Tire Pressure Monitoring for race car and trailer

#1

Last month I bought a TPMS for my trailer. I got sick of getting flats and I got sick of having a flat and not knowing about it.

After doing some research and reading lots of reviews I bought this…http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DYH586

I’ve had 4 flats in 4 yrs of towing. The first two flats were maybe understandable. I thought I was clever in getting my trailer with the race car as a packaged deal. What I found is that altho the trailer looked ok, it reality it was all ragged out. After the first two flats I replaced all the tires.

Replacing trailer flats is a pita. I’m told that the primary cause of trailer tire failure is under-inflation. With each passing flat I’ve gotten better about checking trailer tire pressures. The latest flat was on the way home from Mid-O. I’d last checked tire pressures a week prior when setting out from home.

It can be hard to tell that you have a flat. Last year on the 7hr trip home from VIR my trailer felt just the tiniest bit squirrely and it took me 4hrs to get suspicious enough to pull over and look at the tires. On the way from Mid-O I couldn’t tell at all and a passerby waved at me and pointed back at the trailer. This is a big concern because if one tire goes, the additional strain on the remaining tire could easily leave a person with two flats. Now that would really be a pita.

The TPMS works as advertised. It provides real time pressure and temp, and you can set threshold alarms. The only criticism I have of mine is that it gets a little warm so en route to RA this past weekend I unplugged it for a while every couple hrs.

There’s 2 kinds of TPMS sensor. One kind looks like a golf ball and fastens to your air nozzles. My TPMS requires that you pull off your tires and replace the air nozzles. The golf ball type seems to prefer steel nozzles in order to handle the weight of the sensors, and since I had rubber sensors this would have required that I replace nozzles anyways.

#2

I didn’t realize wireless TPMS systems could be had for that cheap. I haven’t had any flat tires on my 10 5+ hour tows to NASA events, but I did kill the bearings on a hub twice on the way home resulting in the hub loosely rotating on the axle. I didn’t feel it either time and didn’t notice till the next morning when my nice white wheels were covered in greese and steel shavings along with no signs of bearings or dust cap. My tires are looking pretty done at this point, so I got a spare tire mount and spare tire finally. When I replace the tires I will plan to add a TPMS system. So that display can read the sensors even when they are way back on the trailer. They must be putting out some serious signal.

#3

I’m told that the temp measuring feature will warn a person about a bad bearing, but I don’t know this as a fact.

#4

On race weekends the truck, trailer and race car go to work with me so I can leave for the track directly from work. I plugged in the TPMS as I started the truck and then headed out. Within a couple seconds the TPMS was squawking saying I had low pressure in one of the trailer tires. I pulled over about a 1/2mi from home, assuming that the TPMS was giving me some kind of false alarm.

Negative. Altho the trailer tire didn’t look low, the guage said it was at 27psi vs. 49psi like the others.

Didn’t take long for the TPMS to prove itself.

#5

Cool, thanks for the review. I’ve been looking at TPMS systems myself and doing a little research. I have two trailers I tow frequently; the race trailer and a 30’ travel trailer (RV). I just put all new tires on the RV and coming back from NC while picking up the E30 from Travis, we had bad leak in one tire - the valve stem was leaking. We tossed the spare on before it caused any damage to the tire. We were lucky and caught it early.

Trailer Life Magazine just did a nice review on other TPMS systems. I like that the NVision system always you to have multiple trailers and just select which one you’re towing. I screen cap’d the articles and posted them: