Car

Review: TravelSafer digital pressure gauge

Both Brandi and I have had alerts in our cars come up to say that our tire pressures need to be checked. Unfortunately neither of the cars actually tell you *which* tire has the problem so it requires checking all 4 tires (which probably should be done anyway). Naturally the stations never have working air or pressure gauges and as I have an air compressor at home – I need a quick way of checking the pressures. I think this is actually caused by the temperature dropping and getting cold overnight as it only seemed to happen on the couple of cold nights we have had recently.

I already have one of those stick gauges – you put it on the valve stem and it shoots out a piece of plastic with marks to tell you the pressure and each tire came up with the right pressure give or take one psi so I wasn’t sure which tire had the problem.

I was given the chance to review the TravelSafer digital pressure gauge and due to the above issues I jumped at the chance to get a second opinion on the tire pressures.20161106_091352

The gauge arrived in see through plastic on a cardboard backing (left)  and was very easy to open which is a plus – no need to go and get scissors to open this.  It requires a 3v (supplied) lithium battery,  so the device was ready to use straight away. It does look like the screws that hold this device together are really recessed, so switching out the battery may require some long jewelers screwdrivers in order to take the two halves apart. Hopefully the battery lasts a long time!

 

 

When I went to check the pressure on the car, I discovered a major  shortcoming in that the device is pretty bulky and it was difficult to get the device on the valve without the hubcap getting in the way. The device is about 3cm wide so make sure you have plenty of room by the valve stem. You can see the difference in size with the image below – it was a bit too bulky (but not impossible)  to fit on the stem with the hubcap on and nobody is going to remove the hubcap to check their tire pressure!

gaugecomparison-smallThe device however does  seem to be accurate and was within 1 psi of my original manual device when I checked several tires so it’s reading is pretty consistent.  The pressure is displayed for about 30 seconds so you get plenty of time to remove from the tire and then check the readings. The image below shows the reading of 25.5 on the device and about 26-26.5  on the manual device
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The device The light of this device helps to see where the valve stem is has a blue light that is always displayed whenever you take a reading. During the day you are not going to notice it. It is pretty handy to see at night when you are trying to check the pressure. The light is not strong enough to ruin your night vision or read the paper with, but is enough for you to be able to see where the dark valve stem is in the dark. The reading display is back lit to make the numbers more visible.

The device also shows you the pressure in psi, bar, kpa or kg/cm – the vast majority of you are going to use this on your car tires but the other pressure readings will be useful for air compressors too (I guess?). Switching between the scales is a simple push of the power button to cycle through the 4 stages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This device works well if your hub caps allow plenty of access to your valve stems and it makes it a lot easier to read the pressure of your tires. The light also makes it easier to use at night, but it’s not bright enough to use as a flashlight to navigate around the car in the dark.

Note that I did receive this item with a promo code and this doesn’t affect my review of this product – it  is a useful addition to the glovebox in the car, is easier to use than the manual device, but lacks some features that would make it the ideal tire pressure gauge for me. #TravelsaferDigitalTirePressureGauge

Car Warranty companies seem to be a bunch of crooks.

After getting spam from one company – about 10 a day from different get rich quick places I received a phone call from another company today. They actually rang me last Friday night just as we were going out so I told them to ring back later and they rang today, in the middle of the working day and spent over 30 minutes waffling on through the script. Eventually I said I wasn’t going to purchase over the phone today, despite getting a 40% discount for this call only, free trip cover and a $30 gas card. She went to get her manager (this was just like the car showroom!) who proceeded to try and give me the smooth calming call. After explaining (again) that I wasn’t going to give my credit card details over the phone and I wanted to see the details before signing up, even though they could send me the forms and I could cancel within 30 days, they didn’t get the point. When he started again on the “If I could have your visa card for verification” I hung up on them as they were obviously not getting the point and I didn’t want to waste any more of my time or theirs. They tried to ring me back 2 more times but then I was busy trying to do some real work (which I had been doing whilst they were wittering on in my ear – thank heavens for headsets for phones.

Transport Direct

The government have launched Transport Direct which gives you maps, door to door planning, travel news on a website. Worth a bookmark and lets hope they keep developing it and making it better.
Update I am impressed that my destination can be as accurate as the company name that I work for – most of the time sites like this choke on the postcode as it is often not recognised. The only journey it recommends is by car and it reckons it will take 23 minutes – more likely 45 – the designers obviously not driven to Crewe at 9am in the morning. It would also be nice to get a routemap of the journey – something I’ve given them in the feedback so will be interesting to see what feedback I get.

Car serviced and what a suprise….

The car went in for service on Friday and when I drove it on Saturday the brake warning light came on so it was off to the garage AGAIN this morning. I don’t think I’ve ever had the car in the garage where I’ve not had to take it back with another fault the following day. Anyway, this morning they took a look and said it needed a new microswitch for the handbrake (which was strange as the light came on when I used the footbrake). This was replaced and then I was told the car was ok. Sitting in the car, put the foot on the brake and the light STILL came on. Back into the garage and another 45 minute wait whilst they did something (probably replaced the bulb with a faulty one).
I think gateway-peugeout-sucks.com might well be registered soon.

Test drive

We went and had a test drive of a Daewoo car this morning. The main reason for this was that we had heard an advert on the radio where the first 1000 people to take a test drive would get a free digital radio. Sounded a great offer so we sent off the sms text message to apply and had a test drive today. The car wasn’t bad although the boot (trunk) was pretty small and would certainly not be big enough for all the junk/work/caching gear we keep in the back of our car currently.
Although its extremely unlikely we’d actually get a new car the garage itself was a nice experience. There was no pressure to buy a car and they let us drive the car without a salesman in the back seat. The weird thing is that they didn’t ask for any id, proof of insurance or anything so we could have done anything to the car. Still they did seem to be organised and more customer orientated as opposed to the lousy peugeot garage that I currently have to go to where you take your car in for a service and then have to go back the following day as they haven’t turned off the “service needed” indicator.