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Tire rotation and TPMS

16K views 23 replies 6 participants last post by  frogy 
#1 ·
I will be rotating my tires this spring and realized there may be more involved with the TPMS. When I rotate front to rear and rear to front will TPMS know new location, or is there programing I have to get done.
Thanks in advance...
 
#2 ·
It will figure it out. But, it will look for the pressures on each corner that you had before rotation. The back tires usually have more pressure. So, you'll need to do some pumping and bleeding.

I rotated the tires on Frau Putzer's G01 X3 last night. She never saw anything on her gym/Starbucks/Target run this morning. On my F10 I might have had to initialize the TPMS again. Or, maybe I did it and it told me it was initializing after I was driving.
 
#4 ·
It's very simple, and yes, you do need to do something, but it's not programming!

Go into the vehicle status menu of IDrive and once you have the tires mounted and have set the pressure where you want it, just follow the menu to reset them. You'll then need to drive a bit and it will tell you when it's done. Then, they'll be registered to the right wheel at the desired pressure.

The GT is pretty fast to reset things, so you may only need to drive a mile or so, maybe less. My i3 takes sometimes as much as 10-miles or so as it uses a different system.

The sensors only broadcast when they sense movement, and then they only do that periodically, so it can take awhile for the signals to all come in without interference as you drive and each wheel rotates a bit differently as you go around corners (the outside ones turn faster and further). It will reset faster if you're on a curvy road versus a straight highway.

Eventually, you will need to replace them. The battery is not replaceable. Originally, they estimated they would last 100K miles, so long after normal warranty. Depending on how and how much you drive, you may need to replace them (much) sooner. Tire industry now suggests changing them when you mount new tires, but depending on the type you have and how you drive, that may be too long or short. There are test tools that will tell you the battery status in the TPMS. I picked one up when it was on a super, overstock sale. I've got two sets of tires on two BMWs, and it helped me figure out why I had some intermittent results. On one winter set, I had to change them at about 6-years...not because they had lots of miles on them, but they stopped being reliable depending on the outside temperature.
 
#5 ·
The fog is clearing in my brain. I recall getting an error message on iDrive after rotating the tires on my F10 535i and driving about a half-mile. Resetting the TPMS eliminated the message, and re-baselined the desired pressures.

I went into the garage tonight and checked Frau Putzer's new G01 X3 after rotating the tires yesterday. It is correctly displaying the tire pressures with no re-set needed. TPMSs are evolving, and the new ones are better and smarter.
 
#7 · (Edited)
It would also increase cost. The average new car buyer keeps a car about six years and about 70k miles. So, the new car customers normally don't get hit with the cost of replacing the sensors.

Having TPMS sensors as sealed units instead of having replaceable batteries improves their reliability. That benefits the new car buyer, at the expense of the used car buyers. That's good for the car manufactures, more incentive to buy a new car.

I closely maintain my tire pressures, to the point of it being an obsession. The old flat tire monitor (FTM) (that would detect a tire with low pressure by using the ABS wheel speed sensors) fulfilled my needs. FTM's added almost nothing to the cost of a car: some software, a reset button, and an indicator light. The first copy of the software was very expensive. But the next 20 million copies were free.

But, the U.S. government (also) concluded that I'm smarter than most people. So, they decided that everybody's car must have an expensive-to-install, and expensive-to-maintain TPMS system... to save the polar bears and penguins from global warming.

A friend of mine is an automotive slob, and a slob in general. He's also a genius, but an autistic one. He has a MSEE, designs killer drones, and was making $100k/year in his 20's. But, he had to buy new tires for his car way too early. I asked him if he ever checked his tire pressures. His answer was "No, the car does that and will tell me if something's wrong." TPMS doesn't give a low pressure alarm until the tires are about 20% below the baseline pressure. So, he was driving around with 28 PSI in his tires that required 35 PSI. You can't make an idiot-proof system, because there are too many ingenious idiots out there.
 
#8 ·
On my i3, with changing a coding value, you can have the TPMS vehicle display show the actual tire pressure. Why BMW doesn't make that the default setting, I don't know. I did not find that option with my GT, but mine's a 2011...newer ones may allow you to display the pressure when tweaking the coding. Bimmercode enables a bunch of options easily.
 
#13 ·
Depends upon the vehicle. The high power sports cars like 'vettes are, but the average vehicles, no. And just fyi, my '14 F07 has equal size rubber front and rear, so I can rotate them to my hearts content, which I've done twice in the last year. but the half worn Michelins still make way too much noise, so sometime next month they'll be replaced with Contis. And they won't be runflats, either.
 
#20 ·
Got my new Continental ProContactLS rubber installed yesterday, and just as it was with the Mercedes that I owned previously, these made a dramatic difference in the GT. Took less than a quarter mile to hear the difference, and once on I65 where there are some expansion joint bumps in the Bowling Green, Ky. area, there was a noticeable reduction in the feel of those bumps. I went one size larger with these to bring the speedometer a bit closer to true speed (always read 2 mph fast). Now, with 255/45-R19's instead of the 245's, the speedo, according to Garmin GPS and two GPS equipped Rove dash cams, reads just one mph fast. Now the bad news. While getting the new rubber installed, I was informed that the inner lip on one of the wheels has two cracks in it. No dings, dents, out of round, or any other obvious damage, just two cracks on the inner lip 180 degrees apart. Carfax on the car is clean, so not from a crash either. Anyway, Discount tire went right to work and found a used-like new wheel somewhere in New York that'll be here late next week, and is setting me back $360 w/shipping & tax, remounted and balanced. But back to the rubber. Long story short, these are smooth, quiet, ride better, the handling seems just a tad sharper, and they have a 70k treadwear warranty. If you are not looking to go with runflats, as I was not, I strongly recommend these tires, as does Tire Rack.
 
#17 ·
The Michelin runflats currently just keep getting louder and louder with a rhythmic hum that gets louder with speed. That was the same issue I had on the Merc, although they weren't even runflats (all caused by idiots at the dealership trashing two good tires and leaving the two worn out ones on the car)and the reason that I went to the Continentals. It was like I suddenly had a new car, it was so quiet and smooth. And the Conti Purecontact LS tires have a 70k warranty, which is longer than any others I found thus far.
 
#18 · (Edited)
It's my understanding that the TPMS receiver is behind the rear bumper. The reset function works to get things sorted. They replaced mine under warranty once, and that's what the tech told me. The reset function alerts the computer to learn the position of each tire's TPMS. I've not tried to just move the wheels, but when I am swapping, I'm swapping sets, so it has to learn all new sensors (summer versus winter tire/wheel sets).

Each TPMS is built with a unique code similar to what's done with Ethernet controller cards.
 
#22 ·
I rotated the tires on my F10 a few days ago. I adjusted the pressures to exactly what they were before rotation (38 PSI front, 40 PSI rear). After driving about a half-mile, I got an iDrive message to check my pressures and reset the TPMS. Frau Putzer's newer G01 didn't do anything after tire rotation.
 
#23 ·
It's very likely that various models use different techniques to identify and receive data from the TPMS. The service manage said that on my i3, the key fob is part of the receiver network. They had to replace the receiver on my GT (2014 model) because it wasn't working reliably, and it's behind the rear bumper. Later models could have had that portion of the system changed to a different one.

The reset function on mine is what triggers the car to look for either new sensors (tire/wheel swap) or relocation of the original sensors, and, in the process, tells the computer what the tire pressure 'should' be in those locations. It uses changes from that to trigger the alarm if it drops enough.
 
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