TPMS..caution everyone

[wolfdogs]

as you know, NHTSA has mandated them on all vehicles 10,000 gvw and below..many manufactures have already been supplying them with certain models...some its an option, some its standard. next year..it will be standard. thing is... the industry is trying to get their tire dealers to get educated on them. the days of taking a guy who's sweeping the shop floor and telling him to change tires are quickly going away. Tire changing equipment must be updated.. (the mounting machines). Every car manuf.'s system is different..there is no standardization at this point..and tire dealers are either nervous or they just play dumb. This can end up costing them big..or you.

The first thing a tire dealer may ask you is if you vehicle has a TPMS. If it does, he will most likely ask you to demontrate that it works by dropping the tire pressure on one or more of your tires to set it off. They know that some folks with inoperable ones will try and blame the tire dealers after a tire replacement.

Alot of systems use a TPMS valve in the tire. These are probaly the most difficult for the tire dealer to work with. When a tire is changed with a TPMS valve, the dealer should let the valve drop gently into the bottom of the tire after unbolting it and take it out after taking the tire off the rim. The gromet seal needs to be removed from the valve and a new one installed. The tire mounter then puts the valve back in the rim..places the nut on the unit and tightens it up. Using the original gromment, velve core and retaining nut could result in an air leak.... and the valve stem nut needs to be torqued to the O.E. manufactures specs as well. Then!!! when the tires are back on the car...the tire tech needs to reprogram the sensors so that the vehicles PCM knows where they are positioned again.

As you can see....not only will TPMS raise the price of new 08's... but tire mounting and balance charges will be going up as well.

just FYI for those who havent heard.....

[bru333]

Then!!! when the tires are back on the car...the tire tech needs to reprogram the sensors so that the vehicles PCM knows where they are positioned again.

As you can see....not only will TPMS raise the price of new 08's... but tire mounting and balance charges will be going up as well.

One of my firends at work had to replace a sensor on his Wife's SUV. Took almost 1 hour to reprogram due to the number of steps required.

[MN6WS6]

We've run into a lot of these problems since Nissan has already switched to almost every model having them. The three biggest problems we have is:

#1 people breaking them.
#2 regular air is so reactive to climate changes that we probably get 3 or 4 customers every day coming in complaining of the TPMS light on (hello, read the damn manual, and add air to the tires!!)
#3 rim shops trying to put the TPMS sensors in aftermarket wheels that are not capable of supporting these sensors.

The last one is the one a lot of people don't think of. Let's say you take an Altima, which most of them come with 16"s. You slap some 20's on it and some low profile tires, and the TPMS sensors can literally be broken off just by going over a bump. So the rim shops send the customers to us to solve it. Yeah, we can solve it, go back to your stock rims or ride around with the TPMS light on for as long as you own it.

The idea is a good one, but the mandatory is the bad part of it. Now dealers are going to have to stock nitrogen to cut down on the people who just can't get it through their head that climate changes affect tire pressure and you might actually have to get out of the car every once in a while and actually add air to the tires. The aftermarket companies are going to have to design rims that are TPMS compatible, which is going to alter rim styles up because they are going to be forced to make a dip deep enough in the rim so the sensors can clear.

Here's a funny tidbit about the rim thing. We have a customer with an 07 Altima that had to have 20's, but because of the rims she brought us, the sensors just would not fit. So now she has a brand new car that a light will be on in the dash until she trades it in. But parked right next to it was an 04 Titan with 26" rims on it that were designed to clear TPMS sensors even though it had 20 or 25 series tires on it!!