A Tale of Two TPMS
For those not into RVing, a “TPMS” is a tire pressure monitoring system. These are nifty devices that most cars now have as a factory installed monitor that warns of low tire pressure. When driving an RV, tire failure is potentially just as bad, or even worse, than in a car due to the weight and general lack of manuervability of the vehicle. Many tire failures happen due to heat or a slow pressure loss prior to catestrophic failure. The better TPMS out there detect slow pressure loss as well as absolute pressure and temperature and can transit this data to a monitor in the RV (or truck) so you get a warning while there is still time to take corrective action.
A previous post detailed some of the problems I’ve had with one that I purchased. I want to give EEZ RV Products credit for 1) trying sincerely to fix the problem, and 2) giving me a prompt refund once they got their address information corrected. If you can get around the problems with vibration (a combination of the sensor design and the specific tire valve stems), then this is a nice system. I just couldn’t make it work on my Jeep LIberty.
I believe in having a TPMS on board, so I reserarched this from a more knowledgable position, and came up with the Tire Safeguard TPMS. The installation is about the same as with the EEZ RV system. The sensors are of a different design and mounting, but the ones on the car are still on the ends of the rubber tire valve stems. We haven’t taken a trip with these new ones, so I don’t have real world test data about what I bought. I specifically asked about the issues with the first system, and they have guaranteed I won’t have the problem. I’ll come back and update this once I have test data from an actual trip.
Happy trails.
Somewhere in Texas
October 11, 2015