The Best RV Tire Pressure Monitoring System

My dad used to tell me there are two kinds of RV owners, those that have had flat and those that will. Get a TPMS for peace of mind because all RV owners should use them. Imagine towing a thirty-foot towable RV and one of the tires starts dropping pressure on a long haul trip across the southern states. When you fuel up you think it looks a little low, but you get distracted by the kids and forget to check the pressure before pulling across some already hot roads. The road you’re on is worn so the tire is flexing plenty as it hits the cracks, uneven pavement, and potholes, all the while superheating the sidewall of the two-year-old tire by flexing the steel in the tire. Suddenly you hear a loud pop and the RV lurches wildly to one side. In a near panic, you can pull over to the side of the road without first swerving into oncoming traffic.

Nothing can ruin a trip quicker than a flat on the RV, but a good TPMS may save the day. RV safety on the road should be a top concern, not only for the ones in your immediate care but equally for other motorists as well. A tire blowout due to low tire pressure, threadbare tires, dry-rotted rubber, or unseen nicks or nails is the worst enemy for all. 

Fortunately, we have high-tech solutions to provide insight into at least some of these problems. Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems give the RV owner peace of mind while providing near real-time information on the health of their tires. Tires low on pressure will get hot as they flex beyond design limits.

A tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) is an electronic system designed to monitor the temperature and air pressure inside the tires on RVs, motorhomes, trucks, vans, and trailers. The TPMS I chose reports real-time temperature and pressure for up to 115 tires to a color hi-resolution handheld display unit I keep in my truck.

The TPMS system I chose is made by TST (Truck System Technologies). The unit includes the 507 Series Color TMPS Display with four of the 507 Series Internal Sensors. Everything came in a kit (TST-507-INT-4-C) and included the display, 4 internal sensors which are bands that mount to the wheel inside of the tire, a suction cup and dash mount, a repeater, a 12 volt USB adapter, USB cable, and necessary installation components.

The installation was super easy. I just went to Discount Tire and asked them to install it. With the purchase of tires there was no installation charge. But since I was only buying two new tires, I did have to pay a dismount/remount fee that was around $12 per wheel. The instruction manual recommends using the proximity registration to auto-configure the coded sensor to the proper tire location, but of course, I like to do things the hard way. Even using the manual configuration approach, in less than 15 minutes I programmed the sensor location to match the tire location on the display. After configured, the sensors began feeding information to the display in my truck and I now have temperature and tire pressure information on each tire.

I've had the internal TPMS readouts on my truck for some time. When I'm on the road I'm always checking to make sure the temperature and pressure are in good ranges. Now I have them on my RV tires as well. The real-time feedback gives me one less thing to worry about on long-haul trips. While there are several in the market, you can't go wrong with the TST solution. They are trusted market leaders and their equipment works great!

If you are interested in the infamous history tire blowouts in the late 1990’s, there are plenty of good articles out on the web describing what happened, the creation of the TREAD Act, and updates on the issue found at this great Consumer Reports article informing that some of the bad tires are still out on the road on RVs.