Auto Unique Pressure Guard

Has anyone tried these widgets which replace your valve caps & in theory show green unless the tyre has delated by 2 psi or more, when a red indicator starts to show? MCN tested them & rated them but my experience has been somewhat different.

Fitted two to bike & four to the missus' car, then noticed the front tyre of the car almost flat the other day. Pressureguard showing mainly green with the merest hint of red - maybe 0.5 - 1 mm at the most, tyre had lost 18 psi! Blew up tyre, only slow puncture, replaced pressureguard, lost 7 psi over next 24 hours - absolutely no sign of the red warning indicator. Decided to swap for a different unit to see if just one was faulty but again a fall of 8 psi illicited no response in the red warning stakes. I for one won't be trusting them again, especially on the bike!

Ade

Saw a piece in one of the bike comics about them, apparently the centrifugal force generated by the wheel flattens the widgets against the rims and unseats the valves. Bloke in question had a Hayabusa and lost the valve at 160+, completely ruined his day.

Adrian,

I have these on my 650 GS and they work fine.

BUT - the blurb picture shows the flag sticking up like a dogs dick. However, when you actually read the blurb it says the red flag will stick up 1mm (and only 1mm) when there is pressure loss.

Once you get your head round this, it's fine.

My tyres used to loose about 3psi if I left the bike for about 5 days and these gadets confirmed the tyres were losing pressure.

I work shift and sometimes leave at sparrows-fart in the morning - these enabled me to check the tyres quickly each time I rode the bike, rather than getting a pump out.

Once I got used to the fact that it'd only be showing 1mm if there's pressure loss, it was fine.

It didn't stop me checking the tyres all over weekly tho, as we all do angel) altho now it's more monthly as I'm used to the vavles and trust them now (still check condition weekly tho)

I also put ultraseal in the tyres and that's stopped all the pressure loss completely.

When you first put them on, have a good look at the green/red on the valve. They'll be perfectly level with each other. Looks any different when you next it and you've probably lost pressure.

Cheers

Jon

Thanks for your comments Jon,

however I did read the blurb first and wasn't expecting a red lighthouse!

As an experiment (actually just being bloody idle) I haven't got the slow puncture fixed on my missus' car yet and have been topping it up regularly. Even though at times its lost as much as 10 psi there wasn't even a nanometre never mind a millimeter of red protruding, that was with my reading bins on to make absolutely sure.

Mind you it may be that all valves are not as they seem, when I rang the pressureguard helpline as some would not seem to activate when tried on my car they said that the valves may be at fault and suggested I try the "non functional" caps on the valves where the others seemed to be working. Sure enough the "inactive" caps promptly activated. You're obviously happy, but I think I'll stick to the the old fashioned way & just keep checking them manually.

Cheers

Ade