How to disable tire-pressure monitoring (TPM) system?

[Hans Wang]

I'd like to share my frastrating TPM experience with you and want to find a simple way to have TPM disabled.

when I had my OEM rims replaced by aftermarket ones, a damaged TPM sensor was found and I have to replace it. When a sensor was missing, the car beeps 5 times for every 2 and a half minutes and tire pressure warnning light keeps flashing.

I called up a lexus dealer to check on the price. It costs about $200 before tax for one sensor. I did not like dealer's price and luckly enought I found the parts from Internet and it costs about $100. After sensor was installed back to my car, the beeping and flashing wont go away. I went back to dealer and thought that must be a simple setup thing, but it turned out that they have to unmount all four tires in order to have the code for each sensor so that they could reprogram the controller. They need 4 hour to do that. The labor cost is $85-$150 per hour so it's running at $340-$600 to get controller reprogrammed. I still could not understand why they need to reprogram 4 instead of 1 since I only have one new sensor.

I did ask them few more questions reagrding to the sensor itself and here are what I learned

The sensor is not a passive part, it have a battery built-in. The battery can only last 4 years! Flat battery can not be changed since it's built-in, meaning that when battery is run out, the sensor has to be replaced! I could not believe lexus would use such a fatal product on SC430.

I wanted to have TPM system disabled but they told me there could be a way to do it but they wont do it for me because by "law" I have to have it. I don't care about the "law" and once I know how to disable it I'll go for it.

BTW, there are four different color coded sensors. when order sensor from Internet thay need to know the color.