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in October of 2004 I purchased a set of four of these puppies to put on my tire stems. They are the tire caps that have a color system that shows you what your tire pressure is... giving you a heads up if your tire is loosing pressure. I bought it from JC Whitney. (Can't post the URL here, it is too long and it wraps, but here is a link to what I believe is the manufacturer ( (
http://www.accupressurecaps.com )
I know they would not be super accurate, but I figured that they would provide some information on the status of the tires without having to use a tire gauge.
Yesterday, I was driving home (luckily from a short distance) and I thought the car felt a little sluggish, and double-checked I had the parking break off. I got home and parked and forgot about it until walking past the car later. I notice my rear tire was almost completely flat!
"Great" I thought, "must of run over a nail or something." I figured I would re-inflate the tire and see how slow the leak was, then take it to get fixed. So I took off my Accu-Pressure Safety Cap, and filled the tire. When I put the Safety Cap back on, air was hissing out of the cap itself. I quickly switched a cap from another tire, and all is well. The tire itself is fine, but the safety cap must of lost it's seal or been damaged in some way (I have not rubbed a curb, or anything I can think of) or maybe the product "just failed").
So, I bought these to help insure against low pressure tires and the product ends up giving me a flat! Good thing I was at home, and this did not happen during the night or on a long trip. Could have risked damaging the tire and/or the rim! And good thing two did not crap out at once, giving me two flats with one spare tire!
I don't know if anyone else has had problems with this product, and I don 't know if this was just a poorly made exception... (I bought it less thn a year ago) but I think I will take them all off my tires and go back to the original black caps. Seems too risky to keep on my tires!