no TPMS ... more than just a light?

[sexyRTboi]

quick question regarding the TPMS on my '12 R/T.

Wanting to put on winters asap, also have TPMS .... the dealer wants $114 each for the sensors plus a fee to program them to the DJ. If I don't want the sensors for the winter tires, is the only issue Im going to have is the orange light on all winter? (I can deal with that)

Im being told that if I DONT get the sensors installed from the dealer, than not only will I not have monitoring of airpressure ... but also my Traction Control, Anti-Roll and possibly my AWD will be inoperable as well .... basically I will have a Christmas tree of lights on the dash and no safety assistance.

Is this just a scare tactic to get me to pay up? or is it true? -- I have a tough time believing what these service advisors tend to tell me as they are constantly trying to upsell me every single time im in there.

[Journey_SeXT]

I don't think that the traction control system or AWD are in any way connected to the TPMS....at least with the Subaru they are not. Anyhow, I have the winter tires with no TPMS and the funny thing is the light popped up for a couple of seconds then goes off and stays off for the winter season....I wonder if the spare tire has any thing to do with that?

I think that Journeyman425 or Dodge(CA)cares can confirm if what your stealership says is true, which I doubt. Why are you buying tires from the dealership? Is there absolutely nothing online that can beat the dealers prices?

Edited November 30, 2013 by Journey_SeXT

[rolly]

quick question regarding the TPMS on my '12 R/T.

Wanting to put on winters asap, also have TPMS .... the dealer wants $114 each for the sensors plus a fee to program them to the DJ. If I don't want the sensors for the winter tires, is the only issue Im going to have is the orange light on all winter? (I can deal with that)

Im being told that if I DONT get the sensors installed from the dealer, than not only will I not have monitoring of airpressure ... but also my Traction Control, Anti-Roll and possibly my AWD will be inoperable as well .... basically I will have a Christmas tree of lights on the dash and no safety assistance.

Is this just a scare tactic to get me to pay up? or is it true? -- I have a tough time believing what these service advisors tend to tell me as they are constantly trying to upsell me every single time im in there.

I think your service advisor is ill-advised if you ask me. What utter nonsense. Why would the TPMs have anything to do with anything other than monitoring your tire pressure? I would report that idiot to the Dealership manager! No wonder people don't trust the Dealers. I would look for another dealer.

[larryl]

Run Away

[FROGBOX]

Yep, you are being screwed.

Back in the day when tire monitoring first popped up, some tire monitoring systems used to use the ABS sensor to determine if you had a low tire. The low one would rotate at a different speed, so the ABS system would detect that and trigger the low tire light on the dash. So a bad ABS sensor would give you a Christmas tree of lights (low tire, ABS, Traction control, etc). But now the technology is more sophisticated and each wheel has a sensor that sends a signal to a receiver to tell the pressure. It has NOTHING to do with traction control, etc. Perhaps the service guy got his systems confused as a bad ABS sensor would possibly affect traction control.

Secondly, as mentioned above, the system will detect the absence of the sensors and will turn the light off on its own. It may take a few minutes of driving, but it will go out eventually. In the spring when you put the original wheels back on, it will pick them up again and continue working as if nothing happened.

Complain about the experience and look for another dealer for tires.

[wingit11]

The Stealership is full of #%&$. I have had 2 Journeys and I have run the same winter tires and rims without TPMS on both of them and have had no issues. On my 2009 the low pressure warning light would come on and stay on all winter but I just put a small piece of black electrical tape over the light. (2009 and 2010 uses the same light) Now I have a 2013 and Journey_SeXT is correct, the low pressure warning went off a short time after mounting the winter tires. If you go to the tire pressure screen it will just show N/A. Only down side to not having TPMS is you have to check the pressure yourself. Get a good tire gauge and drive with confidence.

Hate to say your dealer is trying to get you to spend your money for something that, true, is nice to have but will not cause you any other issues.

Edited November 30, 2013 by wingit11

[bramfrank]

Yep, you are being screwed.

