TPMS - where can I read the tire pressure?

[trockli]

The other day I got a tire pressure warning. I was unable to find a menu to see which tire.

How can I see the current trire pressure of all 4 wheels?

[akirby]

You put a gauge on each one and read it, then refill it as needed.

 

Seriously.

[Tacyon]

with technology as cool and amazing as it is now days .. I think like many others and not unreasonably so, that there would be some kind of read out on the dash. Or if nothing else, WHICH tire is the culprit.

 

From the stand point of a complete design, its taking that one or two extra steps to complete the design. Ford dropped the ball on a good opportunity to go beyond. Mazda or Toyota (can't remember who) took one more step by teaching the car to honk its horn when the tire is at pressure. $140.00 for Orange Electronic's P409S system gets you a smart phone sized device that gives you individual tire pressures and it goes red at defined levels.

 

Not hating .. just saying .. they [Ford design] could have gone that one more step and OP's question was not that far off base to warrant a "seriously".

[Scorpio]

Ford's design for TPMS is, unfortunately, little better than the old in=dash idiot lights of old. My wife's Acura RDX, which is a couple years older, will show you the actual tire pressure at any wheel at any time, along with warning when one is low.

[akirby]

The "Seriously" part was just to reinforce that there is no way to find out the actual pressure or which tire is low. I agree it's silly not to provide that information. I don't remember if Ford's implementation doesn't know the actual pressure (the sensor is just a pass/fail sensor) or the sensor location or if it knows and just doesn't report it. One model (can't remember which one) even tells you when you're reached the correct pressure while filling the tire by honking the horn.

[trockli]

That is surprising. I mean it doens't even tell me which wheel has low pressure. This is useless. Even older GM cars have dash PSI readout ....

[Tacyon]

after doing a quick search of TPMS it would appear that most of them do individual tire pressure, as well as temperature. Even monitoring the spare tire ! There are several that even have extra transmitters to monitor tandems and semi trailers.

 

I actually would be surprised if the ford transmitters didn't have pressure and temp data tracked.

 

But now this brings up a cool idea for some enterprising individual. An after market device that would interface with factory TPMS transmitters and provide supplemental data to the driver. Unless Ford is the only one who've dropped the ball .. then it would be a limited target market.

[trockli]

I wonder if the baord computer actually has the information or not. Would be interested if the service tech computer can read the PSI.

You would think that a company with tire issues in the past would do anything to show you/email the data.

[Waldo]

The computer knows exactly what tire pressure is in each tire. It doesn't know where that tire is. Ford's system allows you to rotate the tires without having to reprogram them. The downside is you can't be sure where each tire is, thus there's no display.

[MrHappy]

That seems odd. My 07 Chrysler shows each tire with pressure and knows when i rotate them. I have to say, it is certainly one of the missing things on such an otherwise techy vehicle.

[Edgieguy]

This would've been a great feature since my 22' s lose air at different rates each week. My Edge is in service now for the third time with this problem. I could probably have taken this in weekly for the past 108 weeks and they still wouldn't know what to do..... I'm going to look into that orange electric solution

[MrHappy]

Have they fully dismounted and remounted the tires yet Edgieguy? That seemed to help ours until it got cold (and that's a normal drop in PSI so far) They also replaced the valve stem but it was the dismount, clean and remount that helped.

[Edgieguy]

Have they fully dismounted and remounted the tires yet Edgieguy? That seemed to help ours until it got cold (and that's a normal drop in PSI so far) They also replaced the valve stem but it was the dismount, clean and remount that helped.

Yes. They continue to remove and clean the bead surfaces and remount and balance the wheels. No better. Ill see tomorrow if anything changes.

[JOEHIO]

Wish you luck, Andy. Keep us posted on the outcome.

[ablb]

That seems odd. My 07 Chrysler shows each tire with pressure and knows when i rotate them. I have to say, it is certainly one of the missing things on such an otherwise techy vehicle.

When you rotate do you have to tell your 07 where you rotated them to :gang: ?

I'm wondering how it knows where you put the right front, left rear etc???

 

Maybe they wire a sensor to each axle that the wheel would shake hands with.

 

In defense of Ford, I have found that when the TPMS goes off I have 1 LOW tire and 1 or more low tires.

 

ab

[Tacyon]

ok - so due to circumstances beyond my control, I just had to replace the two tires and rims (soon on the rims) on the left side of my vehicle. I got some good Q&A time with the senior mechanic there and in light of this thread had some very specific questions to ask.

 

1) they do know which tire is which. numbered 1-4 starting at the front driver to front passenger and passenger rear to finally the driver rear.

 

2) they can read PSI from the individual transmitters, AS WELL AS temperature and other "error codes" that can be read from the ODB-II port.

 

He was surprised that there were no screens in my edge that didn't give that info. When trouble shooting these they have to pull the failure codes to get a clue. :hysterical2:

 

Anyways, another thing that he pointed out was that on other systems that do show the LF, RF, LR, or RR, often other shops and sometimes the dealerships won't reset them when the when the warning goes away. Then the driver get a warning that his LF is low and its really his RR.

[omar302]

So called "Direct" TPMS have Sensors in each tire that would wirelessly send data to the vehicle with information. Some vehicle have "Receivers" at each wheel well to collect the data, in which it is simple for the vehicle's PCM to know which wheel it is. Other vehicles (Fords included) receive the wireless Data from all four (4) sensors through one receiver (usually the same receiver of the Keyless remote), hence the vehicle needs to learn which sensor is for which tire & in case of tire rotations, it should be re-learned. Apparently, Ford chose the easy way by just complying to minimum law requirement of providing just a "Warning Light", which is better than nothing, but could have easily been turned to a much more useful feature by means of clever engineering without added equipment cost!

