Trailer Tires & Suspension Pressure Monitoring

I wish I would have taken a lot more pictures of this process, but I didn't think about it at the time. There MAY be some hope of not breaking this while disassembling it, but I would have some epoxy handy anyway.

1) There are two tiny screws hidden by the site-glass plastic in the bottom corners (blue arrows below). You may be able to use a razer blade to peel that up to get to them. The top is clipped into place with two, delicate plastic hooks. You can see the tabs that the hooks engage on the top edge of the socket. If you get the screws out and gently pull the bottom of the faceplate out, I imagine the little hooks will disengage. If not, that's what the glue is for.

DON'T LOSE THE BUTTONS. They fall right out and they are tiny.



2) The white electrical connector socket on the back also has a little plastic clip that you can easily push to release the electronics from the plastic housing.

3) The little piezo buzzer (red arrow) is attached by two little stubs through the circuit board. I put a fine point on my soldering iron and released the buzzer by melting the solder on each. I took a chance on that one too, hoping that the speaker was wired on its own in parallel instead of in series with some other feature. I guess we're lucky on that one. Everything still seems to be working great.

 

Very cool! Thanks for posting, I didn’t know this existed but now I’m interested for airbags and trailer tires.

 

Yep. What he said. I also have mine set up for manual inflation, just to keep it cheap. There are systems that run off a compressor with switches in the cab and even ones that auto-level and monitor the system for you if you want to spend a couple thousand dollars. I got myself a small, battery powered compressor to quickly change the pressure in the field.

This particular system can be inflated up to 100 PSI. I've found that about 50 PSI levels my truck with the trailer on. When unloaded, they recommend keeping at least 10 PSI in the system, which I've learned is important. Since the air bags mount to the leafsprings, they reduce the range of travel by a little bit. They end up being pretty stiff bump-stops if you do hit a big bump and the bags are empty. I think that has the potential to damage the system.

 

I look forward to hearing how this goes for you.

 

Will let you know. Got a tandem axle trailer for towing stability. About 5100 lbs loaded. I ALWAYS check tire pressure before we go and before we come back. And truck tires. Saw a stat that said most accidents are caused by under inflated tires. Seems obvious that you should check them but…

 

Very cool

 

The more mainstream add on TPMS systems can be purchased with pass through sensors so you don’t have to deal with losing pressure. I wonder if those would work with the receiver. Mine works with a Bluetooth receiver that connects to my phone. I’m intrigued and at that price it wouldn’t be a great loss to figure out if they would work or not.

 

I just got the cap versions but I can see what or how they show up on bluetooth

 

Excellent job - Good work.
Question: To me (after dealing air shocks a couple decades ago) it would make sense to simply "T" the air bags to one sensor - the "T" insuring both sides are at the same pressure. How do you add air to the air bags with your setup?

 

The t might allow them to flow back and forth. So when one side get heavy it pushes air to the opposite and really screws you up.

 

Just like TacoManOne said, connecting the two would actually do the opposite of ensuring that the airbags were the same pressure. Every time you went around a corner, all of the air would flow to the inside as the pressure increased on the outside. Hitting bumps on one side would likely do the same thing.

I have valves for each of the airbags running out to the back of the truck. I fill them with a small, battery powered compressor.

 

You guys are right. When I first installed "air shocks" on one of my previous trucks I never considered that. What did I know at the time? It was on either my '89 or '98 - don't really remember. I only added them to help with hauling firewood in the bed. No trailer at the time.

 

The locking nut for the screw on sensors poses a potential problem for me. Can the caps simply be screwed on and off without using them? My bags are plumbed separately with a stem for each in the bumper. Don’t really want to fumble getting these on and off because as already mentioned they need psi checking quite often. Great idea and many thanks OP!

 

Very cool OP. As someone who tows a bunch and has bags as well, I like what you have done.

I just use this though and achieve pretty much the same idea.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0797MT15V?ie=UTF8

It sticks to my windshield and is solar powered. I have 2 trailers so I have it monitoring both. I don't monitor my bags as I can easily tell from the ride if they are right or not. I could easily remove the caps from the unused trailer and simply attach to the fittings on my bags though. I may try that one day just to see what happens.

 

He has a "T" with air valves in each line. The sensing caps are screwed into the "T" if each line. They are never removed.

 

That's how mine are plumbed. I think that the lock nut is just for security, to help prevent theft. They could be screwed on and off each time, but I found them to really be a pain. They didn't go on easily and I lost quite a bit of air in the process, hence the reason I added the extra T and schrader valve to each line.

 

I looked at those too. If I hadn't found the receiver that fit into the switch slot, I probably would gone that route.

 

I love the factory-ish look of yours. I'm a big proponent of making upgrades not look like aftermarket hack jobs. When I added my seat heaters I followed that to a T. If I had seen your post when I added my trailer TPMS, I probably would have went that way. Still might lol. I don't have any blanks that size though... I do own a 3d printer though...

 

Gotcha, thanks for the info. Kinda what I figured.

 

Did you ever finish your set-up?