TPMS sensor replaced Costco, loosing air, no leak

I hope Costco really programmed TPMS onto car's ECU. I am not sure on Gen2, but for my PRIME, removing OEM tires with TPMS and swapping with winter rim/tire set without TPMS did not immediately trigger the warning lights to come on. It actually took over 40 miles of driving around. It is possible Costco installed TPMS but never completed re-learning process to register new IDs into ECU. Are they aftermarket TPMS or OEM?

Have not had the TPMS problem with Prius yet, but on my old Civic, I have had numerous TPMS errors starting at when car was 7 years old. After spending closed to $900 and 7 TPMS failures in just 3 years, I finally gave up. I replaced 5 TPMS (4 OEM and 1 aftermarket) and currently have 2 failed TPMS on the car. The car now has permanent TPMS warning light lit on the dash. I just use ~$50 external TPMS to monitor the individual tire pressure on this car.

 

Sounds like the COSTCO guy did something wrong. We are expecting your car works fine but he messed up putting codes in or something.

How did you know which tire TPMS sesnor was bad?

 

Has the tire actually lost pressure verified with a pressure gauge?

 

You probably have a really dirty rim, possibly with lots of dirt on it. When the tire was installed, there was probably a bad seal on the beads. You can verify by putting the tire in water and wait for an air bubble.

To remedy, remove tire, clean the rim and remount tire

 

I believe most tire places use cloneable TPMS so they don't have to mess w/ registering the new TPMS ID into the car's computer. But the battery is dead? For ID cloning, the dead TPMS does not have enough energy to relay the air pressure data. But for cloning purposes, there might be enough energy to get the ID.

Was the tire light on before pulling into Costco?
How was it determined that TPMS was dead prior to replacement?
The tire light remained ON after TPMS was replaced at Costco?

This makes no sense: How can the tire loose pressure, yet have NO leak????
Who determined the tire was "magically" loosing air? Loosing air must have a leak.
Was the tire submerged in water (sections at a time) to look for air bubbles?

What was the PSI when you left Costco? What was the approximate ambient air temp at the time?

What was the PSI on Tuseday? Were the tires checked shortly after being driven? ("hot tires") What was the approximate ambient air temp at this time?

This implies one or two possibilities, which is it?

1) You supplied the TPMS sensors and had Costco install it. Is this the case? If so, Costco meant for you to contact the TPMS manufacture.
2) If Costco supplied the TPMS sensors, then they meant for you to goto Toyota.
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You could get Techstream (official diagnostic software written for Toyota/Lexus, and used at Toyota/Lexus service depts) from Amazon ($25+) and diagnosis this yourself to see if the car sees all four TPMS. Easiest to install on an obsolete laptop running Windows 32bit OS (XP/Vista/7); Mac install possible just search Internet. Ask friends/family in IT for their obsolete laptops laying around.

 

I'm thinking he means the valve is leaking? That could be checked with a little soapy water, fwiw.

 

I've gotten into a habit of always removing valve caps whenever I hand the car, or loose rims, over to a tire shop. So I've got spares, or to replace the goofy green ones Costco puts on.

 

Goofy :

https://goo.gl/images/rJ9UGb

We’re at the Happiest Place on Earth now and will be eating at his kitchen later this week.

But how else will you know you have nitrogen in your tires without those wonderful green caps?

 

That nitrogen fill gets diluted pretty quick.

 

Given air is already 80% nitrogen, it ain’t that much different anyway .

 

If you get Techstream you will be able to tell if you have a bad TPMS. The pressure and temperature for each tire is shown on the screen. I currently have 2 bad ones on my 2006 but I’m going to wait until I get new tires to replace them.

 

Hopefully you have better luck than me...my installer charged me $30 per tire labor to install TPMS whether I am putting on a new tires or not. But yeah I finally got 4 new TPMS here at 12-yrs. I had one go bad at 9.5 years and the others lasted about 12 years. I bought the replacement Denso TPMS units on Amazon myself.

 

Just as a side comment - service at Pep Boys in my experience has generally been terrible. I once took a car for an oil change and afterwards found two bolts missing from the air intake box (they always pull the air filter out to try to get you to pay $20 to replace it). Have also found tires aired up to different pressures and oil overfilled. It depends on your area and specific shops, but Discount Tire and Goodyear have better service for tires generally.