Tire Gauge?
filed in 1991 Honda Civic
Question: Is there a super-duper tire gauge on the market?
I have been using a pocket protector tire gauge for years. I bought an air compressor last summer and now check my tires’ pressure at least once a month. I have found the pocket gage cumbersome to use. I can’t consistently fit it exactly on the tire valve to get a reading.
I’ll pay the big bucks for the right device.
I checked Autozone’s, Pep Boys’, and Wal-Mart’s selection. I ended up with a dial gage with 1-psi increments, ranging from 0 to 70 psi, fairly easy to read, with purge valve and large-headed chuck. The large chuck makes all the difference: I can fit it on my tires’ valve stem, with no leakage, very easily. It “remembers” the pressure, so when you remove it, the last pressure reading still shows. (Press the purge valve, and it returns to zero.) The gage is made by Campbell-Hausfeld in China. It retailed for about $13. Pep Boys wanted about $4 more for a comparable gage.
I just tried it out, and it makes life *a lot* easier. I don’t need valve extensions to use it easily. I’m keeping it.
Dunno how the calibration will last, of course, but I appreciate the many other posts that talk about this.
My tires seem to lose about 2 psi a month, summer and winter. Of course I only check after the car has been sitting all night. I try to keep them at about 28-28.5 psi on my 1991 Honda Civic LX, 160k miles. This is above the spec of 26 psi, but I am experimenting, per many posts in the archives on overinflating tires a bit, at the sacrifice of a smoother ride but better mileage.
Thanks folks for all the input. It’s a seemingly rinky-dink thing but I’ve never had significant uneven wear on this car’s tires, and hopefully, following the protocol above, I never will.
Answer: I have three tire gauges: A $5 El Cheapo metal pen-type with a plastic plunger An expensive all-metal pen-type that’s 40 years old A $30 dial-type that’s new and has been coddled since I opened the package.
All three read within a pound of each other.
The statement I quibble with is that a stick type gauge can inherently be as reproducible and accurate as a Bourdon type, assuming equal quality of manufacturing.
They aren’t, for the reasons I mentioned. The friction component is too variable in the common stick designs. Admittedly, quality construction can improve the performance.
These little Bourdon type gauges used on cheap cigarette lighter compressors are all but worthless.
‘Dead weight’ gauges can be very accurate and have been used to calibrate Bourdon types, BUT a stick gauge is not a dead weight gauge even though there are some similarities.
Electronic gauges can give impressive readouts, but the pressure sensing device itself can be a weak point. They sometimes wander in accuracy.
But then, who wants to know the exact pressure to 0.1 psi?? It is uselessy finicky to worry about this in passenger applications. If the tires are within a couple of pounds of each other, it is better than good enough for most people. If you are on the pole for Ferrari F1, you have a reason for a bit more careful measurements.
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