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Witch’s cauldron on top of a rack. How appropriate for Spooktober!
I was genuinely wondering, if that’s the joke, having never seen this light before…
This is the warning for low tyre pressure. Often shows up after you’ve had a tyre change, such as when you go to winter tyres around this time of year.
Interesting fact, the tyre pressure warning isn’t always measuring your tyre pressure! At least, not directly.
Some cars have actual pressure sensors inside the wheels which do measure it, while others (like mine) use the ABS sensor - which measures wheel rotations - to determine pressure as a byproduct.
The theory goes that an under-inflated tyre will have to make more revolutions than a properly inflated one to cover a given distance, and so by comparing the current status against a programmed normal, assumed low pressure can be detected.
Because what is ‘normal’ can change after you inflate your tyres or change them, cars with this type of indirect sensor will also have a button somewhere to reset it (mine is inside the glove box) so you can redefine what ‘normal’ is and cancel any spurious warning.
Colder air also takes up less volume relative to warmer air, therefore exerting less outward pressure. So, if you haven’t aired up since July, it’s entirely possible that the lower temperatures alone can cause this light to come on.
Yeah, this is the actual joke here haha.
We get it when we switch over to winter tires and never installed the tpms in the other wheels.
It’s there all winter, and ignored. If cold air is enough to set off the low pressure warning, your tires were already really low in July. Or you have a leak.
On some cars the traction control is disabled if the tpms light is on so it might not be a great idea to ignore it all winter. TPMS sensors aren’t that expensive.
Not 10 year old Subarus!
Actually I turn of TC lots in the snow to have a little fun without the Nannies, but it works fine with my snow tires which still don’t have tpms in them like the summer ones.
Or in my experience, when one of the 4/5 transmitters fails.
You must live in warm climate 😀
Cold air in tires makes pressure go down. Low tore warning light.
The part I find funny is I’ve never had seasonal low tire pressure except when the polar vortex rips through and drops temps down to -40ish (which fun fact is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius) maybe this is a thing for folks with heated garages?
Happens to me every year in the north parked outside. I have had it happen on low profile tires, van tires, and bike tires. I wonder if humidity plays a role? Or maybe the drasticness of the change, I’m pretty close to Canada.
Nah, I haven’t had a car for a few years and my car before that didn’t have this feature, because it was an old car… 🙂
Happy tireween to you too.
nice to have a low pressure holiday.
I just checked my tires, somehow only lost 0-1 psi per tire since April. I did check them on a hot day so that probably helped.
we top ours up at tireween and tirester every year
At least one of my sensors is busted. The gauge says it’s fine. Looks like I’ll be fixing the issue with electrical tape.
Get an air pump that runs off your car battery. Don’t get a jump/pump as those are more expensive and they break. Get one with a flashlight.
It’s one of those cheap purchases that makes a world of difference.
Don’t buy the cheapest tho, look online for one that has metal piston & cogs (are are only slightly more expensive, or perhaps even not more expensive).
The plastic ones break easily when heated (5 ~ 10 minutes).
But yeah, why not just pump the air at gas stations?
They usually have to recertify the gauges once a year.You are absolutely right about heat. They get hot
As for free air, more and more gas stations have attached credit card machines to their pumps. Having to hunt for ones that haven’t had become a chore. Also, it is so helpful to just have it on hand at any time.
Most places still have a few gas stations with free air!
Do you mean the time of year where a battery cell goes bad, ruining both the battery and the alternator while you have an Uber passenger in the car an hour from home and every system in your car is cartoonishly shutting off one by one?
Because YEP I GUESS IT’S ABOUT THAT TIME. :(
Chances are that the alternator was already bad, but symptoms didn’t manifest until the battery started to die. A running car should be able to stay alive purely from the alternator. It’s not a great long term solution, since it causes extra wear on the alternator. But it is possible to just push-start it and then keep it alive with the alternator alone.
But it is possible to just push-start it and then keep it alive with the alternator alone.
can confirm. had a buddy in HS whose car had neither a starter nor a working battery. every day after everyone left the parking lot, he would have us push his car over to the street on top of a hill, and then he’d clutch start it on the way down. we only had to push it back up the hill a couple times when he was learning how to do it.
It never really occurred to me that most people don’t check their tire pressure once or twice a month and let it get that bad.
I used to be somebody who checked tire pressures much more often. Oil level too.
But even though our current vehicles are 12 and 13 years old, the tire pressure monitoring works right away on a cold day, and its threshold before turning on the light isn’t super low. It’s high 20s psi I believe.
