Basic Tire Pressure Sensor TMPS Reset Tool EL-50448 Review

[@athhud]

What a coincidence! I just received one of these in the mail yesterday. I bought it to use on my wife’s 2016 Impala LTZ. It works PERFECTLY on her car. Stupid simple to use and does exactly what it is suppose to do. The only “tricky” part is putting the vehicle in “service mode”. On her car you follow these steps: 1-Apply parking brake 2- With engine off, hold down start button for 5 seconds until the ignition, DIC, etc. turns on 3- Use the steering wheel buttons to scan through the driver information menus to the tire pressure monitoring page 4-Once the TPMS page is displayed, hold the select button (check mark in the middle of the scroll arrows on steering wheel) down for about 3 seconds or long enough that you hear the horn honk and the display says “tire service programming activated” or something like that. I don’t remember the exact message. 5- Once you’ve entered TPMS service mode, a turn signal lamp will illuminate (I think it is always driver’s front signal). 6-Hold this stupid cheap tool to the tire, tangent to the valve stem. Press and hold button until the horn honks and the turn signal moves to the passenger front corner. 7-Repeat step 6 on front passenger tire 8-repeat step 6 on rear passenger tire On my wife’s car both taillights remained illuminated so it did not indicate the same as the front did, but the horn will honk and the passenger front turn signal will flash when programming of the passenger rear tire is complete. After that move to the driver’s rear tire and repeat step 6. After that you are done. If you are like me and do most of your work in the middle of the night and don’t want to wake the neighbors with a honking horn, simply pull the horn fuse before starting and just keep your eye on the front turn signal or mirror turn signal lamps. I THINK all GM’s start with driver front tire and rotate clockwise from there, but I don’t know that for sure. You can check your work by removing or adding a pound or two of pressure from one tire at a time and verify that the corresponding pressure drops on the TPMS display of the driver information center. If you’ve screwed up, simply repeat the process again, but don’t screw up. Lol It literally took me longer to type this comment than it does to reprogram all 4 tires with this $7 tool. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked so well! It’s nothing special, just a tone generator in the roughly 300-400mHz range. I’ve got multiple tone generators, but nothing that produced anything in that frequency range. If you have something that will produce a signal that is somewhere in the ballpark of 350mHz, I’d be willing to bet that your device will work just as well as this tool. There is no harm in trying anyway... Worst case scenario is you have to shell out less than $10 for this little device.

[@Fedwrench]

This is probably one of the simplest tools for relearning tire positions after a rotation or TPMS sensor replacement. It won't work on every car. It's used mostly on GM vehicles with the 315 freq valve stem mounted sensors. Because you can't read the sensor data with this tool, your only indication of a bad sensor is that the relearn procedure will time out when you hit a bad sensor and won't relearn. Thanks for sharing, something different for a change.

[@sfx1999]

My old car (Hyundai Sonata) required the more expensive tool that programs the sensor the IDs from each wheel. They have a version that scans the IDs from each wheel and remembers then. There is a tool that lets you program new TPMS sensors with the IDs of the old ones, if you have the IDs.

[@momazoslean4476]

when i put this tire pressure sensor near the tire the low bat light turns on. what does it mean?

[@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017]

I have TPMS on my Subaru but I was disappointed to find that there is no way to manually poll the pressures from the dash. You only get a low pressure warning light and it doesn't tell you which tire it is.

[@nosliwttam77]

You picked a good brand. Kingbolen has great customer service.

[@JonBoy470]

I don’t have this particular brand, but do have one. They’re used on GM vehicles (and likely a number of others at this point). I bought one because the dealer forgot to reprogram the TPMS after they rotated my tires, and the reported tire pressures didn’t line up with the tires. $15 was preferable to taking time off from work for the dealer to reprogram the car. The original is sold through GM’s parts division for $65, but the design is so trivial the Chinese have cloned it and its effectively generic at this point.

