I’ve never seen a warning light like this before.
I don’t have a manual on this new Van. I’ve called the dealer repeatedly and begged for one. Same old song. Backordered.
This light randomly comes on and goes off.
Do you recognize it? What’s it trying to tell me?
Obviously my seatbelt light is on. It’s the yellow exclamation mark that’s bugging me.
It’s a tire pressure warning.
The one on the right is your tire pressure monitoring system telling you to check the air pressure in your tires.
The one on the left is an airbag warning light. You should probably take that to your mechanic and have it checked out.
Another doper once said it’s the “butt symbol”
My wife once called to let me know a dashboard light came on, and wanted to know if it was a problem. I asked her what it said, and she told me “It looks like a little crown”
Tire pressure. Look at the sticker in your driver side door frame to get the correct PSI values for each tire.
What’s the make/model/year? Sometimes you can find PDFs of owner’s manuals online.
As mentioned, your vehicle is equipped with a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS), and it’s trying to tell you that there’s a problem - either the pressure is low in one of your tires, or the system can’t communicate with all four pressure sensors. At the very least, you should check the pressure in all of your tires; you may have a slow leak.
Generally the light should be off right after you start the car, and then the system looks to establish contact with all four sensors (and verify adequate pressure) once the car rolls a certain distance. If there’s a consistent problem, this is when it will consistently show up.
If it’s lighting up as randomly as you suggest, it may be that you’ve got a tire pressure that’s borderline-low, and temperature is making it swing back and forth across the alarm threshold (warmer ambient temps and faster driving will heat up the air in the tire, increasing its pressure).
Thank you.
I’ll stop by a gas station and air them up.
The van is a Ford 2013 E250.
I thought the other light is seatbelt? You can see the strap in the symbol. I guess that ball is the air bag. I gotta get that checked then.
Or one of the sensors is shot and needs to be replaced.
It means your wife wants you to pick up Chinese food on the way home. If it also had an audible tone with it, then she’s pissed you’re taking so long.
I’ve been told the sensor is inside each wheel. I was at my tire dealership when I heard the guy talking to another customer. He was recommending that they be replaced with new tires the customer was buying.
I’ve only got 9,000 miles on this van. The tires are like new.
I’ll add air. I’ll get the sensors checked if that doesn’t fix it.
I guessed it from the thread title. Least intuitive car symbol ever.
Consider checking the tire pressure in the spare, too.
I nearly went nuts having the low pressure light go on, and not getting it to go out despite repeated checks and adding air to my 4 tires, all of which recorded normal pressures.
My mechanic discovered the tire in my trunk was the low one.
My dad has a Tacoma pickup with the low tire pressure light permanently on because of dead batteries. It was going to cost $120 per tire to get the batteries replaced. He decided he’d just check the tire pressure the same way he’d done for the nearly 60 years he’d been driving before they had tire pressure sensors.
It really is the least intuitive symbol, what is it trying to convey? Anyhow it is a tire sensor light, those things are also notorious for failing and failing often, make sure to use an actual gauge (one made of metal) to check your tire pressure. Even if the sensors work its still good to do. Avoid the cheap ones as they can come apart after sitting in the car and letting heat do its work on the glue, thus shooting the plastic pen part against your forehead, once it touches the valve (personal experience).
Pretty much ninja’d me here.
Yeah, dealer quotes are high for these sensors. I have a 2008 Honda CR-V, and the sensor batteries are reaching end of life. I can get the sensors for about $25 each on Amazon. Don’t know exactly what they cost to install, but I’ve read that a local tire shop charges maybe $10 or so per tire.
They are nice when they work, but when they start failing they give erroneous warnings. Not good when the wife is driving alone and starts freaking out.
But I wouldn’t expect then to fail so early on a 2013 vehicle.
Edited to add: Tire shops usually sell a service kit for these sensors that consist of (I think) a set of o-ring seals or the valve stem. These are cheap, and might be a good first step for the OP.
I’ve also heard that in some localities that the sensor must be fixed, so if it’s broken and you need new tires, they won’t do it until the sensors are fixed. Not sure about the validity of this claim though. I’m sure somewhere there is a law like this if people in Pennsylvania can’t drive with a rust hole in a car (like a fender).
I agree that it’s a stupid symbol, because most people find it confusing and not at all intuitive.
But once you’ve had it explained, it does make perfect sense .
Imagine that you’re driving, and looking at a vehicle in your lane, directly in front of you, which has a flat tire. That tire would be bulging at the sides, and flat on the bottom…just like the icon.
And the exclamation point in the icon is a standard element in lots of symbols that mean “hey, pay attention to this problem”.
On a related issue: why are icons always wordless?How hard would it be to program the display to flash words instead of icons?Each “verbal-icon” could be a grid of pixels.
I assume that icons on the dashboard work pretty simply: the car’s computer detects a problem, and sends a single flash of electricity to light up the proper icon.
But wouldn’t it be easy to program the car’s software to make a simple detour? (Similar to the"Tooltips" or mouseovers that are so common on computers.) Go to a subroutine that would look at a simple dictionary with only a few dozen words, translate the icon into that word, and then send the flash of electricity to light up the specific pixels to spell it?
It’s supposed to be the cross-section of the lower half of a tire that’s partially deflated – with an exclamation point in it to let you know there is a problem. Since the only time a real person might see this view of a real tire is after it has exploded to pieces and fallen off the wheel, I can see why few people recognize it. It is in the owner’s manual though if you still have yours.
I believe the tire dealers tell people that but I could’t find any state where it’s true. I just looked at the safety inspection standards for a half-dozen or so states and it doesn’t look like any of them require the tire pressure monitoring system to work or fail a car because the tire pressure warning light is on. None of them even allow an inspector to fail a car if the tire pressure is low – the inspector just has to warn the owner about the low pressure. The tire pressure monitoring systems are relatively new and I doubt that many, if any, states have updated their inspection standards to require the TPMS system to work.
Of course, the tire people can refuse to sell you new tires if you won’t fix the old tire pressure monitor sensors or buy new ones. They have the right to reject your business and you have the right to buy your tires from someone else.
I don’t know the answer by my hunch is that automakers prefer the notifications to be wordless because then they can sell the car all over the world without translating the text for the local market. They probably promote wordless icons through standard setting bodies like the Society for Automotive Engineers, and then those standards either become the de facto industry standards or are adopted by regulators into legal standards.
Pages 9-10 (PDF pages 10-11) shows “some of the symbols you may see on your vehicle.”
the TPMS is explained starting on page 266 (PDF page 267).
Page 89 (PDF page 90) indicates that if there’s a function problem with the TPMS, you’ll get an explicit “TIRE PRESSURE MONITOR FAULT” OR “TIRE PRESSURE SENSOR FAULT”. I guess this means if the TPMS beacon illuminates, the only interpretation is that there’s a tire on your vehicle that is genuinely low on air and needs prompt attention.
Note that if your tire pressure has gone low enough to trip the sensor, it’s likely you’ve got a real leak that needs repair (unless nobody has ever put air in those tires after the van left the factory).