Pressure point
Tyre pressure is surely the most basic check one can carry out on a vehicle. Since November 2014, tyre pressure has been monitored electronically across all vehicles by law. Porsche pioneered this in 1977, on its 928 I believe. An illuminated TPM warning light is an MOT fail, so you’d expect garages to be conversant with the tyre pressures needed for a service. Alas, this is the motor trade, so anything goes except common sense.
Not long ago, a car supermarket asked me to look at a 4x4 they’d just sold. The vehicle, which had just 50 miles on the clock, had a TPM illuminated which their workshops couldn’t extinguish. They desperately wanted to get the vehicle inspected. As a favour to the workshop manager, I prioritised the repair, partly because I knew this model wasn’t prone to such faults – it was a proper Japanese SUV.
Sure enough, all four tyres were at close to 50psi – the shipping pressure. The supplying dealer didn’t seem to have carried out a full PDI and the car supermarket hadn’t engaged a disciplined fitter, just a plug-and-play monkey.
Diagnostics showed all four pressures to be incorrect – or rather, out of tolerance. Which they were, but at no point had a gauge or air-line been attached to the valves to see what the reading was and checked against what the reading should be.
Imagine my annoyance when my in-laws sent their Toyota Verso to the main dealer the other week for a pre-paid service. When the car was delivered back to them, the old man swiftly tucked it away in the garage for the night. The next morning, there was a cold snap and guess what? The TPM light was illuminated on start-up. The thing is, the in-laws are quite elderly and don’t check the pressures according to the manual. In fairness, the old man did confirm that there were no punctures, using his pre-ww2 gauge.
According to the sticker on the driver’s B-pillar, where the vehicle tyre pressures are listed, it should have been 35psi at the front and 33psi at the rear. I’d checked them the week before when the car was MOT’D. The main stealer had only gone and adjusted them to 30 at the front and 29 and 28 at the rear. It was the 28 that had illuminated the lamp.
It is this kind of idiocy and lack of attention to detail that gives the motor trade a bad name. It’s also why so many faults are incorrectly diagnosed and parts wrongly fitted. How can garages get away with it when labour charges are so high?
“Diagnostics showed that all four tyre pressures were incorrect – or rather, out of tolerance”