replace tpms sensors

Since history of the tpms issue remains unknown, I would check tire pressures first. If tires psi are fine, I’d press and hold tpms button til it blinks 3 times to see if tpms can be set to the current PSIs.

 

Without knowing the error code(s), you can't tell what's wrong. If you want to, you can get these, to know what you are dealing with; if not, go to a tire shop. If you have a Discount Tire nearby, go there.

It's possible a sensor has gone bad, maybe due to a battery.

If that's the case, then pressing the reset button won't help, it'll just set another error code (77?) and the system will be "stuck in a loop," having not received a signal from the failed sensor.

New sensors must be registered into the tpms system of your car. Each sensor has an ID code. Registering requires equipment.

There are many threads here with more information.

How many miles are on your car?

 

Considering the year of your car and the behavior of the light that comes on as soon as soon as the car started and flash then stay lit solid, I am sure it is dead battery in one or more of your TPMS sensors. You can try what suggested by @Grit, but if that does not fix the problem, you have either choice of replacing TPMS sensors, or just ignoring the warning.

Is your car in need of new set of tires soon? If it is, you should wait till you are ready to buy a new set of tires and replace all four TPMS sensors at that time. Even if you have only one dead battery now, others are likely to follow soon. The battery life is somewhere around 5-10 years. You can get OEM sensors cheap on-line and have them installed by a local shop, or have local shop install most likely aftermarket TPMS sensors. Whatever you do, I suggest not to take your car to a dealer. They will charge you close to $200/sensor. Yap, I have done that on my very fist car with TPMS. Ended up costing me ~$800 for 4 sensors. At local tire shop, replacing TPMS sensor is about $50/sensor if with aftermarket sensors. If they order OEM sensor, it will be more expensive. If you can get OEM sensors cheap on-line (can be had as low as $10/sensor), and have them replaced by a local tire shop at the time of new tire installation, it should not cost extra over regular tire installation fee of $15-20/tire. Replacing valve (which is the par of the new sensors) and registering the sensor to the car ECU is usually included.

 

You might consider replacing only the batteries like this:

 

Frank, don't hesitate to go to Discount Tire--hopefully the one on JFK is convenient. I suggest you make an appointment on their website, so that you don't have to wait. The charge for one TPMS sensor should be $60. You could maybe find a sensor cheaper online, and have them install/register it, but you'd have to spend time finding/ordering, etc. You could replace the battery yourself, like in the video, but are you game for that?

If you want to know what's happening, to get the TPMS code(s), bend a paperclip and use it to jumper terminals 3 and 14 of the OBD-II port (DLC3). Count the flashes of the TPMS light. See attached.

I would recommend not pressing the tire-pressure reset light. If a sensor is bad, the reset process will error out. That's not a major problem, but if the bad sensor suddenly started working again, you'd have no way to know, because the car would be stuck in loop (search online for Toyota TPMS stuck in loop). The reset button is only for resetting the set-point of the tire's pressures.

 

Looks like one our 2010's (build date August, 2009) TPMS sensors has a dead battery. A good run.

Of course it happened when we were setting out on one of our do-or-die airport runs. So I pulled into a parking lot: no tires looked flat on a cursory inspection, and pressure check confirmed.

I'll probably do... nothing.

 

The economics of any kind of "do them all at the same time because they have the same expected average life" recommendation also depends on what the spread is around the average (and also on what the replacement labor costs, and whether you save money doing more than one).

My tire place didn't charge any labor to dismount one tire and change one sensor I brought in, so I just did the one that failed a year ago.

As soon as that second one gets around to failing, I'll start to have a better idea what the spread around the average is.

 

Same. Mine started that last December, flash to solid then it goes away twice every 30 miles. Still rocked 60 mpg this winter almost 210,000 miles on the clock.