Toyota Care and low tire pressure warning

Sounds fine. If you want to be sure, just call one of the service reps and tell him this story and see what he says.

But I believe those service stations get paid pretty well by Toyota for warranty work, so that could affect.

BY THE WAY DUDE! Theres a tire pump in your hatchback under back corner panel drivers side.

 

yeah, with the cold weather approaching, there are going to be a lot of low tire pressure warnings reported

 

The OEM Toyota compressor in the trunk needs to be connected using the bottle of goop from Toyota that will most likely ruin your TMPS sensor.

For low pressure situations, spend $8.99 at Harbor Freight and get a small compressor:
Harbor Freight $9 Compressor

 

there is no reason you can't drive on a low tire to get air, unless it's visably low. keep a pressure gauge in the car.

 

That is a good criteria, although you should avoid long runs of high speed driving and not expect optimum handling under severe conditions until the tires get filled.

 

Sounds like maybe the person answering the OP's call thought the warning light indicated a flat tire, rather than just one or more tires dropping below the preset pressure in the TPMS. Once a month checking with a quality guage, with the tires cold (parked overnight or driven less than a mile) and adding air as needed will help to avoid the TPMS activating the light. If you were only down 1-2 psi, it shouldn't have gone off anyway. You can reset it per the instructions in the manual to the pressure you want, as opposed to the factory/dealer recommended pressure.

 

I notice that some tow trucks carry a pressurized tank to fill tires, but that is probably not true for all of them. But it is ridiculous for Toyota to pay for a tow to the dealer when all the car needs is a few pounds of air all around. Their call center folks need to know that the TPMS triggers the light in circumstances other than a flat tire which requires towing. Mine let me know I had one tire that had lost about 6 psi due to a small staple puncturing the tire, which caused a slow leak. It was safe to drive home that night and to a tire dealer for repair the next day, so no tow was necessary. Of course, I didn't even call Toyota Care, so maybe I would have gotten the same answer you did. BTW, just curious, but is their call center in this country?

 

Sounds mike you don't need Toyota Care, you get by on common sense.

 

I had to call the Toyota call center for a flat and it is in Florida. Do your best to know your exact location before you call. I pretty much did but it still took some discussion.

 

We had the warning light go on about a week back (just as were leaving, running a little late, for a concert...). I checked the 4 corners with a pressure gauge, and they were all ok, except dropped a bit due to colder weather. Later that night just pulled into a Chevron and brought them all up. Drove about a block and the light went out. No reason for tow in such a situation.

Funny thing though: one of the tires has been exhibitting a real slow leak, for about a year. Put the snow tires on last weekend and really eyeballed the tread on the OEM: finally found the bugger: some sort of finishing nail.

 

Carrying a pressurized tank to fill tires seems silly when a tire inflator would be much smaller and would not require refilling. A more reasonable use for the a pressurized tank would be CNG.

 

I'm talking specifically about a portable air tank, like the one I keep in my garage. It is faster than waiting on an electric pump to inflate a tire. Now, if the truck has an air compressor on board, that is something different. With the portable tank, the driver just needs to fill it up at his base station, which takes just a couple of minutes. Different strokes......