Back in the day when tire monitoring first popped up, some tire monitoring systems used to use the ABS sensor to determine if you had a low tire. The low one would rotate at a different speed, so the ABS system would detect that and trigger the low tire light on the dash. So a bad ABS sensor would give you a Christmas tree of lights (low tire, ABS, Traction control, etc). But now the technology is more sophisticated and each wheel has a sensor that sends a signal to a receiver to tell the pressure. It has NOTHING to do with traction control, etc. Perhaps the service guy got his systems confused as a bad ABS sensor would possibly affect traction control.

Secondly, as mentioned above, the system will detect the absence of the sensors and will turn the light off on its own. It may take a few minutes of driving, but it will go out eventually. In the spring when you put the original wheels back on, it will pick them up again and continue working as if nothing happened.

Complain about the experience and look for another dealer for tires.

Even your 'back in the day' is wrong. Since the TPMS transmitters only send once per 10 minutes minute after they are tripped through rotation, you'd need one heck of a spin to be detected using that mechanism - all they do is send battery status, serial number and tire pressure.

Beyond that, they aren't 'learned' to the vehicle. While the original systems they had back in 2002 required a 'learning magnet' to send a 'registration' message to the system, requiring 5 minutes to set up, the new ones have 3 receivers, one in each wheel well. They are automatically identified based on their proximity to the receivers (the 4th is the one that is weakest). AND, when you remove the sensors for the season, the system is smart enough to simply put out the 'lost sensors' warning once - no warning lights, no chime after that. Nothing at all until springtime, when you reinstall your wheels and the vehicle determines which wheel is where.

The dealer is beyond being full of crap. Tell him to stop 'advising' people until he goes through a proper training course. And then refuse all of their upsells.

[FROGBOX]

Even your 'back in the day' is wrong. Since the TPMS transmitters only send once per 10 minutes minute after they are tripped through rotation, you'd need one heck of a spin to be detected using that mechanism - all they do is send battery status, serial number and tire pressure.

Perhaps you didn't understand my post. I was not talking about TPMS transmitters. I was talking about ABS sensors. My 'back in the day' reference was to the original tire monitoring systems that did not use pressure sensors inside the wheels. They used speed information from the ABS sensors to determine if a tire was low.

There are 2 types of monitoring. Direct & Indirect.

Direct is where there is a sensor inside the wheel itself that sends information to a receiver indicating the tire pressure of each wheel. This system is a stand alone system that only reports air pressures and has nothing to do with any other systems. So not having sensors will not affect the ABS, traction control, or AWD systems of our vehicles. No sensors = no problem.

Indirect monitoring does not use individual wheel sensors and does not report the actual pressure in each tire. It simply works by taking data from the ABS wheel sensors. When traveling in a straight line, all wheels should be rotating at the same speed. If one wheel has low air pressure, it will rotate at a different speed. So the ABS system detects the speed difference in that wheel and triggers the low tire light on the dash. No sensor = problem.

I was simply stating that perhaps the sales advisor was confusing the 2 systems? Because he seemed to think that no TPMS wheel sensors would cause the same problems as a bad ABS sensor (lights on dash, ABS and traction control issues).

The bottom line is, the advisor was wrong.

[bramfrank]

I have no idea why they would have called the old indirect systems 'TPMS', since they are essentially TPCS (the 'C' would be 'comparison') because they really could only tell whether one wheel was spinning slightly faster than the other (which could be due to wear, differential as much as pressure drop) - None of the pre-sensor systems could deliver an absolute pressure reading and even then, depended on the vehicle travelling in a straight line.

[Journeyman425]

Sorry I didn't get to chime in sooner. Your questions have all been answered here. The information you have been given by the dealer is incorrect. Speak directly to the service manager there first before doing any more business with them, or simply find another dealership. A fee to program your tire sensors to this car is fraudulent at best - the car learns the sensor position automatically, as has been stated by the other members.