[@athhud]

For the last 12yrs I’ve been driving an SRT8 Jeep. There is no such thing as rotating the tires on those things with staggered wheel sizes and directional tires, but there is no way I’ve reinstalled wheels on the same side every single tire change, so I am pretty sure that my Jeep’s TPMS recognizes sensor location and moves them accordingly on the display. Anyway, the first time I rotated the tires on my wife’s 2016 Impala I had all of the tires at the same pressure. It wasn’t until weeks later when she got a nail in a tire that I realized that the TPMS doesn’t recognize a tire rotation. I couldn’t find a leak in the “low” tire to save my life. Then I started adding air and the pressure never changed but I could see the tire inflating. Then I finally noticed that another tire on the display was at a higher pressure than the rest... This nonsense really threw me for a loop for a moment lol. When I figured out which tire correlated to which location on the display I was finally able to find the leak and patch the tire... After that ordeal I immediately went on a search for a tool like this one. It’s not a complex tool at all, but I still can’t believe that I was able to get her TPMS locations reprogrammed with a $7 ebay purchase. Lol

[@Thezippo03]

review the new icon golden ratchet :P

[@tangocharlie5509]

FWIW, ICs are: Binary counter 4060 , Mosfet driver UCC37322 from Texas Instrument, Mosfet transistor, operational amplifier LM358 and a 4MHz quartz

[@threeMetreJim]

It just generates a 125kHz signal switched on and off. The mosfet driver is used to drive the 125kHz signal through the large orange capacitor and coil mounted in the probe. 4MHz / 32 (4060) for the 125kHz carrier the on/off frequency generated by the second 4060. Could just about reverse engineer the whole thing from the video. Good that no smarts are involved to make it relatively easy. Not sure what the opamp is for though. For the low price, easier just to buy one.

[@ml1712]

i got this same tool and got it to relearn the sensors but i dont know why the air pressure reading is different on my air pressure gauge than what it says on my car diagram

[@MrRama2295]

Hi, i have a citroen, in this case the config is made via the lexia tool where i need to load every id , but first the sensor has to be activated , this work for this activation/ excitation? the sensors works at 433mhz

[@scottrobertson5639]

its only confusing because in my case i bought a car someone rotated the tires on. the car was saying front left tire low when it was actually the rear left. kinda dumb

[@blanchy]

I need one of these for a mitsubishi mirage. Someone stole one of my wheels while I was at work. I bought a replacement used rim with the sensor but can't reset it

[@athhud]

I’ve never touched a Mitsubishi, but you may need a more capable tool to program the new sensor serial number into your car’s BCM. This tool won’t do that, but if the Mitsubishi’s recognize sensors universally, then this one might work. Another thing you need to check is whether or not the Mitsubishi TPMS system communicates somewhere around 300-400mHz. If it communicates via a different frequency, then this tool probably wouldn’t work in that case either. It’s not like you are out much money just trying it though...

[@andrewsmactips]

I used to think the tire pressure monitoring was done by measuring the difference in rotation speed between the wheels when driving in a straight line. Seems a simpler solution.

[@danr1920]

That's how my Honda does it. Normal cheep valves.

[@CatusMaximus]

Wheel speed differential monitoring is indirect and does not give you a precise absolute pressure reading of each tire simpler but more inaccurate. The next big thing will be tire air temperature as well as pressure

[@upsidedowndog1256]

My new to me 07 Honda Ridgeline usually displays a TPMS on the dash. My eyes and tire pressure gauge sees no problem so I just ignore it. Yet another government mandate that drives up the prices of autos but has no real effect.

[@MrSupernova111]

I think the TPMS sensors in my car died years ago. I believe they have batteries in them and the units need to be replaced at the end of the batteries life. However, they are $75 a pop and I have no desire to replace them at the cost of hundreds of dollars.

[@athhud]

Do some research on your car. There are many TPMS sensors that work just fine by simply popping the case apart and replacing the button cell battery that powers them.

[@MrSupernova111]

@@athhud . Will do. Thanks!

[@politicalpotato8383]

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