fj12ryder wrote:
The TST system will alert you after an hour that it has lost communication between the sensor and the monitor. IMO that is the main shortcoming of the system.
By chance, do you have the older style monitor? Reason for asking, I had the older style but I upgraded to the new color style. I use the TST on my truck also as the 2005 Ford had no TPM system in those years. I have never had this hour later alarm come on.
My camper sleeps in the barn the same as the camper. When I take the truck out by itself, I turn it on in the barn, let it power up and then it sees all 8 tires, truck and camper. As I drive away with the truck only, the camper obviously goes out of range parked in the barn. I never get an alarm, the camper tires read the last set of pressures. After a semi short time period,(not sure how long, my guess is 15 to 20 minutes later) it stops looking for all 4 trailer tires and blanks out the camper tire pressure. I still never get an alarm.
Not sure how all after market external TPM's work, but when a sensor goes out of range the controller can't read it. This would be the same as the sensor battery going dead. If they constantly kept alarming for no sensor signal, that would create an issue as you may not be able to shut the alarm off. That may be why TST did what they did, not sure, just thinking about it. Slow leaks take time, and the TPM has time to read the low pressure. The system time samples, not 100% instant. Battery life may be affected if it samples instantly all the time.
My first thought was, yeh we should get an alarm if we loose a sensor, but if you can't shut the alarm off, then you could be stuck with that constant alarming on when one sensor, died, fell off, or the battery went dead etc. I have to think on this more, not sure there is a perfect solution to this.
When my tire failure blew out, the tread flying around beat up the sensor on the good tire and destroyed the sensor. I never got an alarm from the good tire with the beat up sensor, it was dead and could not send a signal. I got an alarm from the sensor on the blown tire several seconds later as that sensor was still intact and working and saw low pressure.
Anyone have another brand and how does it handle the missing sensor, or dead battery etc.?
Never thought about this. Thanks for commenting.
John
