TPMS Options for Multiple Wheel Sets (I.e., Winter/Summer, Street/Off-Road, etc.)

No worries man, I just didn't want you going through the trouble with just one of them bugars and then the light still be flashing at ya!

 

The very first post of this thread already covers "pipe bombs".

 

It's easier to just modify the wire to the indicator light:

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/284690-2012-tpms-light-disabled.html

 

Use PVC, and just toss it behind the seat or in one of the bed cubbies if you have a shell.

Black threaded pipe might draw the wrong kind of attention.

 

^Chechen Tacos?

 

Looks like I'm going with option 2 listed above - I'll order my own sensors from Amazon since they're cheaper (wife has Prime so free quick shipping). I'll post in here with results after I go through this mess. I checked the http://www.whytpms.com/Dealer-Search.aspx site and found a few dealers nearby.

I also made sure the same dealer was on the GSP9700 (Road Force Balancer) list: http://www.gsp9700.com/search/FindLocations.cfm

 

That's a big plus,

Let us know how it turns out,

I know DT will sell me the 4 EZ-Sensors for 200, including cloning my stock steel sensor numbers also.

I don't know if they road force balance?

 

A good dynamic balance is usually good enough. Road Force balancing isn't a silver bullet and is still dependent on technician skill. The snow tires I ordered mounted on steel wheels were Road Force balanced, but still got vibration. I got them dynamic re-balanced at the dealer - the new weights are clocked about 90 deg from where they were before.

 

That's interesting,

When I worked for Honda a few years ago we were not allowed to sell a set of tires for an Odyssey owner unless they agreed to the cost of Road Force balancing, FWIW

Seemed the vans within a certain year range really were very particular to the tires that were put on them.

 

I don't want to get off topic here in the TPMS thread, but those road force machines seem to do the majority of the thinking for the technician. The tech is told exactly where to put weights with the Hunter balance machine.

Also I guess the 3:40 mark keeps this on topic, some machines will inform the technician what type of TPMS sensors are currently mounted ( OEM default I'm assuming).
http://youtu.be/efhgM2TcQpI

By no means am I saying anyone can run one of these machines, but if you're going to a garage that uses this balancer the risk of error should be less than a normal tire balancer.

 

yeah, just bypass the tpms, cost practically nothing except a scotchlock and then you can remove and wrap in electrical tape when/if you resell the vehicle and the next buyer won't know the difference.

imho

 

The TPMS system in my wife's car just did it's job recently. The temperature here in Wisconsin went from the 70's to the 30's and 40's in almost no time at all. As a result, every tire on my wife's vehicle literally lost a lot of tire pressure over night. I've been way too busy recently to think about constantly checking the air pressure on my wife's vehicle's tires, so it was nice that the system warned me that her tires were low (which prompted me to check the tires on my truck as well.)

On a different note, I just had Schrader EZ-Sensors installed in a set of winter wheels for my Tacoma at Discount Tire and had the sensors 'cloned' to my summer wheel sensors. Even though Discount Tire has the ability to do the sensor cloning, I feel like I'm always teaching them how to do their jobs when I go there... I wonder if I'm the only one who has ever asked them to clone sensors???

My Tacoma's aftermarket summer wheels already have Schrader EZ-Sensor sensors in them. When I went to get the new sensors for my winter wheels cloned to the summer wheels, the technician at Discount Tire didn't think you could "clone a clone", which to me makes me think he doesn't really understand how TPMS sensors work. After a couple of minutes of trying, he told me his tool wouldn't clone my already cloned sensors. As he was sitting next to me telling me this and showing me that it won't work, the tool successfully cloned the sensor he had in his hand. The problem wasn't that you can't "clone a clone", the problem was that one of the four sensors he had was bad and he happened to be using the bad one.

FYI... TPMS sensors are just radio frequency devices that emit a signal that includes the sensor ID. As long as the sensor programming tool can read the sensor ID being emitted by the sensor, then the tool could care less if the source or destination sensors are OEM or aftermarket, as long as the destination sensor is programmable.

