I like to closely monitor tire pressures on my vehicles because I have lost some irreplaceable wheels due to "rapid deflation" events with potholes, screws, nails and such. Of course I check the pressures with my reliable Accutire pressure gauge before trips but this is a bit of a hassle and does nothing once the car is in motion. A TPMS system is what I needed so I began my search to evaluate what was on the market and what would be the best fit for me. As always, I wanted the cleanest solution available and I found a great option - the Steel Mate TPMS-85. It uses bluetooth connected, wireless, valve stem sensors and displays tire pressure AND temperature data onto your iPhone or Android device, so no wiring is required. Perfect!
I sourced a unit from Amazon and installed it on my Prelude, as a beta test. I used my iPhone for the display in the 'lude setup. After running the system for several months, I decided that it had the right stuff to be used on the NSX. I sourced a second setup from eBay and saved $20 but had to wait a couple of weeks for that one to arrive. The Amazon unit had shown up in only 3 days and time is money, as they say. The bluetooth dongle is an attractive device that plugs into the cigarette lighter and features the requisite tire cross-section graphic and exclamation point. The graphic is normally green but turns amber and emits an alarm when there is an issue (more on that later). The dongle also has an illuminated, blue, bluetooth icon that displays when it is paired with the sensors. The ash tray door will JUST close over the dongle:
I was due a new set of tires, so I had the good dudes at Discount Tire install the special valve stems for me at that time. The valve stem caps were pretty hideous so I sourced some cool laser-etched NSX logo-ed replacements from eBay:
After downloading the free Steel Mate app and making a quick initial configuration, the data displayed on my Nav Pod screen (a Nexus 7, detailed here )!
By touching on one of the quadrants of the display, you can see a graphical representation:
Here's a shot of the components inside the car:
The app allows the user to setup audible alarms that sound when the pressures become too high or low, to alert the driver to take action. In the Prelude, this works perfectly because the tire pressures are identical, front to rear. The NSX, however, has different pressures so that creates an issue because the app has no provisions for individual pressure settings. It may be possible to find a happy medium to set the alert at but I will have to wait for summertime temperatures to experiment. For now, I just have the alarm turned off but having instant visual verification of pressures puts my mind at ease :smile:
So, now that the cigarette lighter adapter is taken up with the dongle, where do I charge my phone? There are all kinds of ugly Y-adapters that would work to duplicate the power port but that is not clean. After a bit of head scratching, I decided to install a dedicated power port and I decided to use the snap-out panel just below the glove box to house it. I think that in some earlier car models, this panel covers the computer port but in my '02, this area is empty and available. The little plastic snap in panel is readily available from oemacuraparts.com and costs only $3.50 so it was a very low risk experiment. I removed the panel and taped it off for protection before using a Forstner bit to drill a perfectly sized hole for the port:
I removed the nut from the port and threaded it into the panel, simply by slowly turning it until it seated:
To get the panel to snap back in properly, I had to remove the tray below the glove box and drill out 3 Pop rivets to remove the sheet metal bracket from the tray. That gave me the clearance that I needed for a good fit:
I reinstalled the tray, wired the port to power and ground and viola! More power :biggrin:
I'm really happy with how everything turned out :biggrin:
I sourced a unit from Amazon and installed it on my Prelude, as a beta test. I used my iPhone for the display in the 'lude setup. After running the system for several months, I decided that it had the right stuff to be used on the NSX. I sourced a second setup from eBay and saved $20 but had to wait a couple of weeks for that one to arrive. The Amazon unit had shown up in only 3 days and time is money, as they say. The bluetooth dongle is an attractive device that plugs into the cigarette lighter and features the requisite tire cross-section graphic and exclamation point. The graphic is normally green but turns amber and emits an alarm when there is an issue (more on that later). The dongle also has an illuminated, blue, bluetooth icon that displays when it is paired with the sensors. The ash tray door will JUST close over the dongle:
I was due a new set of tires, so I had the good dudes at Discount Tire install the special valve stems for me at that time. The valve stem caps were pretty hideous so I sourced some cool laser-etched NSX logo-ed replacements from eBay:
After downloading the free Steel Mate app and making a quick initial configuration, the data displayed on my Nav Pod screen (a Nexus 7, detailed here )!
By touching on one of the quadrants of the display, you can see a graphical representation:
Here's a shot of the components inside the car:
The app allows the user to setup audible alarms that sound when the pressures become too high or low, to alert the driver to take action. In the Prelude, this works perfectly because the tire pressures are identical, front to rear. The NSX, however, has different pressures so that creates an issue because the app has no provisions for individual pressure settings. It may be possible to find a happy medium to set the alert at but I will have to wait for summertime temperatures to experiment. For now, I just have the alarm turned off but having instant visual verification of pressures puts my mind at ease :smile:
So, now that the cigarette lighter adapter is taken up with the dongle, where do I charge my phone? There are all kinds of ugly Y-adapters that would work to duplicate the power port but that is not clean. After a bit of head scratching, I decided to install a dedicated power port and I decided to use the snap-out panel just below the glove box to house it. I think that in some earlier car models, this panel covers the computer port but in my '02, this area is empty and available. The little plastic snap in panel is readily available from oemacuraparts.com and costs only $3.50 so it was a very low risk experiment. I removed the panel and taped it off for protection before using a Forstner bit to drill a perfectly sized hole for the port:
I removed the nut from the port and threaded it into the panel, simply by slowly turning it until it seated:
To get the panel to snap back in properly, I had to remove the tray below the glove box and drill out 3 Pop rivets to remove the sheet metal bracket from the tray. That gave me the clearance that I needed for a good fit:
I reinstalled the tray, wired the port to power and ground and viola! More power :biggrin:
I'm really happy with how everything turned out :biggrin:
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