Living with VICTON Tire Pressure Monitor

I’ve been driving a lot these past few days — almost as many miles as the two months since I bought the car. But a few days ago I noticed the car felt bumpy even on flat ground…

I don’t drive much, but it really was a bit bumpy on flat ground. Later, during the late-September maintenance, the 4S shop staff told me it was a tire pressure issue. They checked the tires themselves and found nothing wrong — just that the pressures were off by a fair margin. After adjusting, the bumpiness disappeared. The staffer said it was lucky I found it early, otherwise it would have caused a whole chain of damage to the tires.

During the maintenance I asked the staff a bunch of questions, including about tires. They explained the consequences of uneven tire pressure and blowouts, and also told me…

“Tires aren’t covered by warranty. If you blow one out, you’ll be paying out of pocket at the 4S shop just like at a street tire shop.”

Fuck…

In the end, being a bit obsessive-compulsive, I kept asking how to catch tire pressure problems early. Besides the crude method of kicking the tires before driving, I was advised: “Why not just install a tire pressure monitor?”

Since I basically don’t want to drive inside the city and only drive when leaving it, this thing is actually somewhat necessary — a blowout in the suburbs would leave me screwed. So I bought a VICTON tire pressure monitor on JD using a Baitiao coupon. Why not Steelmate? Because Steelmate isn’t solar. The VICTON can charge directly via solar, which fits my lazy needs.

Tire pressure monitors come in internal and external versions. External ones are easy to install but a pain to inflate; internal ones are the opposite. So I went with internal for a one-and-done solution. The 4S shop said they don’t install these things, and VICTON anticipated that: after purchase you add VICTON’s official WeChat account, and customer service recommends an install point in your city. Going there also saves you the 40-yuan installation fee.

The tire shop guy’s skills were pretty slick.

And that’s the final result. By the way, the tire shop guy tested it and found none of these numbers accurate — it showed 2.7 against a measured 2.3. But when deflating, the monitor did immediately alarm, and we tested it several times during installation, so it’s useful as a leak reminder. That’s really the most important purpose of a tire pressure monitor anyway.

It’s just that the numbers are useless…