My Mini Cooper is very in touch with its body, especially the tires. If the tires are not at optimal pressure, I get a message, then I have to squat at the free air dispenser, and play with the pressure gauge, and lose the valve caps, and I hate it.
So I got a handy tire inflator I can use at home. It took a few tries at first, but now I can stick the air hose on the valve, get the reading of the current pressure, hit the trigger, and it inflates to the pre-set amount (plus or minus a few psi) and then STOPS.
And I can sit like a lady on my portable gardening bench the whole time.
And it’s on Black Friday sale, one-third off. Not free, of course, like air, but worth it if you really don’t like rutting around a parking lot for your valve caps.
Spouse has been using, I kid you not, a $20 bicycle/basketball pump. It is *quite* a workout, but apparently at least this model of bicycle pump does work to get things up to good tire pressure, despite my skepticism of the whole "... a human being can pump against the *weight of a car* and that works somehow?" thing.
Your solution seems *vastly* superior!
(but! If the power goes out and we need tire pressure, I'll be grateful!, I'm sure)
Posted by: KC | November 22, 2023 at 10:47 AM
KC - this thing had an adaptor for the lighter in the car if the power is out.
Posted by: theQueen | November 22, 2023 at 02:07 PM
Okay, that is both really cool and really clever! (while not relying on batteries that will die in 5-10 years; I loved our cordless drill but having that short of a lifespan, and then the whole tool has to be replaced because they don't make that specific battery anymore: it is annoying.)
(this is why I'm not a huge fan of everything being wireless and battery powered: it has a built-in battery obsolescence, at least until we get some uniformity/standards, which is unlikely since obsolescence makes more money; and also it is harder to debug the stuff!)
Posted by: KC | November 23, 2023 at 10:09 AM
(... I guess car batteries also die. But we are replacing them anyway, and it is one battery, and also they are, to some degree, standardized such that the car will not be useless and non-repairable when the battery dies)(one hopes, anyway!)
Posted by: KC | November 23, 2023 at 10:42 AM
KC - Do they make rechargeable electric drills? I now use my corded one instead because of the very issue you describe.
Posted by: theQueen | November 23, 2023 at 11:30 AM
The thing that got me was that even if you had it plugged in, after the battery pack died, it wouldn't run. So. You don't even have an extra-heavy (due to the battery pack) corded drill instead of a cordless drill, you have a useless gizmo which you can't find a battery replacement for because the company has moved on to a different set of batteries, etc...
*shakes cane at things that used to last, darnit*
Posted by: KC | November 23, 2023 at 07:28 PM
KC - everything should be rechargeable now anyway.
Posted by: theQueen | November 23, 2023 at 09:38 PM
But rechargeable batteries *still die* - and when they die, they're hard to replace unless they're standardized. (I've been loving my eneloop AAs and AAAs.)(and did not love most of the process of finding a maybe-matching li-ion battery for a dead Jabra Speak and then taking the whole thing apart and putting in the new battery, etc. but it was an easier repair than, say, earbuds at least!)
Posted by: KC | November 24, 2023 at 03:42 PM