It’s not that I want to ignore the workings of my car. I often enjoy using my phone olconnected to my bluetooth OBDII scanner to provide a bunch of extra gauges. I drive an old Mazda3 and it doesn’t even have a temperature gauge, just a light. So it’s cool being able to monitor coolant temperature, voltage, actual gallons of fuel in the tank, and various other sensors if I feel like it.
In the last month, the high temps where I live have dropped approximately 40 degrees.
That enough to drop tires pressure to the point of the light coming on if you’re not checking it at least biweekly
Which biweekly are you referring to?
Every two weeks.
Twice a week seems excessive…
I check mine when my car tells me to <shrug>
I’ve just realised I’ve completely stopped checking mine since switching to an EV. I can go a couple of months without even stopping at a service station, so the old habit is broken.
What did you stop for at a service station before? Do you mean filling the car up?
Why do you need to stop so often at a service station with an EV? I thought the second plus was not having to get it serviced as much.
You don’t get it. Snow tires.
You buy a second set of wheels, and its more expensive to add TPMS so you don’t and you just get the light 4 months of the year.
Have snow tires, don’t have this issue. If I didn’t have that measurement thing then I could just reset the system to zero.
It only happens if you have a separate set of rims for your snow tires (and those rims have no TPMS sensors installed)
I’m not sure how the terminology works in English. I change the tires I open the bolts and take the tire off and it just has that small round metal part left where the brake is and that the bolts attach to. If without rims means just the rubber part then I haven’t really seen that sort of tire changing where I live. I wonder how you change such tires yourself, the rubber part seems pretty firmly in place
Oh so you are changing the rims in fact. Not sure why you’re not getting a tire pressure warning in that case, either the second set of rims has sensors, or there’s something wrong with the system
But to answer your question, around here most people who only change the tires (rubber) and re-use the same rims (metal) have it done professionally. It’s not impossible to do it at home but it’s generally not worth the trouble
Or they made their seasonal change from their summers to winters, and if, like me, you have separate rims so you can easily do it at home, you now get to drive around with the car whining about no tpms. Because fucking cars can’t have this as built in diagnostic functionality in these giant computers on wheels.
When I have time I’ll pop over to a shop that can reprogram them to the second set, but it’s not exactly priority numero uno.
Mine got down to 18 psi
fall? yeah, the front will fall off soon
Yeah, that’s not very typical. I’d like to make that point.
remember to tow your car outside the environment if it needs work
When living in Florida I used to air up my tires constantly because of the temperature overnight. Now in Oregon it’s been 2 years and it’s only been filled once during an oil change.
Is that the symbol for a cauldron? I don’t get it
I don’t own any horse shoes.
Its a low tire pressure light.
In the fall, lower temperatures cause tire pressure to drop.
Hah, nailed it. Happened this morning. First frost this year.
35 to 27…buy a small compressor, its handy
I got a Ryobi battery powered air pump. It’s so nice to not have to drag out the whole compressor just to add a couple lbs my tires when the temperature drops.
Yeah I’ve got a small battery powered compressor that will top off tires up to about 37ish PSI but struggles to put more than that in. It’s nice for a quick top off, but my bike wants 60PSI so I had to buy a real compressor to keep my bike tires happy
Get a first gen Porsche Cayenne for a couple thousand and you get a hose from passenger footwell. Uses air from the air suspension lol
Fuel economy is as abysmal and it MAY eventually need an engine rebuild. Still best car I’ve ever owned.
Isn’t it great how cars just have like random lights that come on whose design is so ambiguous that there’s no possible chance you could work out what they’re trying to indicate.
My car occasionally displays a blue tick, what the hell is that supposed to mean? It only comes up maybe once every 4 or 5 months so it’s really hard to work out a pattern.
4-5 month is an awfully long time to be too lazy to rtfm
I mean, I agree it’s silly design, but come on
Ten seconds to search. It’s either low engine temp (don’t rev high), or he’s driving with high beams on.
It’s like hearing observational comedy from 30 years ago, before you could google what a light was
I just got a used Cadillac and it has this little blue icon quite frequently. Had to get out the manual. It means I’m driving over the speed limit. Fuck’s sake what a useless light.
I used to drive a Sprinter, and on the dashboard was a light with iconography of waves, wind, and raindrops. I concluded that it was warning me of a storm at sea.
I thought this was some bent over woman sign
The dot being her dot
The line being the groove of her spine
The symbol meaning get laid
You should read your car’s manual.
It’s spends half the time telling you stuff you already know like how to open the engine bay.
They should just have a section called “all the bloody stupid decisions we’ve made” and just put the explanation in there, because that’s the only bit anyone will ever need to read.
oh, like a changelog manual. That’d be useful.
