I'm pretty sure on mine it just recognizes when a tire gets 7 or more PSI below the other tires. I confirmed this with my car when I had a nail and checked my tires. My light didn't come on until it was 7 psi below the rest. I filled it back up and light went out. I kept losing pressure over the next week, but the light again didn't come on until the 7 psi threshold was hit. I don't know if the sensors would care if they are in the trunk, or even in a tire. But then again, they may need a minimum pressure to even register at all. I wonder what the range is for them to even for (eg...20-40psi).

 

I’ll never understand why some owners would go to all that trouble of making pipe bombs, wheel barrow tires in their trunk, or even black tape to cover up the light, when all they have to do is install the sensors on their wheels. (duh) I’m sure there’s a wide selection of aftermarket rims that are compatible with their car’s TPMS.

And, as unimportant as it seems, they get the advantage of being alerted if a tire actually does loose pressure.

 

One situation is when winter tires are installed and it isn't really worth paying extra for cheaper seasonal tires.

 

or just frigin deal with the light on..

 

Coming from an aviation background, we learned never to ignore a warning light, as may mean anything from a minor inconvenience to the airplane going down in flames in the next two minutes.

As for the TPMS light being on all the time, it may mean nothing if TPMS is disabled, or a impending flat tire leading to a sudden blowout and a potential serious accident.

 

i dont believe anyone is saying to dismiss tpms light if its known to be active...
you dont need to have any particular background to learn not to ignore warnings.. common sense

 

Old thread and don't know why it was bumped but the obvious answer is to make sure all your tires have TPMS installed and working correctly. It can be the difference between a good day and a really bad day so the extra money it cost to have them really shouldn't be a part of the equation.

 

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying. Are you saying it’s OK to ignore the light if you know the system is inactive? That doesn’t seem to be in the realm of common sense to me.

 

^^I ignore my tpms from the months of late november to late march each year. The winter wheels have no tpms installed and the light turns on after driving a certain distance with the winter wheels installed. Tire pressures do get checked periodically during the winter.

 

You are correct!

My TPMS saved my butt from an unpleasant day by alerting me of this



Put 50lbs of air in the tire with a slow leak to get me home and a repair



Telcoman

 

Yes, I too had an incident years ago where TPMS warned me of a pending blowout.

But it’s an old topic that certainly many of us are tired of hearing. There’s basically three schools of thought among the anti-TPMS group:

• I check my tires regularly so I don’t need it.
• It’s too expensive when I change to winter tires.
• We’ve driven cars for over a hundred years without it and got along just fine.

Swaying anyone away from such positions can only be changed by having a near bad experience with TPMS saving the day, or worse, having an actual bad incident with the system bypassed.