Tyre pressure system - awesome.

[stever1]

There I was, minding my own business. Doing a "reasonable" speed THEN, a red triangle of death on the dash. Stopped and then noticed that the computer had set the display to the TP monitoring system and the rear showed only 1.7 bar. RESULT. I am now convinced of the value of this gadget.

 

[Boxerboy55]

And the reason was??

I'm interested as my car recently gave me the "flat tyre" warming, so I pulled in at the first opportunity.
All tyres looked ok so I used the gauge on both fronts to find all was well.
Re-set the warning lamp and set off again.
I reckoned that a genuine problem would quickly light up the alarm again, but nothing happened.

Spurious alarm.

 

[stever1]

In my case it was caused by half of a 1/4 inch drill bit. No wonder I couldn't get a seal with the tyre plugger. However, I was going to change the tyres this month so im glad it happened on the old ones. Need to get some more CO2 cylinders now though.

 

[boxer]

Mmmm......tempted

 

[stanley]

Most car systems use the ABS sensors to measure wheel speeds; ie., you lose air pressure, the tyre's circumference goes smaller, the wheel has to rotate more quickly to keep up with the other three.
Obviously this is open to lots of external influences.

The BMW TPS system measures the pressure and temperature within the tyre void itself. Much more accurate! Unless the battery fails :-/
I like the TPS system. I have the computer set to show oil level when I'm stationary, and tyre pressure when moving. Great stuff!

 

[Fanum]

New on Dragon's Den this week....."Laces undone" warning system for stupid bikers.

This awesome new system (which only costs £300) will save you from doing a spectacular faceplant on the pavement if you are fucking thick enough to not notice that your laces are undone, or you forgot to get your Mummy to tie them up properly when you left home this morning.

New products in development....."Eggy on my fucking stupid face warning system" (RRP £450), for the mentally challenged who tend to leave home with their eggy peggy juice dripping down their chins....no longer will you have to suffer the ridicule of your primary school friends when you go to your colouring-in class with egg on your chin....this system will MONITOR the egg drips every 1/50th of a second and will warn you with a 110DB audible alarm when you have yolk in your beard.

Please see our online catalogue for the "Fuck, I've shit my pants" (RRP £578.34) warning system to prevent those socially embarrassing moments when you walk into a party with your breeks full of runny poo without realising it, our patented "FUCK, SOMEONE CHAINSAWED OFF MY LEGS" warning system that will warn you immediately if a redneck saws off your legs before you venture out on to the streets and you embed gravel in your anus, and the "Hey matey, you're in McDonalds but you forgot to get dressed this morning" modular alert system, complete with switchable modes that bleep once for "No trousers", twice for "naked from the waist down" and will administer a well deserved 35KV shock directly to your scrotum within seconds of detecting that you have walked into your favourite fast food restaurant stark bollock naked.

TECHNOLOGY......taking more and more care of the mentally incapable everyday!!

 

[Bobbin-Man]

Wow, all those amazing systems They do seam a tad expensive though which does rather make the BMW TPS good value and and excellent safety aid.

 

[busy builder]

Off topic ...slightly

How do you alter the display to show oil pressure ? mine just shows some dots and a tick (or not) ?

 

[Paul Wakefield]

TPS - of all the options that have come out since I first had a BM, this is the one I would (and do) have. (Despite Bill's rant ).

 

[stever1]

Off topic ...slightly

How do you alter the display to show oil pressure ? mine just shows some dots and a tick (or not) ?

that's it. if it says oil, and a tick, your oil is ok.

 

[ymfb]

Personally I like the TP system on the BMW bikes and it's better to know the tyres deflating before it's obvious. Which is what happened to me, picked up a screw on the M3 so pleased to slow down instead of the thing failing at warp speed.

Having had several BMW cars with a type pressure system I am less enthusiastic as I gave suffered a number of false warnings.

 

[Fanum]

I'm afraid I'm still struggling to see the value in it......

If your tyres are low, you should KNOW from your arse-o-meter sensor.......even a couple of PSI down and you really OUGHT to be able to feel it....if you have to rely on an electronic sensor then sorry, you really ought to be more switched on.
If you get a fast puncture, a you'll know about it just as fast as the TPS will tell you it's happened...in fact, flashing lights and information overload might even confuse the issue
A catastrophic blow out? TPS won't do a flippin' thing for you.

The more people come to rely of widgets and gizmos, the further the disconnect between the way you should be feeling your bike and what's going on with it and the way the gizmos make you actually feel becomes.

