TPMS is a must on a trailer

[RockyMtnMarty]

This past week, two incidents proved that a TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) investment is worth every penny.

Coming back from a long trip on Memorial day, my caravan friends, who did not have a TPMS on their 5th wheel toy hauler, lost pressure in a rear tire which became overheated and eventually blew on the interstate. The damage the blown tire caused to their meticulously maintained RV added up to $3000 in body work. I hear this is typical...and often at the low end of cost for damage when a tire blows. My buddy has talked about investing in TPMS...but chose not to spend the $. The insurance deductible alone for the damage was $500. Lesson learned.

A few days later, I was back on the interstate headed for a camping trip to the lake with my 5th wheel toy hauler. I have invested in a TPMS....and am so glad I did. At 65mph....all of a sudden the display on my Tireminder A1a flashed red and displayed that my right rear tire on the trailer was "leaking". I was impressed that it alerted me when the tire pressure was down only by 2 pounds...and I could see on the display the rate at which it was deflating. This gave me sufficient time to exit the highway, park in a safe place...and not suffer any damage to my RV....let alone save the tire which picked up a screw.

This device is worth its weight in gold....and I highly recommend it to anyone pulling a trailer of any kind. You will never know you a have a problem until it is too late without it.

[ependydad]

Totally agree. TPMS won’t save every situation, but there are enough times they’re useful that I wouldn’t tow without one.

[stephndudb]

TPMS alerted us to a catastrophic brake mechanism failure. The bits and pieces of the brake were grinding inside the drum, which raised the tire temperature, which I noticed on the display.

[whr2nxt]

We also had a brake failure that was indicated by the TPMS system. I have TST 507s for both the TV and the toy hauler, but just recently bought a new TV that has its own tire sensors. So I was running the TST monitors just on the toy hauler, but I didn't switch out the control system to indicate that. After a while, the monitor alarmed because of missing monitors on the TV, so I unplugged it. Next day, plugged it in and the same thing happened. But I had also noticed that one tire was getting warmer than the other three. Not close to excessive, so I thought. We spent almost a week at a campground, and when we left, one brake was dragging. Backing up a couple times free'd things, but about an hour down the road, I noticed one tire was running just over 100 degrees while the others were near 90. I stopped and smelled burning brakes as soon as I got out. After a cool down period, we drive to the next exit where a service shop replaced the whole brake assemble after parts of the old one fell out upon disassembly. (Brakes were less than 2 years old, with about 11,000 miles.)

My TST monitors are external, so heating apparently comes from surrounding air temperature. The brake drum and components were hot enough burn you hands yet the monitor sensed a small change. So I guess the moral of this story is: TPMS can save your trip. If one tire is acting different than the rest, check things out.