TPMS light confusion

If you put in new sensor codes, you can confuse the computer for about half an hour, if your drive exceeds that, your light will come back on

 

They don't need to be activated. They have motion detectors to turn them on.

 

The car needs to be programmed to recognize the new sensors, hopefully possible with what you’ve got. Both prepurchasing the sensors and the “confused” shop does not bode well. It’d be preferable to go with a shop that’ll do “turnkey”, knows their stuff and supplies/guarantees the sensors.

 

I've had this same feeling when I changed the sensor ID. Trust me, it'll come back on. If it were only that easy to disable a TPMS light, we would forget about using sensors altogether

 

A fairly easy DIY. Tighten a 2" cargo strap around the perimeter of the tire, set some 2x lumber on the floor so that it touches the tire but not the rim and jump on the rim to break the bead. Use a fishing line or string when removing the old sensor and installing the new one. A tool like this makes that step easier: More Information for PERFORMANCE TOOL 60501.
To reseat the bead just adding air often works for me. Remove valve stem before air if tire won't seat with the valve stem in place.
Edit: If there is a big weight difference between previous and new sensor and old, it could have an effect on tire balance that can be noticed.

 

Most likely the id programming in the car's ecu is done (as you indicated much earlier), the sensor motion detectors turn them on (activate not the proper word) and "possibly" you set the tpms alarm point at zero.

 

TPMS alarm initiation is normally done with the switch under the drivers dash. See owners manual.

Take a picture of the ids before install, have them installed and then drive about 5 minutes or less.

The id on this one is
5528CA0

 

Caution for anyone looking at the photo in #8 and thinking "Oh! So ID1 is rear passenger, ID2 is rear driver side, and so on!"

Nope! The IDs don't go with particular corners. They're just four arbitrary slots to register your transmitter IDs in. You can make notes like in that photo to remember which one you put in which corner, but if you do, you have to remember to update the notes (correctly!) each time you rotate the tires.

Also, if you have work done at a tire shop, they'll often use a tool that reads all the transmitter IDs and programs the car's ECU with them. They might do it for convenience without you asking. It can result in you having the exact same 4 transmitter IDs registered that you came in with, but not in the same numbered ID slots, so your notes will be thrown off again.

 

You can also release some air out of working sensors while scanning to see which is which.

Techstream also shows battery status. ID4 was low.

In my case I was doing two and wanted to know where they were prior to going to the tire shop.

 

I didn't have tools at the time, so used the scissor jack to debead, put in the tpms (didn't need any fishing wire for that), and went to gas station for air thinking bead would just pop back on. Nope. Had to shell out $10 to the pepboys guy to use the tire machine.

 

I tell people about the wire/fishing line because this one guy claimed that he dropped his sensor inside the tire and supposedly was unable to get it out and had to go to the shop anyways, but not until after digging out his spare tire LOL.

Did you remove the valve core to get decent airflow?

 

Pretty sure I did. But I mean, I don't see how a few more square millimeters makes a difference with the gaping space at the rim. Plenty of YouTube videos showing the lighter fluid pop-on.

 

The guys at my local Discount Tire seem to succeed reliably using a capacious hose from their shop air source. I think they upsized the diameter of that hose and made sure the piping had few restrictions on that path, so the valve core probably is the most significant flow restriction when they're doing that.

 

Exactly