TPMS among other things

TPMS, what in the world is that?  It's Tire Pressure Monitoring System, and it's probably already on your car.  There are several companies that make systems to put on motorhomes and we have been going round and round as to whether to get a system or not.  It has come in handy on our vehicles as it makes you aware when you have a slow leak, i.e., a nail in the tire, or on that cold morning when your already almost low tires really are low with the frigid temperatures.  I also have wondered, even though we always check the motorhome and the toad's tires at every stop, would I even notice if one of the toad's tires became flat while underway before massive damage took place.  We have heard horror stories about people that have had their toad tire go flat, never knew it and continued towing until down on the rim causing a catastrophic fire!  Sobering thoughts.  I did a lot of research on the many different brands and settled between two, Tire Safe Guard and TST.  I was almost set on Tire Safe Guard, and had an opportunity to try it out.

Remember that I told you about delivering Karen's coach to her in Louisville from Texas where she had her wood floor put in?  Well she had installed the Tire Safe Guard previously and was very happy with it.  I figured it would be a perfect chance to see it in action.  Well, unfortunately, I was not completely impressed.  Early in the trip, I got an alarm telling me a tire was low, so I pulled over as soon as possible, and before I even got stopped, the alarm stopped and the tire pressure showed normal again.  Whooo, false alarm, not a good thing.  Oh well, it seems every electronic item has a glitch now and then, so I figured no problem.  I attributed part of it to the horrendously cold and snowy weather I experienced on my drive.  The bad thing was, I had 4 more false alarms along the way, to the point of ignoring the alarms.  So if I was going to ignore the alarms, then why have the system?  I told Karen about it, and even called the company, and they both felt it was a fluke, they reprogrammed the system, and Karen has had no more false alarms since.  So I almost decided to forgo a TPMS, but the more I thought about the ability to check your tires each morning without a gauge, and the ability to monitor your tires as you drove, and especially monitor the toad's tires, the more I ws convinced it was an appropriate and safe thing to do.

I ended up buying the TST system.  The reviews seem to indicate they had a slightly better and longer track record than the Tire Safe Guard, and that their customer service was superb.  I do not mean to imply there is anything wrong with the Tire Safe Guard system, it has many, many excellent reviews and many fans.  I just felt better with the TST.

The system has a monitor that shows all 8 tires on the motorhome and 4 on the toad.  It scans each tire in turn and shows it's current pressure and temperature, if any pressure is low or high, or the temperature exceeds 158 degrees, it sounds an alarm and flashes that tire.  It is constantly monitoring any time it is turned on.

  I think it will provide some peace of mind, especially with our upcoming Alaska trip.  It was very easy to install, each sensor on the motorhome is a "flow through", meaning you can add air to the tire without removing the sensor, and all sensors have user replaceable batteries.  

The "flow through" sensors on the motorhome

I will report our observations on the system as we travel.

We've been busy with a couple other little items.  We have a powered cargo tray in our basement storage area.

An example of a cargo tray

It has been getting reluctant to move and we have to help it in and out.  I found out that the urethane rollers that power the tray were worn and not engaging any longer.  Ordered some new rollers and when I replaced them they were so bad, we were amazed the tray moved at all!

New roller on the left, what a difference, huh?

The tray works great now.  Another project we had been talking about for some time was changing over our halogen lights to LED's.  Let me explain, we have 66 recessed ceiling lights in our coach, so it has the potential to be an expensive exchange.  But there are several compelling reasons to do it.  First of all the halogens are HOT, I mean they can burn you if you were to accidentally touch the glass lens, also they use a lot of electricity which becomes important when boon docking on your battery power.  We had been looking around for LED's for quite awhile, they needed to provide as much if not more light than the halogens, needed to be a comfortable color, be able to dim, and most of all they needed to be affordable.  When we were at the Tampa Supershow we found a LED we liked but could not make up our mind on color, bright white or warm white.  So we bought a couple of each to take back and try out.  Warm white was what we wanted, the bright white to us was too harsh and too white, more like a super fluorescent, than an incandescent.  So we decided to do a few at a time.  Right now we have replaced 30 lights, and have 36 to go.  We went with EEZE RV and have been very pleased.

The last thing we just did was get an AppleTV.  We have been wanting to easily show our pictures on the TV, play music over our sound system, download movies and TV shows directly and from the computer, iPad, or iPhones.  This makes it easy and seamless, and is small and unobtrusive, and should work like a champ.

Amazingly, we are down to only 3 weeks left before we leave Florida, first for Atlanta, then Texas, Albuquerque, and places west to meet our Alaska Ferry on June 20th in Bellingham, WA.  Our to-do list is shorter, but still has 10 or so things to do, so we better get busy, time's a-wasting.