recommend a good tire gauge

[white_2kgt]

in a car you come in and go "fuck this thing is handling like shit!"... on a bike you end up on your face, hopefully just using zip ties and duct tape to put the bike back together.

If you cant figure out that there's something wrong before you end up on your lid, then take up golf.

Yup, so if you get new tires and the monkey and you rely on the monkey at the store to set your pressure you are an idiot. Same as if you just got a new gauge, set the pressure and go balls to the walls on lap one. Once you get A SINGLE GAUGE, you take the time to fine tune the pressure to how you like it, not to what some stunna told you to set it to on a web forum. That's why I laugh my arse off reading tire pressure threads or getting into a discussion at the track with people on pressures, my 38 might be someone else 41 or 36, never know.

[.RJ]

Once you get A SINGLE GAUGE, you take the time to fine tune the pressure to how you like it, not to what some stunna told you to set it to on a web forum.

I think the situation with cars is quite a bit different than bikes in that the tire manufacturers provide quite a bit of support with pressures and setup - My hunch is that there's a lot of good options out there, so if they can help you make it work you'll keep buying their tires. So if they're telling you 30psi cold, and your gauge is 4psi off, it aint going to be right.... having an accurate gauge is still important... at least it is to me - makes getting things right a lot easier.

[WRXtranceformed]

Why is it that hard to find a gauge, or brand of gauges, that reads accurately / the same?

[Maengelito]

i dont think it is hard, but they're playing the "what if" game and assuming that every tire gauge is reading like 80% off or something.

[stevegula]

I feel like if I were to read a select handful of posts from this thread what I would deduce is that tire gauges don't have to be accurate and you shouldn't expect them to be. Also, if I'm a racer, and I did my practice sessions and qualifying on one set of tires, and then went out on a new set of tires for the race where everyone is still doing 95% effort on the first lap, I'm an idiot. All because I expect to be able to trust my tire pressure gauge.

That just sounds.. wrong.

[.RJ]

I feel like if I were to read a select handful of posts from this thread what I would deduce is that tire gauges don't have to be accurate and you shouldn't expect them to be

Well, I think thats a load of crap. The gauge should be accurate. Otherwise you are chasing your tail with setup because of tire pressures. I dunno, I feel like $40-50 should buy an accurate gauge.

[stevegula]

I feel like if I were to read a select handful of posts from this thread what I would deduce is that tire gauges don't have to be accurate and you shouldn't expect them to be

Well, I think thats a load of crap. The gauge should be accurate. Otherwise you are chasing your tail with setup because of tire pressures. I dunno, I feel like $40-50 should buy an accurate gauge.

That's how I feel. I was just pointing out the impression a couple of other people were giving off.

[Evan]

in a car you come in and go "fuck this thing is handling like shit!"... on a bike you end up on your face, hopefully just using zip ties and duct tape to put the bike back together.

If you cant figure out that there's something wrong before you end up on your lid, then take up golf.

I was about to say this but I figured Id get flamed because Im not a ryder dawg.

wheelies on flat tires? ring a bell?

oh wait! I AM a rider dawg! and I can slide the shit out of a motorcycle* mad skillz


and by motorcycle i mean a pit bike with no air in the back tire.

[white_2kgt]

I feel like if I were to read a select handful of posts from this thread what I would deduce is that tire gauges don't have to be accurate and you shouldn't expect them to be

Well, I think thats a load of crap. The gauge should be accurate. Otherwise you are chasing your tail with setup because of tire pressures. I dunno, I feel like $40-50 should buy an accurate gauge.

I have about 10 different gauges of various makes and 3 that are the same make and the 3 always give different results, the same gauges gives the same results but not the same as the rest of them, that's called consistency and that's all I give a crap about. You'd probably need to spend like $500 to get an _accurate_ gauge then get it calibrated yearly.

[Ginger]

I feel like if I were to read a select handful of posts from this thread what I would deduce is that tire gauges don't have to be accurate and you shouldn't expect them to be. Also, if I'm a racer, and I did my practice sessions and qualifying on one set of tires, and then went out on a new set of tires for the race where everyone is still doing 95% effort on the first lap, I'm an idiot. All because I expect to be able to trust my tire pressure gauge.

That just sounds.. wrong.

If you took a select bunch of posts from other contradictory topic threads you'd develop an equally compellingly silly conclusion.

Chad's saying consistency is important... I agree. I think this argument that things are different for motorcyclists is silly. I can tell when my tires aren't working right and fix it before it becomes a problem... and I don't go out a new brand of tires without testing out pressures with my personal gauge. You're a more experienced track rider than I am and I think you'd agree that if you can't tell when your tires are sucking that you've got no business racing.

Saying "well, I got these race tires that I couldn't test because I had to use qualifiers for grid position" doesn't hold water, either (I'm not going back to read again, but I thought I read something like this). Are you going to go out on a model race tire you've never used before? I'm not. If I get a new tire, test it and find it good at 33 on my gauge, then when time comes to mount the next set I'll put them on at 33 on my gauge and be able to reasonably expect the same results. I also don't think it's that bright to set them based on reccomendations you've heard various places.

We've seen here, in a motorsports enthusiast group, that lots of our gauges won't read the same. Between RJ and I we found that we had 3 or 4 gauges, none of which read the same. So why is it reasonable to assume that your gauge will read similar to the guy who your got your reccomendation from? If your gauge is +/- 1psi and the guy that did the testing is +/- 1 as well then you've got the potential to be 2psi off already. And if you drop your gauge?

Get one gauge that will read consistently, find out what works for your tires based on that gauge, and be happy. I don't think that's entirely unreasoanble.