A tyre set on a warm afternoon reads lower at three in the morning without anything having gone wrong, because cool air takes up less room. A few degrees is worth about a tenth of a bar, and on a car whose pressures were only just acceptable that is enough to light the dashboard up. A fair number of our night calls in NW2 are exactly this, and the honest answer at the kerb is that there is nothing to buy.
The useful distinction is behaviour. A warning that appears cold and clears once the tyres have warmed up is telling you the pressures are marginal. One that stays on, or arrives while you are driving, is telling you something is leaking. The first wants an air line at your convenience. The second wants somebody now, because a tyre driven soft stops being repairable quickly.
When a tyre does have to be replaced at that hour, the sensor moves across to the new one rather than being bought again. It is a small unit bolted to the valve stem inside the wheel and moves across with a fresh seal.
Tyres pick their moment badly. It is two in the morning on Hendon Way, or ten past six on a Sunday with the car on a driveway in Gladstone Park and somewhere to be by eight. Tight in Childs Hill, easy in Dollis Hill: neither stops the job. Level in Dollis Hill, sloping in the Chichele Road area: we set the car straight first. NW2 takes in Gladstone Park and Mapesbury, and we work the lot.
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Very few cars round here sleep in a garage. They stand out on the streets off Chichele Road and around Gladstone Park and cool down to whatever the night is doing, which is why warning lights cluster in the small hours in NW2 rather than at teatime. The pressures you set on a warm afternoon were never the pressures the car runs at overnight.
A warning light on a car that had stood out on the street all night in hard frost. All four pressures were within a whisker of correct and there was no leak. We put air in, explained why the light had appeared, and fitted nothing.
A night shift worker in Dollis Hill with a tyre that genuinely was flat and a sensor that had gone silent some time before. The battery inside is sealed and lasts about ten years. The dead sensor was a separate conversation, held first.
A tyre changed on Walm Lane at one in the morning, pressures correct, warning still showing. Some cars pick the sensor back up after a few miles. This one needed telling, which takes a minute and is not a fault with the tyre.
Not definitely. Check the pressures if you have a gauge, and note whether the light clears after a few miles. Cold nights set off plenty of warnings on tyres that are simply a little low, so the gauge decides it rather than the light.
If the tyre is visibly down, no, because every mile driven on it costs you the repair. If the pressures check out and the light is the only symptom, morning is fine. Tell us what the gauge says when you ring.
No. The sensor belongs to the wheel rather than the tyre, so it comes off the old one and goes onto the new one with a fresh seal. You are only buying a sensor when the one in there has already failed.
Most cars relearn on their own within a few miles, so give it a short drive first. If it is still showing after that, the system needs resetting or the sensor needs waking up, and both are done at the car.
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