TPMS Light flashing after swapping wheels

You need to go into Techstream and swap the tire pressure sensor IDs over in each car's respective TPMS ECU.

If you don't have Techstream, you will need to call into a tire place to have them do it for you.

How come only one car has problem? Both should.

 

^ Yeah, my first thought. Likely just a matter of time before the second car starts flashing a warning too.

Another, relatively foolproof, but maybe too much labour charge (8 tires remounting and balancing): swap the tpms sensors between sets of wheels, get them back where they came from.

 

It also involves procuring a windows laptop, pretty much dedicated to this task, off line always (just in case), OS such as win XP preferably. It's a OBDII cable, plus pirated techstream, and a fair bit of finangling.

I haven't taken the plunge myself.

Any dealership can also fix it, maybe $50~100.

 

Not just to do this, and not if you're not really in to DIY. I'd just find a business or a friend that can do it for you. There shouldn't be a shortage of choice, it's not rocket science.

 

My Mini-VCI has paid itself off in twelve packs from friends with aging Toyotas with the TPMS issue, also reprogramming door locks. I think it's a good tool for the price--not very robust, no instructions, no service, but powerful when you figure it out. I've flushed brake fluid and engine coolant with it. I read hybrid battery parameters with it every year or so, and check the battery fan while I'm at it. I've only used it for maintenance so far. I'm sure some trouble shooting will come up soon, and it'll be good to have for that.

 

There is also a standalone tool you can get that just does TPMS (re)programming - search for "
ATEQ QuickSet TPMS Reset Tool
" on Amazon. For one-time use it might not be worth it, but those of us with 2 sets of wheels/tires (summer/winter) can do the TPMS changes ourselves and sae the dealer charge each time so it's worth it.

 

I mainly use Techstream for TPMS so far.
My 2006 build date is July_2006 and so far only one TPMS has died (11-years old).

It can take a Gen2 days, weeks or even months for the dash lights to start flashing when you change codes without telling it...the computer needs an approx. 20-min drive before it goes through the process of realizing there is a bad code, so if you just do short trips, then it never gets to that step. it reads pressure data about once a minute, but if there is no new reading from the tire, it holds the old pressure in the memory.