MOTIONTECH:
Good day fellow car talk brethren, today we are going to be talking about TPMS, Its use, how it works, what could go wrong with it, diagnosis and how to fix it.
WHAT IS TPMS?
TPMS stands for tire pressure monitoring system.
WHAT IS THE USE OF TPMS IN A CAR?
As the name sounds TPMS is a system designed to monitor the pressure in a tire but not only that TPMS sensors are able to monitor, the temperature of the tire, the pressure (psi), the speed at which it is travelling. But basically the purpose of the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) in your vehicle is to warn you that at least one or more tires are significantly under-inflated, possibly creating unsafe driving conditions.
WHY TPMS?
The use of TPMS became prominent in 2007 it became a law when the US government passed the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act. As a result of this legislation a lot vehicles on sale in the United States since 2007 have a TPMS. This was a result of numerous car accidents caused by underinflated tires, prior to the introduction of TPMS the only way to check your tire pressure was to use a tire pressure gauge which did not give you a live data of the tire pressure i.e. if your tire pressure is reducing on motion you wont know, the tire pressure gauge only gave you a one-off status of your tire pressure, with the introduction of TPMS you get an on-the-go information of your tire pressure.
TYPES OF TPMS?
There are basically two types of TPMS
1)Indirect and 2)Direct TPMS
1)The indirect uses data provided by each wheel speed. This is done in collaboration with the vehicles ECM using a certain type of algorithm in comparing the revolution(how fast each tire move) on each tire to determine the tire pressure.
2)The direct TPMS is the other type of TPMS that is mostly used nowadays. In this system each tire has a tire pressure sensor which is used to monitor the pressure on every tire, the data gathered by this sensor is what is sent to the car ECU which in turn commands the TPMS light to come on.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH MY TPMS?
There are basically two reasons your TPMS indicator can come up.
1)When your tire is underinflated.
2)When the TPMS sensor is damaged.
TO BE CONTINUED