[Waldo]

Well I consider myself a fairly clever engineer, but I can't figure out how a system with only one receiver can ever know where each tire is. Yes they are programmed so in the beginning the system does know which tire is where, but the system does not know when you do a tire rotation. So the display would only show the correct tire pressure between the time it's programmed and the time a tire is moved to a different location, unless you tell the customer they need to reprogram it every time they rotate the tires.

[omar302]

Simple solution? Colors!

 

Each tire stem can have a colored ring & thus the vehicle can indicate tire pressures by color which would be programmed only once!

 

But there is aleady a solution in variuos other cars, a simple re-learn procedure that can be repeated each time tires are rotated, that starts with the Front Left tire, then Front Right, Rear Right & last Rear Left. Hech even Fords have that re-learn procedure, and with the same tire order, but Ford just doesn't make use of the added info of knowing which tire is which!

 

I geuss they left out the added info to avoid extra complaints, customers would start complaining why is the pressure not accurate? Why don't I get reading while the vehicle is stationary, why is the pressure reading different compared my X-brand tire pressure gauge & so on!.

[Tacyon]

Waldo, WHAT ??? Think of a WiFi receiver in your house or work place. Know how many transmitters/receivers it can connect to ? More than you and I have fingers and toes combined ! When you get the tires rotated .. they have a tool that tells the system that tire "X" is in position 1,2,3 or 4. (LF, RF, RR, & LR)

 

Each TPMS would just need a different serial address to be differentiated one from the next. They all operate at the same frequency (one receiver) and they're very short range to begin with so who cares if you reuse identifications. You could easily preference the serial data with a vehicle code unique to your vehicle.

 

Its simple .. as Omar said .. they took the easy way out or just didn't take that next step and asked themselves "how can we make this really useful.

 

The data is there, its all about computer program to display it. Jeep has been doing this for years !

 

 

Edge Learn Procedure ... this looks like the same one the guys at Discount Tire was using. (yep - rub yer head and pat yer belly while standing on one foot)

 

 

Relearn

1. Turn the ignition switch to the OFF position. Then, press and release the brake pedal.

2. Cycle the ignition switch from the OFF position to the RUN position three times, ending in the RUN position.

3. Press and release the brake pedal.

4. Turn the ignition switch to the OFF position.

5. Turn the ignition switch from the OFF position to the RUN position three times, ending in the RUN position.

The horn will sound once and the indicator will flash if the training mode has been entered successfully. If equipped, the message center will display “TRAIN LF TIRE.”

6. It may take up to six seconds to activate a tire pressure sensor.

Press and release the test button on the TPMS tool. The horn will sound briefly to indicate that the tire pressure sensor has been recognized by the vehicle.

7. Within two minutes of the horn sounding, place the TPMS tool on the correct position for the sensor and release the test button to train the right front tire pressure sensor.

8. Do not wait more than two minutes between training each sensor or the Smart Junction Box (SJB) will time out and the entire procedure must be repeated. Repeat Step 7 for the right rear and then left rear.

The procedure is completed after the last tire has been trained. When the training procedure is complete, the message center (if equipped) will display “TIRE TRAINING COMPLETE.”

For vehicles not equipped with a message center, successful completion of the training procedure will be verified by turning the ignition switch to the OFF position without the horn sounding. If the horn sounds twice when the switch is turned to the OFF position, the training procedure was not successful.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Tacyon

[MrHappy]

Honestly, no idea how my Chrysler does it but it does in fact know. The first time I rotated them I intentionally left 1 wheel with different pressure to see if it updated and sure enough it did. I know there's a sensor in each valve stem but beyond that, got me. And I replaced the sensors a while back due to faulty valve stem caps corroding and getting stuck and they weren't expensive. Makes me wonder how Ford overlooked that one with everything else the vehicle is capable of. Knowing the PSI through the vehicle info is nice because I know which one is low and exactly how low. The horn honk when full thing from Mazda is cool too IMO but mine updates within a few seconds so it's not a huge deal other than I have to check back in the car during pumping air which stinks.

[akirby]

Waldo said you'd have to relearn each position when you rotate the tires in order for the computer to know the correct location for each sensor. He didn't say it couldn't be done.

 

Obviously Ford took the cheaper way out to comply with the Federal requirements so they don't have as robust a system as others. Ford has a lot of other electronic features that the competition doesn't have like keyless entry keypads, etc.

 

This would be an area where Lincoln could further separate itself from Ford.

[ls973800]

I don't understand the need to relearn the sensors on our Edges. I rotated the tires on my 2013 several weeks ago and did not have to reset the sensors for any reason. All they do is give a signal when a tire is low. It does not give the location or the pressure reading.

 

Our previous GM had readings for each tire and it gave the location of which tire. When those were rotated, they did have to be reset if you wanted an accurate display of which tire was low or where the tire was located. You could use a tool to reset, or up until the early 2011 models, the car could be reset by going through the drivers information display.

 

Our Acura also displays the readings and locations, but when rotated they do not have to be reset, they do it automatically.

 

As someone else mentioned earlier, the Edge system is basically a "Go" "No Go" type sensor.