My car occasionally displays a blue tick, what the hell is that supposed to mean? It only comes up maybe once every 4 or 5 months so it’s really hard to work out a pattern.
I got the same issue with my BMW, except it’s a green arrow pointing either left or right that flashes and makes a ticking sound. Only lasts for a few seconds though.
Oh that sounds like the swerve suddenly into another lane without looking light.
Dont you have the manual? I did buy a used car and it had manual
I bought a used car and it had not just the manual, but the original sales offer to the Estonian government (a specific department of it that I won’t name because that’s too specific). And this was a pre-EUR one, to give you an estimate of how long it’s been in the glove compartment.
But in general it’s been hit and miss for manuals with used cars. Sometimes I’ve looked them up online, but not all are easily found.
I don’t think I’ve owned a single vehicle that didn’t come with the manual in the glove compartment, and I’ve always bought used vehicles.
3 with over 100k miles, 2 that were over 15 years old when I bought them and 2 that were less than 100k miles and less than 5 years old when I got them. Half of those cars I only got one key with, a couple didn’t last 2 years before developing severe mechanical issues, but the one thing that every single one has was the original owners manual in the glove compartment
Okay yeah, I’ve only ever bought one with LESS than 100k miles (I think 3 or 4 that were under 200k) and only 2 that were under 15 years old. I’ve had 11 cars lol
No you dont get it, its bad design if you have to read. Also why are there 3847436189347 different lamps that indicate something now? Thats bad design. Oh why do i not know what the single error lamp means and what exactly is broken?bad design…
All because people dont want to rtfm.
It’s called user experience. It’s like a whole discipline.
It’s a car it’s centuries old technology I shouldn’t have to read the manual to know what it’s complaining about. It has a big infotainment screen it could put the error in English on there, but no.
My ten year old Subaru has a small screen that says what the light is. Unfortunately that doesn’t always help: recently the “spend $1,400” light came on but the screen claimed it was “passenger airbag sensor”
I HATE that sensor. It was the arse weight one, right?
I’ve had it programmed out of a car once. Just couldn’t use a child seat in the front pass. Seat afterwards. Big deal.
Yes. I was lucky that the car had an outstanding recall on the wiring so replacing that was free and the airbag has a long warranty so replacing that was free, but it wasn’t enough. And apparently the sensor is not replaceable so they had to replace the seat base and rebuild the seat. I suppose it could have been much more expensive but this is excessive.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t program the sensor out - let the airbag always deploy in case of accident. The reasoning behind it is stupid anyway. They’re afraid some kid might be in the front seat and be injured by it, yet the weight of a car seat by itself is almost enough so what point is there?
I needed to get this fixed to pass my state’s inspection, but what made it more painful is that apparently that requirement is dropped after ten years. It would have been cheaper to just pay any tickets until December when I could magically pass again. Realistically though, I would not want to be the guy saying “I saved some money by not fixing that” in case an airbag was ever needed
And apparently the sensor is not replaceable so they had to replace the seat base and rebuild the seat.
One of my favourite examples of planned obsolescence in cars - they build a high failure rate part into an expensive part that would otherwise last longer.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t program the sensor out - let the airbag always deploy in case of accident.
It’s not even possible in all cars. I had it done in my W211 Mercedes and the guy said newer models don’t even have an option, the sensor just is there and that’s it, the car always expects it. I don’t know how it is for Subaru. But yes, they don’t want to take any liability.
I needed to get this fixed to pass my state’s inspection, but what made it more painful is that apparently that requirement is dropped after ten years. It would have been cheaper to just pay any tickets until December when I could magically pass again
Ah yeah, my car at the time was like 16 or 17 years old, but unfortunately you can’t have an SRS light up even on a 60 year old car. Not that any CURRENT 60 year old cars have the system, but essentially if the system is present, it must work. No lights allowed on any safety-critical systems
With all the infotainment bullshit they’ve added to cars these days they really could just tell you what the problem is. Still, RTFM.
The challenge there is that there is rightfully an air gap between the infotainment and the actual critical systems to running the car. Sometimes there’s a heavily limited data feed that feeds some data one way but generally the two systems are completely separate and cannot communicate with each other so that you can’t brick your car by loading a malformed music CD for example.
Pay attention the next time you’re futsing with settings and notice how the infotainment is separate from any sensors or settings related to vehicle operation
There’s literally zero reason that system couldn’t pull and display trouble codes from the control module without breaking anything.
True, but who is gonna go to their car dealers mechanic if you can just read a errorcode.
I live in Taiwan and it’s been 90-95 since February.
