TST 507 TPMS...A Review

Dutch_12078 wrote:

BobsYourUncle wrote:
As I follow this thread and read intently every post, I have to comment that I am somewhat puzzled and perhaps even dismayed about the posts regarding up to an hour delay on the signal loss notification.

As one who has experienced 3 catastrophic tire failures and not knowing any of them until much damage was done, I have to wonder why this is perhaps considered "normal".

Does this not rather defeat the purpose of the TPMS?

A lot can happen in an hour. Pick up a piece of road shrapnel and a tire is gone in minutes, not hours.

Makes me wonder why they would be this way. It seems like this should be classified as a bug in the system as opposed to designed that way.......

The TST TPMS, like most others, alerts to a loss of pressure as soon as it's detected. The delay, which is not unique to TST, refers only to the loss of signal. If a complete wheel were to come off undetected by the driver for instance, with no loss of pressure, none of the popular TPMS will report that until some delay period has passed. Is an hour too long? Is 15 minutes too long? Since all of the TPMS sensors only "phone home" once every 5 minutes or so when an alert condition doesn't exist to preserve battery life, some amount of delay is unavoidable. That runaway wheel could be long gone before you're alerted to an issue, regardless of the TPMS brand.

I think you're kind of missing the point. The scenario you've described would be pretty unusual, and frankly I don't consider it very likely to happen. It can happen, but much less likely than a plain ole flat tire.

However, if you lose the sensor signal, which is fairly common IME, you might as well not have the TPMS on the particular tire/s that are no longer detected. A short delay is certainly to be expected, an hour cannot be termed a short delay. I am not too happy with an intermittent TPMS, just as I wouldn't be too happy with an intermittent oil pressure gauge, temperature gauge, or even a radio.