Hitting tires with hammer? Wtf

Each to there own mate each to their own, and yes a tyre gauge will work to, now do the math if you got 18 wheels you got to unscrew each cap and put the tyre gauge on the valve to see what pressure you've got in the tyre, using a tapping device be it a hammer or a mallet or just kicking it with your boot helps you feel whether its got pressure there and your on your way in no time. Meanwhile the guy with the tyre gauge is still on the 4 th wheel. While i'm 20 miles up the road.

 

The fleet I drove for used them. I could never trust them.

I'm sure it can vary on how they are setup but they often won't inflate a tire below a certian pressure. I suppose it thinks it is leaking too fast and would deplete the air. Not always, sometimes it would inflate a tire you know is low/flat.

Or you would park for a 34 and the tire would be flat. Take it in to get the tire fixed and nothing is wrong with it. Just some odd spot in the system that would leak air out if the tire if you were parked in "just the right spot". Fine for 3 days and flat on the he 4th.

I would rather have a tire pressure monitoring system. They have valve caps that send a radio signal to a monitor in the cab. You can see the tire pressure of all your tires in 5 seconds. It will also give you a warning if you are loosing pressure or the tire is getting hot for around $500.

I suppose the application makes a difference. O/O that gives a hoot, I think a TPMS would be better. Lots of drivers that don't know or care an inflation system is probably better.

 

I always do my pretrip with my load bar (flatbed) even when unladen. I give those tires a good whack and I can usually tell when the difference between mid 80's and low 90's cold. I learned this by spending a couple weeks with a pressure gauge first and whack second, then whack and gauge. Now I just gauge and more closely inspecy anything that sounds low or wierd.

Like any skill you invest time and effort and develop it.

 

rookie. saves time. When you finally get some time behind the wheel, you will know the feeling of a low tire when struck with a foot or a blunt object. Nobody wants to spend 10 minutes undoing all the valve stems and putting a gauge on and then putting valve stems back on. Your tone and the "WTF" in the title makes people seem like you think you have the checking tires thing down. Well good for you if you want to do it that way but dont knock others for hitting the tires. worry about your own rig

 

This is a long-ish video, but in a nutshell Ron picks up a fedex trailer that has a flat tire with broken bead. It has the auto inflate system but he doesn’t think that will work because it is off the rim.

He hooks up the trailer and of course the auto inflator just hisses air out of the broken bead as he expected. After he drives a few miles down the road, the auto inflator sets the bead and airs up the tire as it should.

I was surprised, I wouldn’t have thought that would work. but it sure did work for him, but idk, maybe he just got lucky.

 

I used a temperature gauge to check tires when hot. The non contact infrared laserbeam type. I had two or four drive tires, don't recall for sure which, on the same side running hotter than the other tires. Air pressure was correct.

The alignment was off causing the right side drives to run with more friction, and therefore more tire heat.

As I recall, the regular temp was about 110 degrees. And the hotter tires were 10 -15 degrees hotter.

Never caught a flat that way, but kicking a tire hurts my foot, and I ran slip seat so I didnt want to tote around a 4 lb hammer.

I picked up a full tanker once, at midnight, and a bulging tire had a slow leak. Pulled into a shop and waited till they opened at 8 a.m.

 

My trailer is a 2011. When I bought it 2 years ago the air system leaked. All the hoses and the "T" connections on the wheel ends have O-rings. They do wear out.
Fairly inexpensive to change fittings.

I've had the system save me from a tire leaking down the road.
Puntured by a nail.
I just checked tire pressure at home 60 miles away. Each of my wheel supply hoses have needle valves for checking pressure.

Drove another 30 miles to the tire shop without losing the tire.

 

Sounds like you may have had a seal, connection, or o ring starting to leak... This is the most common problem I've seen with the auto inflation systems... But it is usually a really quick and easy fix. My company runs auto inflate on all our trailers... Ive never had a complete flat, but have had some that had pretty bad leaks... Auto inflate gets them up and holds them good enough to get down the road as much as an hour or two if needed to get them fixed without ruining the tire. The worst one took nearly 30 mins at high idle to get the tire up to pressure before I could get down the road without worrying about ruining that tire.

 

Then you have your 32 tire trucks.