In an effort to resolve a warning light on the console, I recently bought 4 new tire sensors from ebay;

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15462378949...mis&media=COPY

I had them installed at a local tire place and they registered fine (apparently), when I left the tire place all 5 tires were reporting a pressure and literally minutes later I received the beeping sound,
hazard light on the console and the tire pressure symbol. "Check tire pressure system", "Have your vehicle checked by a dealer". I immediately took it back to the tire place and on the way it disappeared.
Later it returned. I assume they only replaced the sensors in 4 of the tires (excluding the spare), so the spare likely has the original sensor.

It is basically intermittently switching from a working fine to errored state, which is quite distracting. I'm wondering if this is due to the cheap sensors I bought, the spare tire or something else. Can anyone advise?

Is there a convenient way to just disable the warning altogether if I can't be bothered fixing this? Thanks.

 

In US, it is illegal to alter (disable) TPM system. You need to figure out which sensor causes the warning and replace it.

 

I would go back to the shop and get one installed on the spare and I think your problem will be solved.

 

I did a hail mary and just found about the hidden tire sensor 'set' button hidden above the accelerator, tried that and will see what happens. You might be right about the spare, although it is reporting a pressure. What I don't understand is what the alert is trying to communicate, that there is a problem with the sensor system itself or one of the pressures is too high or low relative to some calibrated value. Also the console reading is insane, there are values but it doesn't tell you which tires the value corresponds to! Is the spare the final one? Am I supposed to just guess? I wonder if this is documented somewhere.

 

Not buying the 5th sensor is your mistake. All 5 must be working properly in a Lexus LS. Now you know what to do.

 

I have an ‘07. The sensors show on the dash display in the order that they are entered into the system. I alway list my spare in the fifth and final position, therefore it shows up as the final pressure, the bottom of the list on the display. If you can get the screen to display the readings you can set up near a compressor and deflate a tire and see what reading in the list lowers. Repeat for all for corners and map your results. I would think the display would show at least one, and maybe multiple values of the five that are not registering before the warning triggers. Those ebay sensors were pretty inexpensive, my guess is a faulty sensor or two are giving yoU intermittent readings and trigger the warning.
tpms problems drive me nuts. I hope figure it out. Good luck.

 

I wonder if there's a way I could confirm the spare tire is the issue, I don't suppose just removing the spare from the trunk and going for a drive would work?

 

No since it will just throw an error the whole time since it expects to see 5. If it can't see 5 or polling fails it will complain, if something is low it marks the one that is low.

 

Going to bite the bullet, order a 5th sensor and have them install it in the spare.

 

Smart move.....

 

Probably best to do 'em all. As an aside, I always keep my spare over pressure. That way I can visually verify that the one that's supposed to be the spare (in the dash display) is in fact the spare.

 

Went to a discount tire today and they confirmed with the scanning tool that the four new sensors instantly scanned, but the spare took a bit longer -- this matches the theory that it's lower on battery and likely what is
causing the intermittent errors, it might be on the cusp of failure. Will update when new sensor arrives and is installed. As an aside, my AC decided to die today and a garage quickly told me it was the blower motor and
quoted an obscene price. I ordered the part from ebay already and looks like a pretty easy DIY job.

 

sigh, it's over. Had the garage install a fifth brand new TPMS sensor and the problem has not gone away, even after doing a reset using the secret button under the driver dash. Does anyone have any more ideas? I'm sure if
I take it to Lexus or something they will immediately dismiss the issue as due to the non-OEM sensors I'm guessing. I'm not looking to spend 5 x $130 or whatever it is just to make this ****ing chime shut up and the light disappear.
Is it possible to have them diagnose it first before giving me a free quote?

Can I mess with this to turn off the TPMS reporting altogether? Desperate times!

 

Are you seeing ANY of your current TPMS sensors report to your on dash display? Every time you start the car the system will look for the sensors. When you have your display set to the TPMS display you should be able to watch the pressure reading on the dash display. The system shouldn’t show an error/alert until it has exceeded the max reporting time. This will at least tell you if the system is reading any sensors at all.

 

yes all 5 tires are reporting in with ok pressure values after the brief 'checking' status. It's when I start driving that the error chime and blinking light flash intermittently, then clear by themselves. I wonder if there is something wrong with the TPMS receiver module or some kind of other interference happening.