I loved the ABS on my 1150, but getting back on a non-abs equipped bike made me realise how much of a shit, lazy and potentially unsafe rider it had made me.

 

[stever1]

Fanum, your missing the point. With modern tyres you don't get that difference in "feel" until its virtually deflated if your travelling in a straight line. Therefore the TPS gives an early warning allowing a controlled , safe stop, not an arse clenching moment. As for a catastrophic blow out, your right but that's life - innit .
To a degree I agree with your sentiment about gizmos (who needs hillstart on a bike ) but anything which COULD have a positive safety benefit must be a good thing.
As for the comment about ABS, if you need it when riding, your riding to quick. Maybe the outcome was more about your level of concentration than any input from the bike. I have had 3 bikes with ABS since 2006, and other than deliberate activation during moving brake tests I have never had an ABS system acvivate.

 

[Paul Wakefield]

There are lots of gadgets on a bike you don't need - heated grips, rev counter, gear indicator, etc.

I agree about the feel of losing pressure once you're in the bends but on a motorway for instance it is not noticeable until quite late. But, much more important for me, is not having to check the pressures in the dark when it is near freezing and pissing down with a gauge which has decided to suddenly become 6psi out of true and which lets 2psi out of the tyre just trying to get a seal. And then pumping the wretched things up again to get back to point where you started...... and breathe.

 

[Wierpig]

I'm afraid I'm still struggling to see the value in it......

If your tyres are low, you should KNOW from your arse-o-meter sensor.......even a couple of PSI down and you really OUGHT to be able to feel it....if you have to rely on an electronic sensor then sorry, you really ought to be more switched on.
If you get a fast puncture, a you'll know about it just as fast as the TPS will tell you it's happened...in fact, flashing lights and information overload might even confuse the issue
A catastrophic blow out? TPS won't do a flippin' thing for you.

The more people come to rely of widgets and gizmos, the further the disconnect between the way you should be feeling your bike and what's going on with it and the way the gizmos make you actually feel becomes.

I loved the ABS on my 1150, but getting back on a non-abs equipped bike made me realise how much of a shit, lazy and potentially unsafe rider it had made me.

Luddite.Do you lament the decline of contact breaker points and carburettors as well.why not bring back cable operated drum brakes?

 

[GreatScot]

I'm afraid I'm still struggling to see the value in it......

If your tyres are low, you should KNOW from your arse-o-meter sensor.......even a couple of PSI down and you really OUGHT to be able to feel it....if you have to rely on an electronic sensor then sorry, you really ought to be more switched on.
If you get a fast puncture, a you'll know about it just as fast as the TPS will tell you it's happened...in fact, flashing lights and information overload might even confuse the issue
A catastrophic blow out? TPS won't do a flippin' thing for you.

The more people come to rely of widgets and gizmos, the further the disconnect between the way you should be feeling your bike and what's going on with it and the way the gizmos make you actually feel becomes.

I loved the ABS on my 1150, but getting back on a non-abs equipped bike made me realise how much of a shit, lazy and potentially unsafe rider it had made me.

What your arse-o-meter sensor could usefully be telling you is that you need to remove your head from up yours. The blockage it's causing is leading to those classic symptoms of omniscience and gross intolerance. This inevitably leads to a campaign to have the whole world think like you, sometimes characterised by many thousands of posts on internet forums.....

ps Hi from a newbie (love your work!)

 

[Fanum]

What your arse-o-meter sensor could usefully be telling you is that you need to remove your head from up yours. The blockage it's causing is leading to those classic symptoms of omniscience and gross intolerance. This inevitably leads to a campaign to have the whole world think like you, sometimes characterised by many thousands of posts on internet forums.....

ps Hi from a newbie (love your work!)

Typical response from a 'believer'

Rather than addressing the points raised (which were serious and on topic) you fall back to a position of "HANG THE HERETIC!" and abuse immediately.

Come back when you've got something to say on the ISSUE

As for "With modern tyres you don't get that difference in "feel" until its virtually deflated if your travelling in a straight line."....what miraculous tyres are you running that cause you to believe this?

