I’ve got a '19 Subaru Forester that has pressure sensors in the wheels. Work fine. Two years ago I bought new wheels/winter tires from Tire Rack and opted to save money by not getting pressure monitors included. So now I spend December through early March with a low pressure light on the dash.
I can buy the sensors from various suppliers, but I’m wondering if there’s more t it that just braking the bead and installing them.
Is there some kind of programming required or just put the tire/wheels on the car and all will be well?
They’ll need to be paired with the car. Whether or not your car gives the end user the ability to do that through the infotainment system, I don’t know. When I see mechanics doing it, they always use a tool like this.
Installing them seems to be pretty similar to installing regular valves, though if youtube mechanics are to be believed, you have to be careful breaking the bead. The youtuber I watch always mentions starting the machine just after the valve and stopping before you get back around to it so you don’t break off the sensor.
I believe that there is some sort of programming required. I had new wheels put on my Mustang a few weeks ago, and they installed new sensors, as well; they had to use a handheld tool (a lot like the one in @Joey_P 's post) to program each of the sensors and pair it with the car’s electronics.
Are you planning to install the sensors (and remount the tires) by yourself? If you are, I’m guessing you could get a mechanic to program them fora few bucks.
I do have access to a bead breaker, so that’s a plus. Time to check and see if the local auto parts places have the tool. I imagine if they sell the sensors they probably do have it.
I know it can be done without the tool on my wife’s GMC terrain. There’s a procedure in the manual. You have to clear the current settings, then you have to deflate the tire in question until it picks out the pressure change, at that point it chirps the horn and moves on to the next tire. It’s a nuisance, but not really difficult as long as you have a compressor handy to reinflate when you’re done.
The tires and wheels will have to be rebalanced too. The sensors weigh only a few ounces which is more than the standard valve stems. That is enough weight to throw a tire out of balance.
The guy at the tire shop should also use the same sensor serial numbers as the summer tires. By doing this the sensors won’t have to be paired every time the tires are swapped out. Eric O at the South Main Auto Repair You Tube channel has a couple videos on this.
I know that works for things like rotating the tires where you have the same actual sensors, just in different spots. It might not work when adding new sensors to the vehicle. You’d have to have a way to tell the car the serial number from the sensor. I don’t know if cars can do that without, at the very least, a bi-directional scan tool.
I know I’ve seen some mechanics reprogram the new new sensor to have the same serial number as the original one so the car doesn’t know it was changed, but that’s not the case for the OP.
I actually started to type that exact same idea. My concern would be if the tires that aren’t on the vehicle are stored too close to the car (ie in the garage), it might be able to read them and cause some kind of error.
That’s my guy. I think I’ve watched every SMA video out there. Some of them because they had some relevance to something I was actually doing, but most because I really like them.
When I have my summer tires/wheels reinstalled I’ve never had to do anything. They just show up with the pressure reading. But I admit that I’ve never deflated a tire to see if they are reporting the correct locations. I don’t think that’s an issue with the Subaru because the front rear pressures are different and I’ve never noticed any misreporting. If it was only done by the realer as part of a rotation they could have made adjustments of coarse. But since I’m doing it at home I think the car just knows. A sensor at each corner?
