Tyre pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) are a brilliant thing for caravanners as they give you an early warning of problems before they become dangerous. Various systems have come to market and the latest is the TA22 from Tyrepal.
Initial impressions are very good. The valve sensors are quite large, but despite fears they would be easily damaged, they’ve remained fine on the three months we’ve had them fitted to our Kia Sorento test car. Installing them is straightforward, although fitting the optional security collars adds a few minutes extra fiddling about.
The display and control unit that sits in the car have a clear display although the cradle is quite bulky. We didn’t use that, opting instead to leave the unit on the fascia, where it still got signal from the sensors but wasn’t in the driver’s eyeline.
That sounds like it defeats the object, but unless a problem develops the display is blank and the unit is silent. This is no bad thing. A display blinking away when there is no problem is easier to miss than one that only chirps into life when something is wrong.
The reality of using the TA22/6 we tested was mixed. The initial set-up is a bit fiddly but once done, things settle down. The instructions are clearly written and easy to understand.
The issue we found when setting up the car and caravan tyres is that there is no facility for adjusting the rear tyre pressures on the car without resetting every tyre pressure on the outfit and that is just too fiddly.
In summary, the TA22 is a good bit of kit, but we’d advise against using it to monitor towcar and caravan tyre pressures at the same time as we did with the six-wheel sensor TA22/6.
We’d suggest the best option for most is to order the cheaper TA22/2 (or TA22/4 for twin axles) and use it for monitoring just the caravan tyres. As caravan tyres pressures are rarely adjusted, you can set it up once and it will work in the background.
As a line of defence against tyre failure causing a destabilisation of the caravan, the TA22 is easy to recommend. We’d suggest it is best suited to those not needing to monitor the towcar tyres however, where it becomes a bit laborious to use.