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Is it possible to calibrate the PSI on my TPMS?

belchfire
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belchfire Enthusiast

belchfire

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I bought new tires yesterday and they had to replace two TPMS sensors.  When I got the truck back, I noticed that they were all different pressures.  No big deal.  When I got home, I grabbed my pencil gauge and aired them all up to 45 PSI, but the dash is still showing different pressures.  The two OEM sensors are accurate, but the two replacements are several PSI off.  Is it possible to calibrate the PSI on the system to a known good number?

CamGTP Senior Enthusiast

CamGTP

Posted
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No, not exactly.

 

All you can do it set the pressure with a mechanical gauge and then you can re-learn the sensors to the truck. They should be pretty close to what the mechanical gauge is set to.

 

The TPMS tool is like $12 on amazon, they work good. Then just follow the TPMS procedure to reset them.

 

If that doesn't work and the aftermarket sensors are still off, then they are to blame and the only way to fix it would be to replace them with different sensors.

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belchfire Enthusiast

belchfire

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Posted (edited)

The shop that replaced my tires has four OEM take-off sensors and said they'd swap them for me for $20.  I figure that's an easy solution and not a bad price to pay to demount and remount two tires.

Edited by belchfire
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LDM Enthusiast

LDM

Posted
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Aftermarket sensors tend to be hit or miss.  You can try using the tool to reset them but if they are still off you can't calibrate them to make them more accurate.  I'd go with the OEM option as it will probably give you the most accurate reading since you have the option available.

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JimCost2014 Senior Enthusiast

JimCost2014

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1 hour ago, belchfire said:

The shop that replaced my tires has four OEM take-off sensors and said they'd swap them for me for $20.  I figure that's an easy solution and not a bad price to pay to demount and remount two tires.

Not sure if you asked, are the sensors the correct frequency for your truck?

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It's Tim Senior Enthusiast

It's Tim

Posted
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1 hour ago, belchfire said:

 I figure that's an easy solution and not a bad price to pay to demount and remount two tires.

All depends on how old the batteries are...

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rav3 Senior Enthusiast

rav3

Posted
Posted
38 minutes ago, JimCost2014 said:

Not sure if you asked, are the sensors the correct frequency for your truck?

If they weren't correct frequency they wouldn't connect at all & have no readigs

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The Zip Senior Enthusiast

The Zip

Posted
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It's Tim is correct.  Although the oem sensors may work, you won't do yourself any favors by using old sensors.  The batteries in TPMS are not replaceable and once they go, you have to replace the entire sensor.  I haven't seen a guage that  tells  how much life is left in the batteries.  

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16LT4 Enthusiast

16LT4

Posted
Posted (edited)

A pencil gauge is far from accurate.  Verify with a a quality dial gauge; cheap gauges like HF gauges can be off by up to 5 psi, and pencial gauges by 10 psi or more; theyr'e entirely dependent upon application speed.

 

I don't use the dash readout for tire pressure; in fact, I've removed it from the queue to avoid having wasted, useless displays in the cycle.

Edited by 16LT4
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belchfire Enthusiast

belchfire

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17 hours ago, 16LT4 said:

A pencil gauge is far from accurate.  Verify with a a quality dial gauge; cheap gauges like HF gauges can be off by up to 5 psi, and pencial gauges by 10 psi or more; theyr'e entirely dependent upon application speed.

 

I don't use the dash readout for tire pressure; in fact, I've removed it from the queue to avoid having wasted, useless displays in the cycle.

I realize that all gauges can be off.  However, given that I used the same gauge on all four tires, I can tell that the replacement sensors are not reading the same as the two OEM sensors.  I scored a set of four OEM sensors from another set of tires/rims that I had, so I am tempted to have those two swapped for the OEMs that I have, but given @It's Tim and @The Zip's comments about battery life, I wonder if that would be smart.  I don't know how old the batteries are in the extras I have.

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