winter!

A+

 

[dlague]

This is my first vehicle with TPMS, but I've been checking the tires each day on the dash readout, and they seem to bounce between 34 and 36 each day, which doesn't inspire confidence in me in terms of accuracy. Unless the air temps can make them vary each day by a pound or two.

Think deflategate!


Another great point, and more evidence that this whole TPMS thing is a money-making, incestuous government/lobbyist created scam.

There's no gadget or government mandate to "monitor" tread wear (which could easily be done), even though bald or balding tires are responsible for EXPONENTIALLY more accidents than underinflated tires.

They check my tread wear once a year when I have my vehicle inspected.

My sensors would signal low air on days where the temps dropped overnight and then once it warmed up the indicator would go off. Just driving down the road often would heat up the air enough to change the pressure enough to have the indicator turn off. That always bugged me but I go used to it.

Still always did visual inspections.

 

[Edd]

I am blown away by the level of government nanny state paranoia associated with basic safety standards. You can put the tinfoil hats away. The government is not out to get you.

100% agree. When it comes to government paranoia, one of my faves is people refusing to improve their lives with an EZ pass because "that's a way to track you".

 

[cdskier]

My sensors would signal low air on days where the temps dropped overnight and then once it warmed up the indicator would go off. Just driving down the road often would heat up the air enough to change the pressure enough to have the indicator turn off. That always bugged me but I go used to it.

I'm a bit intrigued by this scenario. What's the drop in pressure that your sensors need to see in order to trigger the warning light? To use my truck as an example, 35 psi is the recommended pressure. The warning light doesn't go on until it drops to 25. If you estimate a roughly 1 psi drop per every 10 degree temperature drop, then if the tires are close to the recommended pressure one day, wouldn't you need a roughly 100 degree temperature drop overnight to get the warning light to go on? Or do some cars have a much narrower threshold for the warning?

Also, maybe everyone else here has better eyesight than I do, but I can't see the difference between a tire inflated to 30 psi and one inflated to 35 psi. Every tire article I ever read that talked about air pressure always said visual checks are unreliable (with the exception of a massively under-inflated tire or flat).

 

[dlague]

I'm a bit intrigued by this scenario. What's the drop in pressure that your sensors need to see in order to trigger the warning light? To use my truck as an example, 35 psi is the recommended pressure. The warning light doesn't go on until it drops to 25. If you estimate a roughly 1 psi drop per every 10 degree temperature drop, then if the tires are close to the recommended pressure one day, wouldn't you need a roughly 100 degree temperature drop overnight to get the warning light to go on? Or do some cars have a much narrower threshold for the warning?

Also, maybe everyone else here has better eyesight than I do, but I can't see the difference between a tire inflated to 30 psi and one inflated to 35 psi. Every tire article I ever read that talked about air pressure always said visual checks are unreliable (with the exception of a massively under-inflated tire or flat).

I ended up finding that one of my tires was on the border line and once I had inflated it a bit that was no longer happening. It did get out of sync a lot generally at higher speeds - when that happens he indicator would flash. Once it was back in sync it would stay on for a bit then go off. That too was annoying but got used to it.

BTW we are going to get a second new to us vehicle and this thread has been interesting even though it was hijacked. We are considering, Subaru Forester, Ford Edge, CRX and others in that size range.

 

[MEtoVTSkier]

100% agree. When it comes to government paranoia, one of my faves is people refusing to improve their lives with an EZ pass because "that's a way to track you".

Yet they won't stop staring at their smartphone...

 

[cdskier]

I ended up finding that one of my tires was on the border line and once I had inflated it a bit that was no longer happening. It did get out of sync a lot generally at higher speeds - when that happens he indicator would flash. Once it was back in sync it would stay on for a bit then go off. That too was annoying but got used to it.

That pretty much was what I was hoping you'd say and shows the system was working as intended and helped you catch a tire that was borderline before you noticed it the old fashioned way. With a properly implemented TPMS (by that I mean where the dash shows you actual PSI values), you can catch situations like that before they even become borderline. It is much faster for me to hit a button on my dash and see the PSI values than to go around and measure each tire manually (I do keep a gauge in my glove box though). I also like seeing the values while driving as it is interesting to see the impact of heat on the pressures as the tires warm up while moving.

Never personally seen the sync issue in any of the vehicles myself or family have had with TPMS though. That one would bother me if it happened regularly.

 

[Dickc]

For most tires, the pressure changes by about one pound for every ten degrees F the temp changes. A summer day with them set at 32 PSI will have them drop by three pounds from that 80 degree summer day to a day like today at 50 degrees. My wife's Honda will flash the low pressure light if any tire hits 29 pounds. I have not had my 2014 Chevy pickup show a low pressure warning yet, but it has the screen where you can see the actual pound readout, and I keep them a pound or two over. I find it correlates with a tire pressure gauge quite well. In summer driving on the highway, they will go from 32 PSI cold to 34-35PSI. In winter they go up a little less with the colder pavement, but will go up.

The reason these things are on most vehicles now is an under-inflated tire will heat up A LOT. Anyone remember the Ford Explorers that were blowing tires and rolling over? (Firestone tires.) Those tires SHOULD have been at 32 or so PSI, but Ford wanted a softer ride so they placarded them for something like 28. Go down a few PSI, and they would blow out on a hot summer day and the results were deadly.

 

[Harvey]

Great to hear. Thinking I want a new CRV to replace my Civic.

This may be something that benefits me but not all.

The way I understand it, they set it up so that under 5 mph all wheels are engaged instead of waiting for slip to bring on the rears. This REALLY helps me get up our steep drive in the mountains, which one of the primary reasons I have AWD. You have to accept the fact that if you are moving really slow, crank the steering hard to one side while steeping on it, you get a bit of a clunk.

