Tire Pressure Monitoring System
TPMS. Four letters that can cause so much grief if you don’t know what they mean. :-)
Last night on my travels a panel of the car dashboard lit up orange with words and a strange symbol that looks something like a…..not sure, really. It all became clear once I’d read the manual - pressure in one of the tires was too low. Fascinating. I didn’t even know I had that technology in the car!
The conundrum was caused by a quick inspection of the tires not identifying a particular suspect. I quickly interrogated each tire, but none owned up to feeling a little down. I figured the safest thing was to head home and deal with it in the garage and in daylight.
Today I inflated all 4 tires to the recommended pressure and…the warning light has now gone. Magic.
I wonder how much it would cost to upgrade the system to inform you which tire was the problem? Too much, clearly, but it would have been so nice to know. Anyway, everything was in the manual, but the manual itself is the size of a small novel only nowhere near as interesting. And when we checked the manual for my wife’s car….yes, the same feature is present. I wonder what else these cars can do?
Tags: cars, tire pressure, TPMS
November 20th, 2008 at 9:26
I know of a few cars that have individual tires monitored for the TPMS. The Jeep Compass is one of them, but that car is so cheap inside it’s not worth it.
November 20th, 2008 at 16:00
It’s a nice idea, TPMS. I just think it could be implemented better. I love the paragraph in the manual about the warning system that tells you when the tire pressure warning system isn’t working. Seems to be heading for an infinite loop of warning systems.