Tire Gauge's

[cardinal4fun]

I check my G rated trailer tires before every hook up to make sure they are all at 110psi. Well what a suprise when I was checking the tires of my fellow camper last weekend. I found my Accu-Gauge dial gauge was off 10 lb to the light. In other words when I thought my tires only had 100psi and aired them up the true end result was 120psi.

Accu-Gauge does have a program to send in the gauge and they will fix it. However the reason for my writing this is to ask everyone to test their tire pressure with two gauges everyonce in a while. That way you are sure both gauges are reading correct. Who would ever think something like a tire gauge would need checked.

[Herk7769]

"Off the shelf" tire gauges are only accurate to 10% of "read" pressure. It is actually written "small" on some packaging.

At 100 PSI plus or minus 10 PSI is "in limits"

At 32 PSI it would be plus or minus 3.2 PSI.

You would have to buy a very expensive one indeed that can be sent to a calibration facility for a "true" reading and the first time you dropped it; it would be back to get re-done.

[Triguy]

Comparing two gauges makes sense...until they are different. How would you know which one is correct and which needs to be checked?

FWIW I have a McMaster Carr gauge that has served me well.

[MtnGuy]

Originally Posted by Triguy

Comparing two gauges makes sense...until they are different. How would you know which one is correct and which needs to be checked

In that case, use a 3rd gauge. Still no guarantee, though.

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by mtnguy

In that case, use a 3rd gauge. Still no guarantee, though.

You will then have 3 completely different readings (I actually tried this!)
I kept buying more expensive gauges to no avail. I now use the truck's on board air pressure system to "calibrate" the hand held unit I use to check the trailer tires.

I fill the truck tires until the DIC states 80 PSI, then let it sit a while and recheck to make sure it stays at 80. Put the gauge on and see what it reads. My gauge reads 4 PSI low at 80 PSI. So for the trailer tires (that I run at 55 PSI) I fill till the tires read 52 PSI. Using the "Rule of Thumb" that would be 3 PSI low at 55 PSI.