Maybe you could just remove the bulb?

 

Federal law states that a shop CANNOT legal remove or disable the sensors. At work we had a guy want them out and what we did is dismount the rims, released the rims to him, he took them to the parking lot removed the sensors himself and brought the rims back to have the new tires mounted.

Not a bad idea. Or just do as I stated above and pull the light out on the gauge cluster. Then sell the sensors on eBay or CL and make some cash!

because people are dumb asses and dont know how to check their tire pressure. Then they have a blow out and die and so the government feels a reason to protect their sorry asses.

Sensors do not need to be spun to send a signal. They operate off of a battery that has a life of 4-5 years. To replace the battery you have to replace the sensor. $80-100 a sensor plus install. They send a signal every 5-7 seconds.

Thats what I would do.

 

do you have a source for this "law"?


that has nothing to do with it. It has to do with fuel economy. running too low a tire pressure decreases gas mileage. personally, im anti big brother government, but either way, thats the reason for TPMS

 

Not off of the top of my head, I will grab the law numbers tomorrow night and google it. Its in our manuals at work.

Its a safety feature not a fuel saving feature.....

 

i wasnt doubting you... its just that when i got my new wheels at Americas Tire, they didnt seem to care abou tme getting new TPMS sensors. They said it was optional. of course i did cause i didnt want the damn idiot light on lol

 

You wouldnt need new sensors. All you would need is the bands that hold the sensors to the wheels. Thats the nice thing about band sensors is that they will work on 100% of wheels.

Some places will try and get you to buy new sensor because they get them for ~$40 and can resell them for $100 each. Huge mark ups!

 

Look up FMVSS 138, it's an interesting read. While I don't remember the actual federal law, it went into effect in Sept. 2007 for vehicles with a GVW of 10000lbs or less.

FWIW, I'm using an aftermarket TPMS system by Orange Electronics. Why? It's a looong drive from Ocala to Woodland so having the ability to glance at the monitor and see all four tires pressure is a blessing.

 

Funny, but when I had my spare on the ground and the TPMS wheel up under the truck with 30psi in it...the warning light never stopped flashing for two weeks. So if spinning isn't required the light shouldn't be flashing. All sensors are in the "road wheels" now and the light stopped flashing.

 

^^ Did you only have 1 sensor on the wheel or all 4 on the same wheel??

My stock tires are in my garage so if I park in/near the garage for a night the truck senses them and the light doesn't come back on for 2-72 hours... the system is lame/unreliable... if it was a good setup I might have considered keeping it....

 

Sensors @ LF, LR, RR and Spare positions.

 

You cannot remove the bulb, in the f150 they use an orange led soldered into the cluster, so i would assume the rangers are the same way. i took apart the cluster and put a black piece of electrical tape on the backside of the mylar. dumbest idea ever, but we can all thank gas and go drivers, who don't know anything but a damn light on the dash. if you could get 8 sensors programmed for 1 truck, i would consider it, but i refuse to get my summer and winter tires reprogrammed every time. as far as i know, the spare tires do not get a sensor.

 

whend they start putting them on the f150s? ive got a 2007 fx4 and ive never seen the light come one. and how low does the tire have to get till the light does come on?

 

did you have a 7lug truck?


they become standard in 2007 on 6lug trucks, if you had the heavy duty payload package then it was optional i believe. i don't know what the specs are, i haven't had sensors in my wheels since like 500 miles. i never had a dash light because i never drove the truck far enough, but after it came on, it wouldn't go off obviously.

 

oo. ic. idno if its hd, i bought it used. whats the diff between HD and regular 150?

 

6 lug and 7 lug

 

oo. ok. hadnt paid attn to it

 

if you have the fx4 package, that you can't get a truck with 7 lugs

 

I will say this, that system saved me last week... If I had not have seen that light I would have been on the side of the road or involved in an accident... turned out I had a decent size nail in the pass. rear tire and it lost a great deal of air while I was gone (took another vehicle)

 

Maybe so, but people had automobiles for the last 100 years and did fine without it. Just another damn moneymaker.

 

There is a receiver near each wheel that picks up the signal from the tire and sends it to the computer.

Also each sensor has a ID number. So therefore the computer knows where each sensor is. So if your truck was looking for sensor ID 1234xab in the RF position and it couldn't get a signal off of it, it is going to throw the dummy light. The computer also knows the ID of the spare (if equipped) and know that it can be in any position on the vehicle. I'm not sure if Ford has a sensor in the spare or not.

I can tell you 100% for sure that the tire does not need to spin to send a signal. We have a tool at work that read the info from the sensor (ID #, Temp, PSI, and state of the battery) and that tool would not work if the tire had to spin.

Im not exactly sure how to reset it on Fords, but on most domestic vehicles you can reset it yourself in less then 5 minutes. Look in your owners manual and it should tell you. If it doesn't send me a PM and ill look through our stuff at work and find out what the process is. Basically when you reset it, it relearns which sensor is in which position.

Yup! Where I work we do not charge any labor on installing or resetting TPMS. We also sell our sensors at cost. Most shops have a 100%-200% mark up on parts and charge $90 an hour for labor. It can get expensive really quick.

 

with the F150's you can only have 4 sensors programmed at one time, and you need the dealer to program them each time, screw that noise.

here they charge 25 bucks more to mount and balance tires. i argued with a shop who refused to mount my tires because i didn't have the sensors in the tires. just a big hassle IMO, i will take my chances with a flat, lol

 

Sorry its federal law.

Now on the other hand if you just bring in a set of rims as a carry in, they should mount them up no problem. Our rule at work is, if it comes in with sensors, it must leave with sensors. If it comes in without sensors and it should....look the other way. The laws only say that we cannot remove or bypass the system. If its not there, theres nothing we are required to do.

You can have 8 sensors for one vehicle. Only 4 of them can be programmed at once. What year F-150 is it. I will look up the procedure at work. I have not yet seen a domestic vehicle that we have had to use the computer plug in to reset the TPMS system. I could be wrong though. Let me take a look.

 

Ya. you can have sensors in all 8 wheels, but it can only be programmed for 4 at a time, I have an 07, well not after next month but right now i do, lol. This is the same shop who can't even fit a 20x10 rim on there machine, what a buncha jokers, lol

 

so in the next yr or so when i get after market rims, what will happen and what will i need to do?

 

All I did was walk in and ask 'em to mount the set of tires in the bed of my truck onto the rims in the cab of my truck. They were well aware of the TPMS system in the truck but either they didn't care about the law or they didn't say anything since I didn't have them actually mount the wheels to the truck. It might be worth it (if your buying new wheels & new tires) to just have them mount the tires on the wheels and mount them on the truck yourself.