TPMS Inactive?

[Atebit]

Last week I took the car in for the battery cable fix. When I got in to leave the dealership I noticed the TPMS light was on. I figured it was because the battery was disconnected during the service. After driving a bit it went off as I expected.

This week I was driving along and got the harp and a TPMS Inactive message & the TPMS light. This persisted for a few minutes, then the message went away & finally the light went off as well.

Not sure what the difference between the light and the inactive message is. It hasn't happened since & my tire pressure is good, so I'm wondering what's the issue?

[Crazykoh]

Originally Posted by Atebit

Last week I took the car in for the battery cable fix. When I got in to leave the dealership I noticed the TPMS light was on. I figured it was because the battery was disconnected during the service. After driving a bit it went off as I expected.

This week I was driving along and got the harp and a TPMS Inactive message & the TPMS light. This persisted for a few minutes, then the message went away & finally the light went off as well.

Not sure what the difference between the light and the inactive message is. It hasn't happened since & my tire pressure is good, so I'm wondering what's the issue?

If you've checked your tire pressures and know they are okay, you might try resetting the tpms. It's in the service or status section of idrive I believe. See if that makes it stop.

[lcheong]

I've lived with this issue for about 30k of my 43k miles!! The TPM Inactive light would go on randomly and stay on, or it would turn off, etc. Tire pressure was always correct. I'm meticulous about that.

At 35k, dealer was able to isolate to faulty TPM sensor which they replaced. I told them to keep it until they did an active fix. So, it was good for about 1000 miles, and then it did it again! The Inactive light would turn on about 30 minutes into a drive and then usually turn off but not always.

I didn't worry about it until my 42k tune up was due. I took to a different dealer (I had moved since the last time). I again told them to keep it until they had an active fix. They finally were able to reproduce it. They detected two of the remaining sensors were faulty. So they replaced all four to be safe (which includes the one that was replaced just recently). They were able to do this under warranty. So I now have four brand new TPM sensors. It's been only 300 miles since then, but so far I've been clean. It definitely would have gone off by now many times.

So, my guess is that it is a sensor on the verge of failure. You just have to have the dealer reproduce the fault.

/LesC

[Atebit]

Originally Posted by lcheong

So, my guess is that it is a sensor on the verge of failure. You just have to have the dealer reproduce the fault.

/LesC

Thanks for the background! I will pass your experience on to my dealer, who will likely disregard it. . Hopefully I can play up the "safety" issue & they will do something meaningful about it quickly.

It just started doing this after they did the battery cable recall repair.