TPMS keeps going on and off over the years?

My 2010 and my 13 are both doing this weirdness and it just seems like the batteries are slowly failing one by one or something along those lines and it just messes with the light sometimes it'll be flashing other times it's solid on I can't remember the last time it was completely off The tire sensors are original and old. I put a set in my 2009 of the Pacific branded that came with the car new and I have a relearn tool coming which supposedly doesn't care about the numbers and all of that it will literally switch the relearn mode on on the TPMS sensors and also do something to the car puts it in the relearn mode You go around and do one at a time we'll see if this works on the '09 if so I'll do my other generation twos the generation 3s are going away from here so we won't be doing anything like that to those.

 

There's just a watch battery in them. There is no recharging.
"IF" you wanted to change the battery, it is possible, not easy though.
You have to remove them, of course, then dig out all the silicon stuff to get to the battery.
Unsolder it, solder in the new battery, then fill up the area with silicone, and install it.

I purchased 4 new ones that I've been to lazy to install. I "might" try replacing one of the
batteries just to see what a pain it would be to do it....

 

Yep, one or more of your TPMS sensors are dying. They need to be replaced and cloned. Any tire place can do the job, anywhere between $100 - $200 for all four.

 

Or ignored? At least until new tires are required.

 

Button under the dash? Adjust pressure and press/set reference values?

 

If you run your tires above or below factory recommendations; that button will reset to current pressures as your new set-point.

 

Oh boy, a new theory that members can run with! All we have to do is repeat it a few times and it will be a Priuschat “fact”.

I always thought you used TPMS warnings to alert the driver if a nail or cold weather has reduced pressure.

Of course the owner’s manual has the secret for telling when a TPMS sensor is bad versus when it is just telling you about low pressure.

The one thing that I have seen that can cause intermittent TPMS operation is radio frequency interference. Such as often created by aftermarket led headlight bulbs.

 

When I was a kid there were fancy wristwatches with a weighted mechanism inside that would keep them wound as you moved your arm around.

 

Yes the good old self winding watch I don't know who was the initial inventor of that but Timex and Omega and everybody picked up on it for a while.

 

Yeah why not with TPMS. There’s likely reasons, say charging not effective enough, or too pricey. But interesting.

 

Honda and others have a low tire pressure monitoring system with no batteries or special sensors in the wheel. So it can be done.

 

I have a 2012 Prius with a yellow TPMS light warning light. It blinks at first when I start the car and then the light goes solid. I'm assuming the battery is low in one or more of thesesors. All four tires are inflated to the correct PSI. I really see no big value in having these TPMS installed on passenger cars. Either I have a flat or I don't. It's not rocket science to check the air in a car tire and these TPMS are a pain in the neck to maintain when they go bad...and they do go bad.

 

For several years, I had a half dozen rounds of false alerts related to some form of interference or reception failures, on both summer and winter wheel sets. An upgraded ScanGauge helped identify which sensor code was having the problem (only on wheel of each set), and distinguish this problem from actual low pressure, so that I wouldn't need to stop and manually check pressures each time it happened.

But the pattern eventually ceased before I could further diagnose it.

 

The

Blinking TPMS settling to a solid light means one or more of the TPMS sensors has failed. Low pressure alone just brings up a solid light.

A set of compatible TPMS sensors are $45 on Amazon. Installation is maybe $15 a tire. About a hundred for no issues over the next 5-8 years.

A tire with a nail can seal off at 15 psi and drive ok. Until it overheats and blows. That one tire costs more than replacing the set of sensors. Don’t even think about a possible trip to the emergency room for the innocents you involved.

 

As long as we have to have wheel speed sensors for other reasons, using them to detect low tire pressure seems more practical method, even though it can't show specific pressures.