At least I saved 50p...
Posted: September 11th, 2017, 1:07 pm
I've never had a car with a tyre pressure monitoring system before so it was quite exciting when the light came on a couple of months ago. I was on my way to Sainsbury's so popped into their petrol station to take advantage of the free air. Sure enough, one of the tyres was about 3 psi low so I pumped it up and went on into the shop thinking what a jolly good asset this pressure monitoring business is.
Roll on a few weeks and the light is on again. Ah, I wonder, perhaps I have an extremely slow puncture, it'll be interesting to see which tyre is low. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near a Sainsbury's, but decide to pop into a garage to check. Disappointingly, they charge for air; 50p for two minutes or £1 for four. Hmm, two minutes usually seems longer than you'd imagine, the miser in me thinks - so 50p it is. I test the previous culprit first and, sure enough, it needs a few psi again - I make a note to attend to it when I have more time (I'm on my way to meet someone). I am just finishing checking the pressure of the third tyre when it suddenly occurs to me that I have no idea how much of my two minutes is left. I feel sure I am comfortably on course to finish in time, but am struck by a sudden impulse to get on with it, just in case. In that split-second of haste, I pull the nozzle of the pump away from the valve at the slightest of angles and... CRACK! Clearly, I have damaged the valve. I then watch with horror as it takes about thirty seconds for the tyre to expel every last molecule of air...
I'll never know whether I would have broken the valve if I'd paid for four minutes and not had that slight moment of panic. So I'll never know whether I could have avoided damaging my back putting on the spare wheel (am I getting old or are wheels much heavier than they used to be?!). Or whether I would have saved the £92 it cost for a new pressure monitoring valve. But I do know that I wouldn't have been there without the pressure monitoring system and that I would have done a regular check of my tyres (as I used to and at a leisurely pace) at Sainsbury's for free. And, if I had broken a "normal" valve in the process of checking the tyre pressures it would have cost me all of a pint or so to replace it.
Progress, eh?
Roll on a few weeks and the light is on again. Ah, I wonder, perhaps I have an extremely slow puncture, it'll be interesting to see which tyre is low. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near a Sainsbury's, but decide to pop into a garage to check. Disappointingly, they charge for air; 50p for two minutes or £1 for four. Hmm, two minutes usually seems longer than you'd imagine, the miser in me thinks - so 50p it is. I test the previous culprit first and, sure enough, it needs a few psi again - I make a note to attend to it when I have more time (I'm on my way to meet someone). I am just finishing checking the pressure of the third tyre when it suddenly occurs to me that I have no idea how much of my two minutes is left. I feel sure I am comfortably on course to finish in time, but am struck by a sudden impulse to get on with it, just in case. In that split-second of haste, I pull the nozzle of the pump away from the valve at the slightest of angles and... CRACK! Clearly, I have damaged the valve. I then watch with horror as it takes about thirty seconds for the tyre to expel every last molecule of air...
I'll never know whether I would have broken the valve if I'd paid for four minutes and not had that slight moment of panic. So I'll never know whether I could have avoided damaging my back putting on the spare wheel (am I getting old or are wheels much heavier than they used to be?!). Or whether I would have saved the £92 it cost for a new pressure monitoring valve. But I do know that I wouldn't have been there without the pressure monitoring system and that I would have done a regular check of my tyres (as I used to and at a leisurely pace) at Sainsbury's for free. And, if I had broken a "normal" valve in the process of checking the tyre pressures it would have cost me all of a pint or so to replace it.
Progress, eh?