TPMS on a DRW truck. - RV-Dreams Community Forum

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

TPMS on a DRW truck.

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

Check out this product www.dualdynamics.com/products/cross-fire/
I run them on the big truck but have seen them on regular duallys. If I had known about these I would have had them on the Ram we had. You can order them with extra schrader valves on them for pressure monitors.
Big boy trucks use them almost exclusively even though there are other brands on the market.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I like these ... I'm just not sure if the bracket would interfere with the hubcap. I'd love to see them before I ordered a set.

el Rojo and Pam · RV-Dreams Family Member

Are you sure your King Ranch isn't already equipped with pressure sensors?

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

Unfortunately yes ... it even stated on the window sticker ... "tire pressure monitor delete". For whatever reason, Ford doesn't do them on dually trucks. Even my last 2014 SRW F350 only had a warning light that indicated a tire was low. No temperature warnings and when you got the "light" you had to go figure out which one of the four tires was low. I love Ford trucks, but this is a PITA. I assume the 2017's will fix this, but no TPMS on the planet is worth $15,000 (the difference between my new 2016 and the new 2017).

I've gotten used to the TST507 on my trailer and it's very comforting to KNOW what each tire's pressure and temperature is ... I'd like that same warm fuzzy with the truck.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

OK ... I bought 6 TST 507 non flow thru tire sensors (for the DRW truck) to go with my 4 flow thru sensors that are on the 5er. I have seen several creative ways of getting TST sensors installed on the two front and four rear tires. The PROBLEM with the TST non flow thru's is that they use a special wrench to screw them on the valve stem which makes them "theft proof". If you try to twist the sensor off, it just freewheels and won't unscrew, without the special wrench.Unfortunately, this wrench makes installation much harder and requires valve extentions in order to use them (at least on my 2016 Ford F-350). Pressure Pro uses similar sized sensors, but they just screw on the valve stem with no special wrench. If I just gorilla glued the screw on part to the main body, I could then just screw them on in a pretty straight forward way, like Pressure Pro already does. This would prevent the "replaceable" battery from being replaced, making them one and done. I am weighing the ease of installation against the cost of replacing them every few years. I'm not real comfortable with valve extensions as they add rotating weight to the sensors and add an additional air seal that is subject to leaks. Jury is still out, looking at them as a consumable would cost me more, but would put NEW sensors on the truck every couple of years ... actually not a bad thing. Anybody else thought about this, or maybe even tried it?

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I really didn't get any feedback on my original question, so I just did it. I installed 4 non flow thru TST tire sensors on my two front and two outer wheels of my dually. I am assuming that the outer tire will (indirectly) reflect the health of the inner tire. If the inner tire goes low, the outer tire will heat up due to it's carrying more load. While not as good as actually monitoring the inner tire, I believe it might be a reasonable way to do it, certainly better than no monitoring at all. If I have any good or bad experiences from this experiment, I'll report back. I would like to install the two inner sensors, if I can figure out how to do it, but for now I'm going with this.

-- Edited by RonC on Tuesday 11th of October 2016 11:11:31 AM

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

The guys at PressurePro have some extenders available…they're flexible and connect to the inside valve stem with a bracket that goes under one of the lug nuts and a stem that holds the inner sensor outside the outer wheel.

However…I found that on both my F450 and RAM 5500HD I could pretty easily get the sensors on and off the inner wheels. Not as easy as the outer ones of course…but it took maybe 2 minutes to get it on or off…and it's not like you have to do it very often. Once I figured out the optimum clock position to move the inner valve stem to so that my hand fit easily through the hole on the 450 or between the tires on the 5500 as it's wheels are a bit farther apart it's actually not hard at all.

My 2012 F450 had them…don't know about any other year though…and all you get is a 'low tire pressure' alert anyway; I'm not even. sure if it tells you which wheel it is.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

Neil and Connie wrote:
However…I found that on both my F450 and RAM 5500HD I could pretty easily get the sensors on and off the inner wheels. Not as easy as the outer ones of course…but it took maybe 2 minutes to get it on or off…and it's not like you have to do it very often. Once I figured out the optimum clock position to move the inner valve stem to so that my hand fit easily through the hole on the 450 or between the tires on the 5500 as it's wheels are a bit farther apart it's actually not hard at all.

One trick that sometimes works - if one positions the valve you need to get to at the top of the wheel's rotation you may find just a bit more room between the dual wheels to get your hand down between the tires. Tire sides expand a bit more the closer they get to the bottom of the rotation and have less sidewall expansion at the top of said rotation. In the case of my truck, like Neil's, that's enough difference to get my hand down between them with enough room to work on the valves. YMMV

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I will check that out. Thanks.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

No go on getting my hand between the tires by going thru at the 12 o'clock position. For now, I stick with my current experiment of monitoring the outer wheels of the dually and using that to indirectly monitor the inner wheels. I will order some extentions and install them at a later date. I love the capacity of dually trucks, but it's got some warts.

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

You can contact Ed Lusko at edward@pressurepro.us and he'll be glad to sell you the ones they have…

On my 5500 I can get the inner ones on without having to go between the wheel…on the F450 I put my hand through the hole in the outer with the inner sensor at about the 9 o'clock position then dropped the sensor from above into my hand…couldn't get my hand through with the sensor in my fingers but once it was in I could catch the sensor and then screw it on. I did have to use a pair of channel lock pliers to get it tight as I couldn't get enough torque onto the sensor with 2 fingers to tighten it firmly. Removed them by loosening with the pliers then fingered it off through the hole.

It depends with hand size…maybe you have a significant other with smaller hands?

I considered the extensions but once I got the 5500 and found out I don't really need them I didn't bother, but they're well built and essentially bolt the sensor to a bracket held down by a lug nut with a flexible hose to the inside. The ones that are just a long metal tube I (and PressurePro) didn't like as they make the sensor bounce too much with the sensor's weight on the end and fatigue failure of the tube might be an issue.

I'm not entirely sure that the outer pressures would really go up a lot due to more load/heating if the inner went flat…would depend I guess on how flat it got but even then the pressure goes way up when the tires get hot anyway and it really depends on tire load. I haven't noticed any significant difference in how much the fronts rise when hot compared to the dualley tires…it's about 10 pounds in both cases.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I got two valve extensions (similar those Neil described) and had them installed on my two inner dually's, so I now have all 6 tires monitored. It wasn't easy, but I now feel much better KNOWING what's going on with all 10 of my rig's tires. Whew, another box checked off!

-- Edited by RonC on Tuesday 8th of November 2016 08:28:43 PM