This will go down as one of those projects that should have been a lot easier than it was and is probably much easier on most any other motorcycle.
Last year, after getting a slow leak puncture in the rear tire of the 2016 Ducati Multistrada 1200 and plugging the tire with the Dynaplug kit, I purchased the external tire pressure monitor system, FOBO Bike 2, to monitor the tire pressure in real time. This system replaces your valve stem caps with sensors that communicate with your smartphone via Bluetooth and provides current pressure readings as well as alarms for tire pressures outside of the set limits.
Sounds pretty straightforward. The reason why I never completed the install last season was that both the front and rear sensors were going to conflict with the brake calipers. The single-sided rear swing arm of the Multistrada places the rear brake caliper towards the centerline of the rim and the existing vertical valve stem was too tall. The front tire has an angled valve stem, but with it pointing towards the side of the rim, it also extended the sensor into the front brake caliper.
Getting ready for this season, I again found that the rear tire had a slow leak at the Dynaplug location. Obvioisly needed to plug the tire again, but also decided that I needed to make more effort to getting the FOBO TPMS kit installed.
First up was plugging the tire as there is still a lot of life left in the Dunlop Roadsmart 3 tires. This time I tried the tire plug kit that comes in the Multistrada tool kit. Very similar to the Dynaplug process, but using the more old fashioned rubber strips that self-vulcanize to the tire. The kit has everything you need for a roadside repair including CO2 cartridges.
With the tire plugged again, I let it sit for a few days while monitoring the tire pressure. Everything was looking good, so it was time to work on replacing or adjusting the valve stems so that the pressure sensors would not conflict with the brake calipers.
The FOBO Bike 2 kit comes with everything you need to be able to make the system work. The two pressure sensors, spare batteries, four lock nuts, two lock nut wrenches, and two vertical valve stems that are much shorter. I purchased some additional angled 8.3mm valve stems that I thought might work as well in my situation.
Now, the challenging part is replacing the valve stems without replacing the tires. On both the front and rear tires I broke the tire beads with a pair of 8″ C-Clamps that also pulled the tire over far enough to access the valve stem from the inside. I started with the front tire knowing that that would be the easier of the two.
With access to the valve stem nut, I just loosened a bit and rotated so that the angled stem was in line with the rim and no longer a conflict with the front brake caliper. The only potential issue was that I had removed the valve core to air down the tire and didn’t replace before rotating the valve stem. The small T-handle core tool I was using would no longer access the valve, but luckily I had another that was for a socket set and could easily re-tighten the valve core by hand.
Re-inflating the tire reseated the bead at about 20 psi, so things were looking good on the front. The rear tire is much more of a beast (190/55r17 vs. 120/70r17 on the front), but the same procedure worked again for access to the valve stem.
The next challenge on the rear tire was that the valve stem was tightened from the outside with the inside flush to the rim with a 3mm Allen head socket. Removal wasn’t an issue, but the new, angled valve threads were too short to extend through the rim. I would have to use one of the valve stems that came with the FOBO 2 kit which was much shorter on the outside and plenty of threads on the inside, but would still be a challenge to tighten from the inside of the rim.
The rear tire also reseated the bead at about 20 psi. The last steps were setting the pressures, installing the sensors, and connecting everything to the app on the phone. There are lock nuts included with the kit. The lock nut worked ok on the rear, but still a little tight for getting the pressure sensor tight. The front valve stem did not have enough threads for the lock nut to work (the angled stems that I bought separately did have a longer threaded section). I debated about whether to replace the front valve again, but found in the online manual that the lock nuts are only for security purposes and not for any operational issues. I will likely leave the lock nuts off since they are an extra pain if you need to add air to the tires. If you are concerned about theft, but don’t use the lock nuts, there is still some security that these sensors can’t be re-paired to another app unless you release them first. The thief might not now that, so you may still end up without a sensor even though it is worthless to anyone else.
Connecting the sensors to the application was straightforward and I was able to experience the different alarms as I had trouble with the front lock nut or when removing the sensor to add more air. I have a Bluetooth headset in my helmet too, so the audible alarms will be conveyed to the headset which is a nice safety feature.
So far, so good with the application. Pressures are relatively steady as it was much warmer when I installed the sensors than it is now. A feature is the ability to display a temperature adjusted pressure based on a reference temperature of 20 degrees Celsius/68 degrees Fahrenheit. Even with an understanding of temperature impacts on pressure, I never gave it that much thought when checking or adjusting tire pressures in the past.
Overall, a bit of effort to make this work when the existing valve stems were not going to allow a simple installation. My Suzuki SFV650, I would have just installed the pressure sensors to the existing valve stems and been done. With the Multistrada or another installation, the only thing I might do differently would be to purchase the accessory T-Valve stems from FOBO so that you could always have the pressure sensor connected and always be able to adjust the air pressure without moving things back and forth.
Two Wheel Junkie 