It’s now been seven years since many new vehicles started arriving at Canadian car dealerships equipped with a factory-installed tire pressure monitoring system(TPMS) that alerts drivers when a tire’s pressure is dangerously low. Today, most of us have a much better awareness about how TPMS works to save lives, but you might not know an important component of your TPMS might be due for replacement. Hailed by some vehicle safety experts as the best thing to happen to vehicles since the seatbelt, TPMS isn’t yet mandated yet here in Canada, but an estimated 70 per cent of vehicles sold here since 2010 are equipped with TPMS. If you’re not familiar with how TPMS works, it uses a wheel-mounted sensor or the ABS system to detect tire pressure. If your tire pressure is dangerously low, the sensor sends a signal to your dashboard, where the TPMS warning symbol will light up. But there’s another reason why your TPMS symbol could be lighting up, especially if it’s flashing and your vehicle was purchased around 2007: an expiring sensor battery.

When TPMS first came out, the engineers behind this potentially life-saving system estimated its battery life would be about seven years. Today, TPMS experts believe a more realistic expectation of the battery’s lifespan is kilometres driven more than the age of vehicle—150,000 kilometres, depending slightly on the vehicle and ambient temperature. If your TPMS symbol lights up and your vehicle is either at more than 100,000 kilometres or somewhere between five and eight years old, there’s a good chance it’s the sensor needing a new battery. If it is the sensor battery and not low tire pressure, the symbol will likely flash, either at first and then turn steady, or remain flashing, whereas a TPMS symbol that’s illuminated and only steady indicates low tire pressure (each vehicle manufacturer is slightly different in the way it flashes to indicate a TPMS component failure). Either way, your vehicle needs to come in to a Kal Tire service centre near you for inspection.

When you bring your vehicle in and our TPMS experts diagnose the problem as an expired TPMS sensor battery, the sensor needs to be replaced, not just the battery. The battery is an integral part of the sensor, and the whole sensor needs to be replaced. Now, your TPMS light could come on to tell us there’s a component malfunction on one sensor, and we’d replace it, and then next week, the symbol could light up again. That’s because each tire is equipped with TPMS, possibly your spare as well. Since you’ve come into the shop to have one TPMS sensor replaced, and they all have about the same lifespan, it makes sense to have them all replaced at once rather than making several trips over the course of a few months or weeks. That way you’ll save yourself time, but you’ll also have the peace of mind of knowing your TPMS is best able to do its job—tell you that your tire’s air pressure is dangerously low so you can avoid blowouts and accidents. To learn more about TPMS, how it works and what to do if your warning symbol illuminates and remains steady, read our post What is a Tire Pressure Monitoring System?

I had a lot going on this past weekend, and found myself crisscrossing L.A. and Orange counties in our 2014 Jeep Cherokee Limited. Saturday morning's chosen road was particularly pleasant and I was really enjoying myself until...Homes For Sale Swartswood Lake Nj ...the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) warning light started blinking.Toilet Seat Deflector For Adults The pressure display screen automatically popped up on the driver display screen, but it showed all four tire pressures to be bang-on the specified pressure of 33 psi. Drapery Grommet CutterI pulled over and confirmed this with a quick check, but as I was doing it I knew it wasn't necessary. A blinking light, you see, means a problem with the system itself, not the tire pressure.

A steady light means you have a low tire. This distinction is coded in the TPMS regulations and noted in the owner's manual. So I made a mental note and went about my business. The blinking warning persisted for about a minute or two. After that it went solid as if to say, "You've seen my alert. Now I'm going to back it down a notch so you don't get annoyed with me and trot out the electrical tape." My errand-filled day resulted in many stops, and this pattern repeated at every restart in order to make sure the driver (me) didn't forget to have it checked out. The warning light would blink, the tire pressure display screen would override whatever was on the display screen, and after a minute or so the blinking light would downgrade to always-on status. At one point I was paging through the driver information screen and found a "Service TPMS system" alert on the Stored Messages screen. Why wasn't this screen the one that automatically popped up? If it's a fault with the system itself then there's little point in conjuring up the tire pressure display.

Why leave the discovery of this clarifying service message to chance? For no apparent reason it all went back to normal several key-starts and some dozens of miles later. No more blinky light at restart, the tire pressure screen retreated to its usual background position and the Stored Messages screen cleared itself. It's as if I dreamt the whole thing. I'm not exactly sure, but I have a couple of guesses. The central brain could have missed a few reports from one of the wheel-mounted tire sensors. A low sensor battery might do it, but they're supposed to be good for 10 years. Maybe I drove through a region of high electromagnetic interference. I don't recall any mysterious radio towers along my route, though. And the nearest military installation is dozens of miles away. Besides, the pressure screen that popped up always displayed numbers that made sense. And as I drove they changed up and down one or two psi in response to heat, sun load and driving enthusiasm, as per usual.