At first I was like WTF is going on with my brand new car, but once I figured it out it was all good.

 

[Scruffy]

I am blown away by the level of government nanny state paranoia associated with basic safety standards. You can put the tinfoil hats away. The government is not out to get you.

Not worried about the government, they can't even put up a competent candidate up for President. I'm concerned with business raping me for no good reason, while our incompetent and greedy government turns a blind eye and holds their hand out. Of all the safety regulations TPMS is low fruit, sorry, I realize you're developing the next smart car, great for you, I hope you succeed; but really I think I can manage the air in my tires just fine- and until the whole Ford explorer debacle you mentioned a while back, no one even batted an eye about low air pressure being safety issue. Tires weren't just blow up allover the place and cars flipping over because of it. I'd rather the business/Govment regulate how close a vehicle follows the car in front of it, and enforce that by some monitoring system-tailgating, much more dangerous than low tire pressure.

 

[yeggous]

Not worried about the government, they can't even put up a competent candidate up for President. I'm concerned with business raping me for no good reason, while our incompetent and greedy government turns a blind eye and holds their hand out. Of all the safety regulations TPMS is low fruit, sorry, I realize you're developing the next smart car, great for you, I hope you succeed; but really I think I can manage the air in my tires just fine- and until the whole Ford explorer debacle you mentioned a while back, no one even batted an eye about low air pressure being safety issue. Tires weren't just blow up allover the place and cars flipping over because of it. I'd rather the business/Govment regulate how close a vehicle follows the car in front of it, and enforce that by some monitoring system-tailgating, much more dangerous than low tire pressure.

Low fruit is a good way to put it. Very little expense was required to prevent a big problem. The Ford / Firestone debacle killed a couple hundred people. That was a strong argument in favor of it being necessary.

Good news on the tailgating issue. Automatic braking is already being mandated as standard equipment in the immediate future. If somebody gets closer than is safe, their car will not so gently remind them by hitting the brakes. This is already an option on just about every car for sale today.


Sent from my iPhone using AlpineZone mobile app

 

[BenedictGomez]

I am blown away by the level of government nanny state paranoia associated with basic safety standards. You can put the tinfoil hats away. The government is not out to get you.

It's hardy "paranoia", it's years of observational life experiences regarding government cash-grabs, combined with a dose of logic.

There is not a plethora of road deaths each year due to under/over-inflated tires. That is a canard (and not even a very good one).
You know what does kill a lot of people in vehicular accidents each year? Bald tires; as Billski correctly noted.

Yet we dont have a Federally mandated rule on bald tire monitoring like we do for tire pressure. Hell, a "Federal regulation" to keep headlights clean would save more lives! lol

And has already been stated here by others, the Firestone / Ford debacle was a strawman argument that allowed them to pass this nonsense on every American in the name of "safety". That was one very unique problem, inherent with one size of tire, from literally one tire manufacturer, and at one plant. Yet they made it seem like this was a "common" problem (it wasn't) that needed an immediate (and expensive) solution imposed on every American.

 

[Cornhead]

The conversation probably went something like this, "How can we get lazy Americans to keep the proper amount of air in their tires and keep them from wasting millions of gallons of gas every year?"

Sent from my XT1064 using AlpineZone mobile app

 

[skinavy]

IIRC it began with the ca.Y2K Ford Explorer rollovers. As usual, a statistically small number of spectacular/headline-grabbing incidents tend to inform large-scale policy...

Ford had dropped the recommended pressure from 32psi to 28psi in the Explorer to make the ride cushier to appeal to families while keeping the Ranger chassis & suspension, despite the Explorer being much heavier and with a higher center of gravity. Toss in the usual operator neglect, and folks were now riding around with <20psi in top-heavy, overloaded vehicles, trying to make overly-fast turns. It caused Ford to divorce Firestone after 90+ years, got me a GREAT deal on a new Explorer, and kickstarted the TPMS thing. From their view it covers their butts; from the gov't view it helps people be a little safer; from my view its another system to disable before it fails and ticks me off.

Not that keeping 32 would have necessarily prevented this, but it can't help to start with even lower pressure than originally specified.

 

[dlague]

It's hardy "paranoia", it's years of observational life experiences regarding government cash-grabs, combined with a dose of logic.

There is not a plethora of road deaths each year due to under/over-inflated tires. That is a canard (and not even a very good one).
You know what does kill a lot of people in vehicular accidents each year? Bald tires; as Billski correctly noted.

Yet we dont have a Federally mandated rule on bald tire monitoring like we do for tire pressure. Hell, a "Federal regulation" to keep headlights clean would save more lives! lol

And has already been stated here by others, the Firestone / Ford debacle was a strawman argument that allowed them to pass this nonsense on every American in the name of "safety". That was one very unique problem, inherent with one size of tire, from literally one tire manufacturer, and at one plant. Yet they made it seem like this was a "common" problem (it wasn't) that needed an immediate (and expensive) solution imposed on every American.

I would like to know how many states have safety inspections? Most states I have lived in do, but Colorado doesn't the shear number of vehicles on the road that have cracked windshield is nuts. I also see a lot of beater cars with bald tires too.

BTW Colorado is more of a live free or die state than New Hampshire by a long shot. NH is actually pretty uptight.

Sent from my SM-G930P using AlpineZone mobile app

 

[Smellytele]

100% agree. When it comes to government paranoia, one of my faves is people refusing to improve their lives with an EZ pass because "that's a way to track you".

My issue with Ezpass when NH first got it was that the discount that I got from tokens was greater than the EZpass discount.