As the original poster of this thread, my goal was to be able to swap-out my summer and winter tires and still having a working TPMS system w/o going to the dealer to reset the sensor codes in the ECU... and then share my experience with *you* so you don't have to go through the pain-in-the-butt that I did to get this to work. Thanks to Discount Tire, I've now 'succeeded' in accomplishing this mission.

However, accomplishing this seemingly simple task was not so simple. There is a lot of cost and effort on the consumer's part to simply make it possible to swap-out summer and winter wheels. I had to do a ton of research on TPMS, had to drive an hour to Discount Tire several times because no closer dealers know how to clone sensors that I'm aware of, and the sensors add ~$200-$300 to the cost of each wheel set (a cost that will keep repeating every 7 to 10 years, depending on the battery life of the sensors).

It's my opinion that wheel and tire shops should stop selling non-programmable sensors and just use only programmable sensors. I don't think the shop should even tell the customer that they're going to clone the sensors... just do it and the customer will be none-the-wiser and the system will just work. I still think there's some kind of conspiracy going on where dealers don't want to clone sensors because they want the customer to have to come back as much as possible, giving the dealer an opportunity to sell more stuff.

 

Mine did it's job as well.
We have a good tool, why not use it?
Mine did not work for the first 6 months (maybe year?) I had my truck. Considered disabling it, bought the Techstream cable and software, etc... Finally figured "Why not do it right?"

15 minutes at Discount Tire and my system was working properly.
So 2 days later on the way home from work, I see the light again. Thinking it's just screwed up again, I pulled over to a parking lot, shut everything down, and restarted. Flashing for a minute? Nope... came on solid with no flashing.

Checked my pressure, and one tire was down 10psi. Not enough to notice on the sidewall, but enough to trigger the TPMS.
I slowly rolled the truck forward looking for the culprit and finally found a nail.
I whetted the tread and confirmed. Marked the sidewall with a pen and went to Pep Boys to get it plugged.

The Pep Boys guy couldn't find the leak... told me the tire was just low. I had to point it out to him.

Had it not been for the TPMS, I probably would have come out at 5am the next morning to a flat.

 

I have a guy who wants to swap wheels with me he has a 2012 and mine is 2010, can we just swap and the computer will recognize the new tpms sensors from his rims?

 

You'll have to have the ECU's reprogrammed to recognize the sensors.
Each sensor has an electronic serial number, that way your truck doesn't trigger a fault when parked next to another vehicle.

 

Can anyone confirm this:
Understand that checking your tires and inflating them to the correct pressure when cold will not "fix" your tire pressure light. The following is the proper procedure as per section 1-7, page 204 in everyones owners manual;

* first verify no tires are low on pressure and if so adjust to proper psi when tires are cold if possible INCLUDING your spare

*once tires are properly inflated turn your car on, engine idling and find your tire pressure switch (should be near your knees if your sitting in the drivers seat)

*with the car running press and hold the tire pressure switch till the light goes off, you still have not re-initialized the system yet. Let go of the button once the light is off

* this is the most CRITICAL part of the whole re-initialization; with the car still running press and HOLD the tire pressure button till the light flashes 3 times and then let go of the button.


This is the proper way to re-intialize the tpms when a flat has been repaired, pressure adjusted, or tires rotated.

Remember that unless the tire light is flashing there is no problem with the system or the sensors.

The TPMS system will trigger the light when the pressure in any two tires differs by more than 10psi, or when the pressure goes below the set point.

My recommendation is to set the tires to about 5psi below where you intend to run and reset the system there, then increase to your desired pressure.

 

I've had both a nail in the tire, and a spare that went low, and simply reinflating the tires turned the light off.

 

I'm thinking of ordering some winter tires from tire rack. How do I get the sensor ods from my stock tires so I can have them preprogram some cloned sensors? Do I need to have the tires off and sensors out or is it possible to just read the from somewhere in the truck?

 

^^ This. I had one flat tire extremely low and another time 2 tires were low. Both instances were in "extreme cold" (for this area). I inflated the extremely low tire and the light went out. The 2 that were low I didn't inflate and when the temperature came back up with the sun the light went out.

 

The shop should be able to pull the existing sensor IDs using the programming tool (which plugs into vehicle's the OBD2 port).