Check Tire Pressure

Beebe · September 23, 2009

My wife's 2005 Chevy Suburban has the tire monitoring system. But the original owner put custom chrome rims on it before we bought it, and did not bother to have the "special" valve stems reinstalled. We did however get the old stock rims with old tires, and they do have the "special" stems with the purchase. So the Service Tire Monitor message always comes on the DIC. Seeing as they are not on the vehicle, I wasn't concerend.

Well, last week my wife says the DIC says Check Tire Pressure, and the orange tire light is on. I was kind of confussed. How does it know its low, without the special valve stems? So I checked the pressure and sure enough one tire was 10-12 psi low. Filled it up and it went away in a day. Then today it came on again. I checked the pressures, and they are all within 1psi of what I run them at.

How does it know to check pressures? And how do I reset the darn thing? (Yes it has the Autoride).

Thanks,

Dave

asilverblazer · September 23, 2009

If you keep the old tires and rims near where you park it, maybe it is getting the reading at night or when it is parked near them and one of those tire is low. It has no idea how much air is in your tires on it unless the valve stems are in them. It should display a message at all times to the effect of "Service Tire Pressure Monitor..." Because it can't get a reading.

Stevens03 · September 23, 2009

If you keep the old tires and rims near where you park it, maybe it is getting the reading at night or when it is parked near them and one of those tire is low. It has no idea how much air is in your tires on it unless the valve stems are in them. It should display a message at all times to the effect of "Service Tire Pressure Monitor..." Because it can't get a reading.

What he said,... It can pick them up if they are close to the truck. It doesn't cost much to have them installed in the new wheels, heck if you had a compressor you could do it yourself.

brims · September 23, 2009

If you have the chrome rims on now, either the wheels do have the correct valve stem that holds the TPMS sensors, or the sensors were actually banded to the inside of the wheel. That's the only way that the system would know the pressures of the tires.

And I agree with what was said above, if you didn't have something, the service tire pressure system indicator would activate.

Beebe · September 24, 2009

Ok, let me give a bit more info. The DIC does display "Service Tire Pressure Monitor" all the time. So I looked in the manual on how to calibrate it. I tried to calibrate it by putting it into learn mode, but it never worked. So I assumed the sensors were bad. After some research, and finding out what they look like it dawned on me. Check the old tires and rims valve stems. Sure enough they are the TPM style stems.

So I figured that when the original owner swapped out the rims, he didn't bother to have the stems installed. The old tires were 25 miles away when the DIC displayed "Check Tire Pressure" and the tire light came on. I thought that the Autoride may be able to tell if pressure is low. I did have a tire low, inflated it and the message went off. Then a week later it came back on, but the tires are at the proper psi.

Thanks,

Dave