Tire inflation monitors?

[pdisme]

I'm curious about these things, here's my questions for anyone who knows:


Can these be added on to any wheel when having new tires put on?
What tool do you use to monitor the pressure?
Are they passive or do they have some type of battery?
Are they part of the wheel and just need to be put inside somewhere or part of the valve stem so they end up trashed after every tire change?
Are they compatible with a race environment? (heat, bumps, etc.)
Compatible with nitrogen?

[RAiMA]

I beleive Motec have this system. I'm not exactly sure how it works.

My understanding is they're a unit that's added onto each wheel and they have some kind of battery in them. They communicate back to a computer of some sort via radio frequency.

The touring cars use them, so they would be race suitable. As for being compatible with Nitrogen, it would be. Nitrogen is just a gas that doesn't expand as much as air would due to the reduction of moisture content.

Are you looking at fitting them for race purposes to work out camber, toe and weight distribution?

[Jay]

Simple. Buy a Diablo and you'll have 'em :lol:

[pdisme]

I beleive Motec have this system. I'm not exactly sure how it works.

My understanding is they're a unit that's added onto each wheel and they have some kind of battery in them. They communicate back to a computer of some sort via radio frequency.

The touring cars use them, so they would be race suitable. As for being compatible with Nitrogen, it would be. Nitrogen is just a gas that doesn't expand as much as air would due to the reduction of moisture content.

Are you looking at fitting them for race purposes to work out camber, toe and weight distribution?

Yeah I was curious about how they worked for use in my race car; be nice if I could pull in after a session and glance at a thing instead of having to jump out quick and check all the pressures. If they're part of the stem they'd probably get expensive since I change tires regularly but if they're something that mounts to the wheel itself that would not be so bad; although they must attach with something quite sticky to stay stuck to the wheel.

Simple. Buy a Diablo and you'll have 'em :lol:

Murci has those too; us Gallardo owners got the shaft on that. :)

[Jay]

although they must attach with something quite sticky to stay stuck to the wheel.

They attach to a thin metal band around the inside of the wheel.

[zzzzdoc]

I had them installed on my Murci. They measure pressure and temperature of all 4, with alarms. Works well, They have the thin metal band that VTPower said. They correlated well with the gauge at Sebring. And they survived some pretty high temperatures, as you recall that day. I had to bleed air twice during the day from my tires due to the increased temperature raising the pressures. I forgot the maximum tire temp, but there were hot.

I'll look later for the brand. Our friends at C2 did the install.

I believe they can work with any wheel. There is a SMALL monitor inside the car. Not sure if there is a battery in the wheel monitors or whether it is passive.

[zzzzdoc]

Here's the link from the one I got. It's the second generation SmarTire system:

http://www.tirerack.com/accessories/smartire/smartire2.jsp
http://www.smartire.com/


http://www.tirerack.com/images/tires/accessories/smartire_2nd_gen_bigger.jpg

I did get a different remote display that looks much nicer. I can't seem to find a picture of it, but it's an LCD display of a car that reads out the digital pressure at temp and shows which tire it's reading.

They quote battery life at 5 years at 50K km/yr

Here's a link to the owner's manual, which has a drawing of the display, as well as the directions:

http://www.smartire.com/2006/pdf/manuals/full_func_display_english.pdf

[pdisme]

That's pretty wild, maybe I'll throw some on the Radical.