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Comment by dhimes | Hacker News Reader

If TPMS is tire pressure, then you are being unfair. There are cars like Toyota and Audi that have sensors that don't work well and even frequent service can't keep them off (to the point where some will not-quite-suggest disabling them).

So if you are going to downgrade for that, at least have a look at the tires directly and see if one is obviously lower than the others.

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If the driver has snow tires, they're a safer driver than one with all-weather and a blank dash.

You can get TPMS on a second set of wheels. I have them on my snow tires and they were like $80.

For mine, I had to pay for a TPMS reset every tire change. This isn't worth it.

TPMS reset is usually holding a button and typically in your driver's manual for the vehicle. Found this out myself when my tires got replaced and they couldn't reset my TPMS sensors.

I have a tool to reset them myself, I think it was free from Tire Rack when I bought the tires. It's like a keyfob and pretty simple to use, you just hold down a button.

It would be worth looking into getting.

I always swap my own tires in the summer/winter because it takes me less time to do it than to drive to the shop. TPMS, but it can be such a pain.

My previous car, 2010 VW I could switch from summer to winter wheels/tires and drive away. TPMS would figure it out just fine. Now I have a Subaru and am debating buying a $100 tool to reset them. It won't take long to pay for itself, but as it is now, the light is still on.

Worse, my Ram has positional sensors and I haven't seen any "cheap" tools. It happens to be the same set of wheels, but I rotated them and it expects different pressure in the front vs rear. The light is on and it yells at every start because the rear tires are underinflated. How hard can it be for a car to learn which tire is on which corner of the vehicle?

In California, summer tires get the best traction and all-seasons are generally worse (many people mistakenly believe that all-seasons perform better than summer in the rain, I suppose because winter is the rainy season here).

I guess it depends on what part of California you're talking about but all-seasons will generally outperform equivalent grade summer tires in the rain if temperatures start falling below 50-55° or so. A summer tire's grip falls off precipitously [1] when temperatures reach 40-45° but the loss of grip in that "NorCal winter" kind of weather can reduce their performance below that of all seasons. Just because they haven't lost a dangerous amount of grip doesn't mean they haven't fallen behind the grip available to a tire with a more temperature insensitive compound.

[1]: https://m.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=27...

Agreed, I should have specified that all-seasons are the safe option in some parts of California. My frame of reference is the warm climates of Silicon Valley and SoCal. Summer tires could even lose traction in one of the colder nights in a San Jose winter.

I'm betraying my ignorance but I thought SV/SF were relatively temperate climates. Nothing like Seattle, but still 50 low to 75 high most of the time?

in theory, the difference between summers and all-seasons is the rubber compound used. all things being equal, the summer compound will perform better when it's hot outside. in reality, most people in the US just don't care and run all-seasons year round. people tend to only buy summer tires for performance-oriented vehicles, so the tires offered with summer compound tend to be aggressive tires with less tread. if you pick a summer tire at random, it may well be less capable than an all-season tire in the rain. the superior compound can't grip if it can't evacuate enough water from the contact patch.

FYI, there is a difference between all-weather and all-season tires.

https://info.kaltire.com/all-weather-vs-all-season-vs-winter...

Tire pressure sensors are super flaky. Mine come on randomly all the time, and after the first few dozen times I stopped to put a real gauge on them and saw that all four were right at the rated pressure, I've gotten to the point where I just ignore it and punch the button on the dash to hide the warning. It's the kind of false negative feedback that is especially unhelpful.

It doesn't help that it is completely opaque what the thresholds are for when the warning light goes off; I also don't know whether one is supposed to recalibrate anything if you change the type of tire that you are running - for instance, I run snow tires during the winter that have a different PSI rating than my all-seasons the rest of the year...

You car manufacturer should be setting the psi, rather than the tire manufacturer. There are indeed manufacturers who recommend higher pressure on winter tires for that car model, but it's still the model and not the tire that drives it. (Tires have a max inflation pressure, but the recommended pressure comes off the door jamb of your car.)

Or behind the fuel door (Volkswagen; took me months to find it).

I now have a Civic which just has a generic "tire pressure low" warning, but on my previous car, a Dodge Dart, it told me the pressure for each tire.

TPMS is also relatively easy to reset (just read the manual) it does not require professional service. You usually do need to do it seasonally due to fluctuations in outside temp. Drivers should really be aware of it.

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