Second set of tires and Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS)

Confusing. When my wife bought new tires she did not need new sensors. Thought they were somewhere on the rim. Why should snow tires be any different.

Hi,

The snow tires would be a second set of tires (I am buying both steel rims and snow-tires). I do it this way so I do not have to unmount and remount tires on rims every Spring and fall.

Thanks, Duane

Typically, people who live in the snow belt and who depend on snow tires will have a second set of wheels rather than swapping tires to and from one set of rims twice a year. That can get expensive as well as potentially causing bead damage to the tires. A second set of wheels would mean having a second set of TMPS stems or learning to ignore the warning light either during spring+summer+autumn or winter. Being basically cheap I'd probably do the latter; when I lived in Alaska, I learned to do without the snow tires and became a really smooth driver during the winter despite only having a FWD VW at the time.

4) Buy a decent car that doesn't have such pointless electronic gadgetry. ;-)

That should have dawned on me. Must have been over 30 years since I used winter tires ;)

Apparently not in US:

Pissed me off when wife's Forester needed a new sensor and it cost $200.

I went with a partial version of option #1, I live with it, and I didn't tape over the dashboard light. Suck it up, as they say. Cheapest, most aesthetic way, imagine trying to peel that sticky tape in the summer again?

Yousuf Khan

Yup, I went for several years with only all-season tires (i.e. barely passable in winter) on my old Outback. Then I finally took on some snow tires in the final couple of years with the Outback. I now have a Tribeca which actually came with snow tires when I bought it, so one headache down. Basically, you can live with all-season tires, as long as you know that you can't brake as well with them, as you can start with them with AWD. Only a few cars have AWD, but all cars have all-wheel braking, so there's no advantage there.

Yousuf Khan

MY VW Routan minivan (same as a Chrysler Town & Country) recently needed a sensor replacement and it cost me $60.00. We just ordered a new 2014 Forester and I hope I don't have to go through replacing one at this kind of price.

$60?!? That's cheap! Most repairs and replacements of these silly electronic gizmos usually cost you in the hunders of dollars. :-(

My wife's is an '08 Forester and my '03 does not have them. Hopefully better on the '14.

All she saw was a pressure warning light. I checked all pressures and determined some sort of sensor fault. I rented a Toyota last year that gave out pressures of all the individual tires. One went off but I did not know which tire and had to check them all and fill the low one. Pressures on the individual tires were as much as 10 psi apart but why should I be concerned about a rental?

Whole system is a pita. All us old timers do is check pressure now and than and check tires when we get in the vehicle. I doubt if a single life will be saved by this expensive government mandate.

I had gotten a flat driving to work and had to change three lanes to get to the shoulder. The tire was ruined although shredded and it took the sensor with it. Weeks later, I decided to replace all four tires was they had

60,000 miles on them and needed replacement. In the process of dismounting the tires, the three older sensors were breaking. Something about moisture and the reaction of the different metals in the sensor and the alloy wheels causing a problem. Those three sensors didn't make it, those were replaced too. They were $60.00 each installed and the shop charged me another $40.00 to mount, balance, and install the tires. I provided my own tired from TireRack.

It's possible such gadgetry has saved a few lives (by telling the dumb generation that they need to put more air in the tyres), but proving that it has / hasn't would be completely impossible..

You could put on your tin-foil hat and say that the use of silly electronic tyre pressure monitoring systems which are purposely set to over-report the actual pressure slightly so that drivers use more fuel, and thus pay more sales tax ... plus of course the extra sales tax by the car manufacturer buying the monitoring system and the income tax from the company selling the system, AND the extra sales tax from the companies reapiring the faulty systems. ;-)

Ah, but there's plenty more of "us old-timers" who never bother to check pressure now and then, or at all! "Old-timers" come in many forms. ;)

I'm personally happy to have one of these working sensors in my car, as I'd never check my pressures in the dead of winter, when it was too cold. But in the dead of winter is probably when it's most necessary to check these pressures.

Yousuf Khan

Personally I check my tyres (including the spare) at least once every

2-3 weeks, but there's one tyre that has a strange slow-leak that I cheak every few days.

Although I dislike these silly in-car gadgets, there is the fact that checking the pressure at the petrol station is never accurate - every petrol station's air system gives you a different pressure, and even using the same petrol ststaion every time is no good since the air system is used by so many people the hose and/or connector can often be faulty. The cheap home pressure testers are also hopelessly inaccurate and don't have any way to put more air in if needed.

Cheap or not, having your own pressure gauge at least ensures consistency so you don't have to rely on the gas station air pump gauges. Personally, I got a digital readout gauge, not that I believe it's any more accurate than analog ones, just that it gives more easily readable readouts.

My own accuracy standard is to monitor the tire wear patterns on all tires and then fill them up based on whether the wear patterns indicate underinflation (usually) or overinflation (rarely). If I can achieve constant wear throughout the tread from the outer edges to the center, then I have done my job right.

Yousuf Khan

Being consistently inaccurate isn't much use though. Your tyres could still easily be incorrectly inflated.

Partly a good idea, but tyre wear is also caused by other things. For example unbalanced or misaligned wheels (something that is easy to get thanks to some of the incredibly badly designed roads in New Zealand).

Unfortunately, TPMS sensors are required by law on all new vehicles, and auto shops are held liable if they sell wheels without TPMS sensors for one of these cars.

These guys clone TPMS sensors on all Subaru's even the 2014 models.