joako

A while back I had a tire pressure light turn on.. I really don't recall what I did about it. But this weekened while cleaning the car I noticed a few hidden buttons, one was to disable VSC and the other had the same icon as the tire pressure light on the dash. I was just wondering how exactly the system works. Is there a monitor in each tire, sort of like this:



or is another system used?

rxdriver

The tire pressure monitoring on the RX is not based on an absolute pressure value reading. Instead, it's a differential system. IIf a tire is low on air, that wheel will rotate at a different speed than the others. The anti-lock brake computer detects that difference and turns on the tire pressure warning light. There's a remote possibility that all 4 tires could lose air at the same time - the system would not detect that situation.

So, you don't set the system for a certain pressure. Instead, you set the four tires where you want them, and then you're supposed to follow the calibration process in the Owner's Manual. As long as you keep all four the same - it doesn't matter at what pressure - I don't think it's necessary to keep re-calibrating it.

That also explains why there isn't a dashboard display for tire pressure - the car doesn't know! I'd prefer to have the system depicted in the first post.... that would be able to show you the pressure in each tire.