TPWS did not work!!!

I am sorry to hear about your near catastrophe. Assuming no one ever sprayed sealer into the tire, I suspect a bad lithium ion battery (or oxidized contacts) inside the TPMS sensor. If the battery failed, then the question becomes this: Why did the start-up diagnostics fail to report a tire that was not sending data? Any dealer should have a simple RF tool for testing these sensors. You could also do your own test if you drop the pressure in a tire, then drive for a while to confirm the warning light, refill the tire and repeat for all the other tires. Even then, a battery could fail the next day. Nothing beats checking each tire with a gauge once in a while.

 

Damn I like those rims! It's weird indeed, that there was no warning light.

Just editorial: it's TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor System).

And whoa, just noticed: that tire is knackered!

 

Have you ever gotten a ticket or stopped for not having your HOV stickers in the right place? I notice alot of people put them on the drivers side and theyre not supposed to go there. Passger front corner gets the 2 small ones and passenger side rear gets the 2 larger ones...(per DMV rules)

 

I'm just wondering what would cause such catastrophic failure. A nail in the tread would not normally do that. Unless coupled with protracted driving while completely flat??

Tried to bump the brightness a bit:

 

Yes. Personally: no spare, no sale. But if you want a plug-in, unfortunately you have to cobble your own solution, compromise hatch or backseat space. For safety too: maybe have an engineer look at how to secure it.

Just to give this thread more legs lol: what kind of tires did you get?

 

Phil-
Yes the TPMS should give a warning light! So they need to check the system for you.
Something funny going on there. Now then, I am faking my system out, I have one sensor with a binder clip clamped on giving me a false reading to turn the light off. So there is a rare chance the TPMS unit got wedged inside there with physical pressure which is reading like real pressure.

It takes a minute or two for the new pressure reading to register, so it is not instant, but prompt.

 

PS- The other more likely thing that can happen, if you broke your TPMS sensor in the tire, then the data register keeps the old reading say 35 psig, because it never got the zero reading transmitted.

It can take quite a bit longer (weeks on my car) or until you hit the reset button, for the system to realize data in the register is not being updated. Finally, the light will come on. But it is not as fast as getting a real zero reading.

So I am putting my money on Door#2, you broke your TPMS sensor in the mishap.

 

I got a set of Defender XT's (Costco's variant) for our son's Civic. Well I just did the legwork, with his loose OEM rims, he reimbursed me, lol. We'll put them on in spring. FWIW they have the GreenX logo, so maybe not bad for LRR?

A thought:

Intentionally drop one of your new tires to around 20 psi, see if the light goes on?

 

If you don't have four registered, active TPMS sensors, the dash light goes on. If you swap the wheel with another, TPMS light goes on. And they're a pain to register: You need to know the ID number that's printed on the TPMS sensor which is inside your tire.

So what I'm saying is that it makes no sense that your TPMS light didn't go on. It should have. I got a nail in a tire and my TPMS light went on. I'm not doubting you at all; I just can't understand what happened.

 

Unfortunately Toyota does not give us a screen with the tire pressures data read-out from TPMS. Many other car manufacturers do.
So you would have to buy a TPMS reader device (many of us use the miniVCI with Toyota Techstream which runs on a laptop and plugs into your car - see it on Amazon or EBay). Or have the tire place check it.

 

This thread has made me realize the original owner of my car put the HOV stickers on incorrectly. I have the big ones on the front and back and small ones on the sides (rear quarters). I wonder if I have anything to worry about and if I should get new ones and apply them properly?

 

I seriously doubt you'll get a ticket for improper sticker placement.

 

With the large percent of single commuter non-plug-in vehicles driving in HOV lanes with impunity, one would hope that ticketing improper sticker placement would be very low on law enforcement priorities.

 

Same thing happened to the wife this past weekend while driving her 2012 PIP

When she was leaving work, she noticed that the car felt a bit funny (I'm surprised she actually could feel the difference, normally she has zero clue how the car feels/handles/even looks). She got on the freeway and immediately another driver in a pickup honked at her and pointed at her car. She pulled off and found the tire was flat.

Apparently she had picked up a giant nail. America's Tire told her the nailhead was almost the size of a penny. I had her fill up the tire to 50 psi at the gas station she pulled into so she could limp it to the tire shop a mile away. As she was filling it up, she told me she could hear air coming out.

What's odd was there was zero warning from the TPMS. We're the second owner, car has been serviced exclusively at the Toyota dealership all of it's life.

Tire could not be patched - driven too long and destroyed the sidewall. Also, the nail was near the shoulder and would have been dangerous to patch. I'm still puzzled as to why the TPMS light did not go off.

You can see by the picture my wife took that the tire pressure is low, to say the least...

 

Did they use the old TPMS in the replacement tire, or give you a new TPMS?

If it is a quick blow-out, I guess you could squash the TPMS pretty fast, breaking it. Otherwise it ought to react with a couple minutes. If it gets broke in the flat, possibly it does not have time to transmit the zero pressure reading, and the old good reading will be stuck in the data register.