I run exactly the same "modern tyres" on my "old" bike as you guys do, yet there is a distinct feeling present if a tyre is losing pressure....OK, I grant you, it's more noticeable on a corner, but outside of America's plains straight roads, where are you going to find a straight long enough for it to matter here


Sorry.....still can't see it being any more than a case of the "Emperor's new clothes"

 

[Beemerman59]

As I bought my bike second hand it just happened to come with TPS's. On two occasions they have made my life easier. Once when I left home, got a nail from the driveway (I assume) in the rear and the sensors picked up the loss of air about a mile later allowing me to ride home and plug the leak in the comfort of my garage. The second time was when going a bit quick down the A303 and the sensors lit up about 200yds before a petrol station so I was able to stop there and fix the puncture. In both cases, it made my life easier in that I could stop in an easier or safer place to repair the puncture. There obviously was a great bit of luck in both cases with that but it is just my own experience. In neither case did I realise the pressures were getting low before the sensors chipped in but having said that neither puncture was catastrophic.

I still manually check my pressures on every ride - I do not rely on the sensors for that bit. I'm also fed up with the fact that the batteries in one only lasted 5 years not the spec'd 10 years and I think the other is on the way out. BMW sell them as a commodity as the battery is not replaceable. (well it is but you have to do some work on it).

So in my view they can on occasion make life a bit easier. If you experience that then you will have a positive feeling about them as I do. If you never have a puncture then they're probably viewed with derision. Did I manage perfectly well for the 30 years I had ridden without them? Yes, of course I had, but I do remember one occasion when I got stuck at the roadside in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black and it was raining - maybe, just maybe if I had known I was losing pressure I could have stopped somewhere a bit more convenient. But that's just luck at the end of the day. Plus I was a student then and couldn't afford proper foot ware let alone anything else more expensive.

Would I pay for them in the first place though? Now, that's a different question but as I'm not having to make that decision at the moment I won't answer it.

 

[robvanelst]

I'd rather have a system warning me when the gearbox oil-seal is about to fail again and will be soon oiling up the clutch - that happened far more frequently over the past 29 years and half a million miles on Beemers than flat tyres .
Tyre-pressure warning may seem a good idea in principal, provided they work reliably. Still, I am not sure if I am over-sensitive but tyres that loose pressure for more than half a bar affect the bike's ride immediately, even going in a straight line? Since our tyres have no more inner tubes, sudden blow-outs are rare - and you wouldn't need a sensor to notice that anyway . Regular pressure- and surface checks help, it hardly takes a minute.

I am not sure where I stand on electronic gadgets - I liked the simplicity of my Buell Cyclone, which electronic highlights consist of a speedo, trip/odometer and a light that tells me the engine is about to blow up from a lack of oil pressure. I vaguely recall seeing some more lights on the dash but they seem to have died and I never miss them, obviously.
The automatic indicator switch-off rarely does so when I want it to, and I also remember how often I wanted to push my bike off a cliff every time the "BMW-approved" alarm system stopped me from firing the bleeding thing up, disrupting yet another working day.

I do appreciate ABS though. I would say my RoSPA advanced riders training to be more useful for safety but we all make mistakes or can end up in panic situations and ABS can help you out, esp in the cold and wet. It's no guarantee though so don't change your riding style. I remember the older generation ABS systems being a little crude and sometimes overpowering the battery on start-up diagnosis checks but never had any real issues.

One gadget I really appreciate without ever expecting to (the sales-person convinced me to buy it, saying it'd enhance the resell value....) and that is cruise-control: that is really great when doing long motorway trips. I use that a lot now, unless it's too busy of course.

One electronic thing modern bikes curiously lack are back-lit handle-bar switches - bikes now have so many buttons that at night you have to guess what feature you are about to engage. I remember trying to adjust the screen-height in the dark on a RT bloodbike (police version) and that took me countless attempts before giving up, accompanied by several combinations of blues, reds, sirens and horn, and unintentional browsing through features like blue-tooth, board-computer, traction control, heating-appliances, indicators and main-beam. I never found the retractable mini-bar though, let alone the screen-adjuster

I can see both people's views on gadgets - you can live without them and you won't miss them if you never had them before, but they can be useful once you have them available - just don't get distracted and keep your fingers crossed they keep working

BTW - Honda's double-clutch gear change on the VFR1200 - now that is a GREAT gadget once you tried it, even (like me) you had already decided to hate it before trying it out

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

What your arse-o-meter sensor could usefully be telling you is that you need to remove your head from up yours. The blockage it's causing is leading to those classic symptoms of omniscience and gross intolerance. This inevitably leads to a campaign to have the whole world think like you, sometimes characterised by many thousands of posts on internet forums.....

ps Hi from a newbie (love your work!)

Welcome aboard. You're clearly going to fit in.