Tyre pressure gauges | Motoring discussion | Back Room Forum

Wed 12 Sep 2007 12:28

Tyre pressure gauges - meandering

I know that air pump gauges may or may not be accurate, so I would like to top up at the pump, drive home and use an accurate gauge to let the right amount of air out when the tyres are cold.

If I buy a new gauge, how do I know if it's accurate?

A year later, how do I know it's still accurate?

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Wed 12 Sep 2007 12:30

Tyre pressure gauges - Blue {P}

I think Auto Express did a series of tests on pressure gauges, the winner was a small, cheap keyring model that proved to have perfect accuracy even after being dropped.

I would say that so long as it stays within a PSi or two you aren't going to have a problem.

Blue

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Wed 12 Sep 2007 12:55

Tyre pressure gauges - DP

Motorcycle magazine RiDE ran a similar test a few years ago, and the winner was a cheap Halfords keyring model which cost about six quid. Mine's still going strong and has been dropped, trod on and run over!

Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX

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Wed 12 Sep 2007 13:20

Tyre pressure gauges - J Bonington Jagworth

The digital gauges use similar sensors and are pretty good. What matters is that you use the same gauge for all the tyres, so the values are consistent. Great precision is pointless, as the pressure varies with temperature anyway.

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Wed 12 Sep 2007 14:01

Tyre pressure gauges - Saltrampen

I have 3 gauges - the one on the pump reads 33PSI on my front tyre, the tesco digital reads 30.4PSI and the 10 year old BS std dial gauge reads 28 PSI. Pressure in the tyre is supposed to be 30PSI.
With the pump dial used as stnd. the tyre feels underflated, with the BS one not too bad, but in hot weather every bump is felt. With the Tesco digital one, feels OK though looks slightly underflated.
I guess somewhere you can buy an industry calibrated high accuracy digital gauge, but it seems the digital ones are more accurate in terms of ride quality vs advised pressure.

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Wed 12 Sep 2007 15:19

Tyre pressure gauges - meandering

Thanks for the responses. I googled and found the Auto Express article which was informative.

I also found a group test of garage air pumps and came across the interesting point that all the gauges which were inaccurate read too high.

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Wed 12 Sep 2007 18:13

Tyre pressure gauges - oldgit

>>also found a group test of garage air pumps.... came across the interesting

point that all the gauges which were inaccurate read too high.

I have only ever used garage air pumps to put air into my tyres and then done a rough assessment with my own tyre gauge/s or as soon as possible after on cold tyres.

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