Tire Pressure Sensor Warnings

Check your driver's side door sticker for correct tire pressure for your vehicle. My Explorer specifies 30 PSI for the front tires and 35 PSI for the rear. That's cold pressure, as in hasn't been driven for awhile. First thing in the morning is a good time to check. The specified pressure varies based on year, tires, engines, etc. I don't have any experience with a pressure warning system, but you could check the owner's manual to make sure it won't go off if the pressure is too HIGH. Try a different Ford dealership since this is still under warranty.

I just bought an '05 Explorer on Saturday and it was showing a Tire Pressure Sensor Fault before I even left the dealership. They told me to bring it back so they could either reprogram it or replace it. Mine faults ever time I start the vehicle. Smply pressing the Reset button on the dash seems to clear the fault. We'' see if they can actually fix it.

I also saw a Low Tire Pressure warning yesterday morning when I went out to wash it. It was a little cold, and it was a cold night. According to the owner's manual, cold temperatures can effect the output of these sensors. So when the tire warm up the warning will go away, and it did for me yesterday.

-- Holmbrew

Good luck with the dealer. I made 3 trips to the dealer that sold me the car. They kept telling me they couldn't do anything because the sensor was not activated and I needed to bring it back when it was lit up. Since they're 40 minutes away, that's a problem. I finally complained to the Svc Mgr, who said make an appt and they would swap out the sensors. Did that, called back after not hearing anything for 6 hours, the service writer said "can't do anything because the sensor was not activated." Found another dealer, he swapped out the four sensors. A week later it tripped again.

I can understand the sensors tripping out when cold on cold mornings. On mine, I may drive interstate for 2 hours, then the sensors suddenly goes off. No way that's cold tires. I've driven Explorers since '92, and survived fine without this annoyance. These things are a royal ass-pain. They've gone off so many times, there's no way I could take them seriously even if there was a problem.

Good luck, JW

Well, my wife is going to take it in later this week to get a few other things fixed at the same time. They made it sound like an easy fix, and since it ALWAYS faults on vehicle start up, it is at least a reproduceable problem.

The other thing with the sensor saying the tire pressure is low at a low ambient temp seems reasonable. Since the pressure of a volume of gas can be affected by temperature, it makes sense to me that my truck was showing a low tire pressure when the ambient temp was cold. Your problem sounds like something more than just a faulty sensor, perhaps there are some bad wires associated with the sensor or something.

Hell, there is probably a way to jumper that sensor's circuit with a small resistor that would fake the computer in to thinking it was reading the correct pressure.