Keeping proper tire pressure has never been easier! For tires to perform correctly, they have to be at the right pressure. Unfortunately, monitoring tire pressure has been a hassle - until now!
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For all the work our vehicle’s tires do for us, they deserve ongoing inspection to be sure there is no tire damage and that the specified pressure is maintained.
Doing a quick visual of your tires ongoing isn’t that difficult and should be a habit we all acquire. Seeing how much pressure there is in the tires is another story. This typically means having a stick, digital, or dial tire pressure in our garage or in the vehicle itself that we check pressures ongoing. Or, like what we do, use a tire inflator with a built-in pressure gauge to get pressures maintained.
Although certainly worthwhile, it’s inconvenient. So, a LOT of us don’t check our tires as often as we should, or in the worst case, never at all, until a problem happens.
We’ve found a GREAT solution that is visual, durable and a very good value for the money! Quick Pressure monitor caps allow you to do a quick visual walk around your car or truck to see that all tires are inflated to specification.
Here’s how they work. First, assure that each tire is inflated to the correct pressure. (unless you’ve installed custom tires and rims). You can find the required tire inflation listed on the placard inside your vehicle’s driver-side door jamb.
Have the right Quick Pressure™ monitor caps on hand (available from www.tireqp.com). They come in two-pound increments. Our tires are supposed to be inflated to 35 psi, so we rounded up one to 36 psi.
Then, remove the existing valve stem covers, and using a small soft brush (an old toothbrush works well!), brush the threads to assure they are clean.
Then simply screw on the tire pressure caps onto each valve stem. Do not use pliers or any tools during this step - only your fingers. Finger tight is correct. Then, spray a bit of soapy water at the base of each pressure cap to assure there is no air leaking. Adjust as needed.
To make the caps theft-resistant, Quick Pressure™ offers “anti-theft” nuts that can be installed before the caps and then tightened against the base of the caps after they are installed. This makes it difficult for someone to simply unscrew the caps.
Now, the monitor caps will display green with the correct pressure, a combination of green/red should pressure drop, and red when 10% of the specified pressure is lost. Spiffy, huh?
All of this is very reasonably priced. At the time of filming, caps for non-commercial cars and light trucks ranged from $5.95 to $8.95 per cap. Caps for semi-trucks are $12.50 each. A set of 4 anti-theft nuts were under $4. Shipping was under $5 as well.
For convenience and safety, we think this is a great product at a VERY reasonable price! You can order a set of your own at www.tireqp.com. Tell them DirtFarmerJay sent you!
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Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Your vehicle's tires work really hard for you
and they deserve ongoing monitoring of the tire pressure, but it's a real hassle.
Until now, there's a cool new product out that allows you just to visually
walk by, check the tires, and know they're inflated correctly. I'm going to tell you about it.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Keeping the pressures in your tires
But we found a product that we really like that we bought that is not very expensive.
These are about, oh, $6 a piece. And they are visual indicators that are screwed right to the
top of your valve stems on your tires. And they tell you just when you walk by, by the color of
the pressure indicator, whether or not your tires are inflated properly. One of the things we really
like about these quick pressure indicators are is they let you know when just 10% of the specified
tire pressure has been lost. So in these tires, which run right at 35 or 36 PSI, just a loss of
around four pounds of pressure are going to show up in the indicators. If the indicator is green,
everything's good to go. If it's shared green and red, it means pressure is starting to lose.
And if it's red, then you've lost more than 10% of the tire pressure. What's really cool
about this, you can just walk by and look at the tire and know right away whether or not your
pressures are correct. Now, we recently did a video on the tire pressure monitoring system,
and you can check that out right here. And the tire pressure monitoring system is really important.
It's a great system, but it only lets you know when you've lost about 25% of the pressure of
tire. This is a much better approach, and it's kind of the gap between not checking your tires
at all and waiting for the TPMS to tell you, versus knowing that your tires are pretty close
in spec right away. Well, how do these work? We're going to go ahead and get them installed,
and we'll walk you through it. So the first thing you need to know is the tire's specified tire
pressure. And where you're going to find that on your vehicle is inside the door jamb on the
driver's side. There's a placard there, and it's going to tell you for the typical tires for your
vehicle where they need to be inflated. And those pressures are listed both in PSI and KPA. So
you're going to have the information you need. The second thing you need to do is check your
tire's pressures, and you need to round it to the nearest even amount. And the reason for that,
these pressure gauges come in even numbers. There's a wide range of them that are available
for light trucks and vehicles or passenger vehicles, but they also have them for semis,
commercial vehicles at higher pressures. And you can check the description below, and you're going
to see the price point. They're not that expensive. Commercial ones are about $13 a piece, and these
type are anywhere from $6 to $8 a piece. A real bargain. So you need to order the right ones for
your tires. And as you can see here as imprinted on the caps on the top is which ones you're
ordering. We ordered 36 PSI caps. Our tires are specified at 35 pounds. We just bumped it up one
pound and set the tire pressure to the specified amount. So let's check the tire pressure. We'll
take off the little cover here on the valve stem. Let's go ahead and put in our indicator,
and that's showing 36 pounds. So we're right where we need to be. The next thing we need to do
is just take a little cleaning brush and just brush the threads to make sure there's no grid
in them. Now that the threads are clean, let's go ahead and place this on. Do not use a wrench
with these at all. These are meant to be hand pressure only. And when you put this on, you
probably won't be able to hear it on the video, but I can hear air escaping now until it tightens,
and then you're just going to tighten until you can feel it's snug and you can see the indicator
immediately turn green. It's at the right pressure, and I'm just going to double check that.
Now what you need to do is take a little bit of soapy water in a spray bottle and go ahead and
squirt that on there to make sure you don't have any air leaking. If you did, I can see bubbles
forming around the base of that. But just go ahead and make sure that's good and clean, and then you're
going to install each one of these. And now you can walk by your vehicle, look at those indicator rings
on the side. If they're green, we're good to go. If they're a blend of green and red, it's time to check.
And if they're red, you've lost at least 10% of the specified tire pressure. One other thing here,
once you do that, you're not going to use this cap any longer. And to air up your tires, you do need
to take these caps off. To make these simple and more durable, they decide not to do a pass-through
air system, but a screw on and off, and these will last quite well. You would think that you ought to
be able to just air up your tires once and not worry about them from time to time, but that's
not the case. There's a lot of reasons tire pressure changes, all the way from slow leaks. But one that
people overlook a lot is seasonal changes. So when it goes from warm weather to cold, you tend to lose
pressure in your tires because cold air is denser, therefore not as high pressure. And the other way
around is you've got tires that are inflated to the right pressure at cold temperatures, but now
it goes hot and you've got overpressure in your tires. So check out your tires, make sure that
they're correct. One last thing you should know is that these monitors only tell you if you have
too little pressure. If you have too much above the specified, it's still going to show green.
So make sure that you put the right amount in there to begin with and check at those seasonal
changes. Ever had that pesky low tire pressure message show up on your dashboard? You know, just
when you're getting ready to go on a trip or run an errand? Well, recently we did an episode where
we showed you how to get that message resolved and how a TPMS, the tire pressure monitoring system,
works. You can check out that video right here, we'll tell you all about it. And you can also
check out this other video that YouTube thinks is really cool for you. Hey, no pressure. See
what I did there? Hey, check it out. Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
