Need advice on TPMS tire shop v. dealer

Thanks for doing lots of reading. It's so much easier to help people who put a legitimate effort into solving their problem first! One time I was faced with a similar challenged and solved it by pumping the tires up to near 40PSI, which not only got rid of the lights for good, but gas mileage was improved too. And if that doesn't work I'd take it back to the tire shop and argue that they used sensors that aren't compatible with Prius and they're going to replace them for you to solve this problem. Maybe buy your own TPMS sensors from someone on Ebay who sell them often to Prius owners to improve your odds. Main reason I always purchase on Ebay instead of Amazon is they have a very generous refund policy for anything less than $300 and you don't even have to waste your time sending the product back.

 

JUST a WAG....any chance the OTHER sensors could be going out, thus causing the issue?
kris

 

That's a good way to go about it. One would assume the Toyota Stealership would of been able to check this, especially on the return trip when it failed again, but sometimes the mechanics at the stealerships are newbies, or suck at their job, or just plain not as smart as you're being right now.

 

I’ll bet tire shops miss the good ol’ days, selling tires, putting in $2 valve stems.

 

I would suggest you take your car to a shop that is properly equipped and staffed by competent technicians.

If I saw a car like this, my task list would be:
Check and adjust tire pressures.
Connect a (capable) scantool to the vehicle and readout diagnostic trouble codes from all modules.
IF the codes indicated a fault with one of the tire pressure sensors, use a TPMS tool to wirelessly "ping" all 4 sensors to determine if the sensors respond correctly and show good battery condition. This step will also read the unique ID code for each sensor.
Use the scantool to read what ID codes are programmed to the car- if any are different then go to programming mode and manually enter the correct IDs.
Test drive the car to see if the scantool shows that the TPMS system now correctly shows updated pressure info from the sensors.

Most "hardware" faults that trigger the TPMS light to flash are sensor problems- but not all. If the sensor IDs are not correctly programmed, the system will revert to the previous IDs and might take 20 to 30 minutes of driving before it throws a code because it hasn't received data from the sensors as expected.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Are the TPMS sersors on all Gen 2 Prius models? Because on my Dutch one I don't have them... Would be nice to get a hint if your tires are about to get messy because they are at low psi. Is it US standard? Did buy second hand wheels, main advantage I have now is that I can dit any set if wheels I want, as long as it fits correctly, don't have to look out for sensors.

Best regards, Nick

Black 2007 Prius

 

Thankfully Canada they’re not mandatory yet.

 

Thanks for the update!! Wasn't aware of this. Now I know why you need this to work as supposed for your Prius.

Best regards, Nick

Black 2007 Prius

 

Techstream is the "cheapest" scantool that has the capability to program the TPMS sensors. I don't know if any budget scanners will do that on Toyota. The pro-level aftermarket scanners like Autel are $1000 and up (some like SnapOn are several thousand) . Some of the fancier TPMS tools should program the car as well, but those are over $500.

It is a bit of work but one option is to get a cheap used windows laptop just for Techstream. Another would be to put VMware on your mac and download a generic win7 virtual machine (I think Microsoft has it somewhere). You can then install and run Techstream on the virtual machine.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

At least Toyota Stealerships are relatively consistent in not noticing stuff that's obvious for other shops.

 

Requires the quality OEM Denso tpms.

Amazon $50.

 

Here is one thing I noticed. Every time you program the sensor IDs successful, the light stays off for a couple of days. Eventually it starts blinking and stays on to show an issue like a dead battery on a sensor.

 

Denso 550-0103

Is that the right part #? They seem to be $35 everywhere.

 

Yes I checked price has come way down in the last 10 years.

that’s the one.

 

$58 CDN for me on Amazon right now. In Canada it’s nice to (at least for now) forgo sensors, just use traditional valves.

 

I check my own tire pressure often
Have not seen the TPMS light on my dash in years...I covered it up