So in doing research on my FRS' TPMS, order to swap wheels, I think I've found a few answers. My car only recognizes only one set. They must be spinning in order to wake them up (so I can't just make a pressurized container for the OG sensors and call it it a day.) I know I need the 7 did get serials off each of the sensors. Subaru sensors use a specific frequency, 330mhz, I think.
What about cloned sensors, using the original serials stored in the ECU? What readers, dongles, etc... do I need to do it myself? I've heard of a magnet trick, but I don't think it works with my car. What's the frugal way to swap wheels, and not have the tire light come in? I want it functional, as it's saved my tires after I picked up a couple of nails. No, I'm not putting a circle of electrical tape over it.
A small square of electrical tape and just check your tires visually? You could also use a rectangle. Or a triangle. Maybe go exotic and do a rhombus or trapezoid, a higher order polygon is just showing off.
Are they on the back of the valve stem?
Not that I'd ever really end up doing this but you could break the tire bead at home and get the sensor off and swap into another set of wheels and then reseat the bead on that tire.
REALLY annoying that your car only recognizes one set of sensors...
I bet TireRack deals with this kind of question a lot - have you checked their website? Like setup a winter wheel and tire setup for your car and see what the website says about TPMS?
When I was getting a second set of wheels for my FRS I bought an ATEQ Quickset, which would let me reprogram the car for the sensors in whatever set of wheels I happened to be putting on. It seemed pretty easy to use, the program installed on my PC easily and was very user friendly and it connected to the car without problems when I tested it. I never actually ended up using it to reprogram the car though because the tire place I bought the wheels from just cloned the sensors on the new wheels to my old sensors, so now I can switch between summer and winter tires without reprogramming the car. I don't know how many times you're planning on getting new wheels, but it might be easiest to just pay a shop to do the cloning (I have no idea how much a DIY cloning tool is).
I cloned the TPMS sensors for track wheels on my 128 and snow tires on my Crosstrek with Autel's products. I have the MaxiTPMS TS501 and their universal 315/433MHz sensors. It was a fairly painless process. Scan the sensor on each wheel, drop their universal sensor into a slot on the tool and it cloned each sensor. I have had no issues so far when swapping wheels.
I did the ATEQ as well. It's been a while... IIRC it didn't have any trouble waking the sensors up sitting in the basement. Good grief, where's my thread on that? I thought I ended up using two tools for the combo of reading sensors and telling the car what's up...
Yep, ATEQ to read/set car, and an Autel tool to read the sensors the car doesn't know about (the other set).
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/which-tpms-tool-do-i-need-for-wintersummer-09-subaru-legacy-tire-swap/143898/page1/
I continue not to have much control over the cars, so I think I've still only been through it the once...
Cloning certainly sounds nicer if you can get it done from the start.
The new to me used wheels appear to have sensors still in them. They came off of an FRS, so I know they are Suby/Yota compatible. Thought it might be worth it to be able to swap the sensors that came with it. Can you have multiple cloned sensors? Like if I end up with dedicated track tires, 3 seasons, and winter beaters? What happens if the ECU detects signals coming from multiple sources? Does it care?
Are there any cloneable sensors that are reasonable in price and not total pieces of crap?
You can clone a sensor any number of times.
If the computer reads two different sensors with the same ID (the part that gets cloned), it will throw a code. I have seen this happen. The sensors do not wake up unless the pressure changes or the tire is rolling, so this should not be an issue unless you mix and match sets and don't keep things straight.
I had a customer with a WRX with winter wheels and tires that we cloned his old sensors for the winters. You literally have to do nothing when swapping wheels, that is why you clone the sensor IDs in the first place.
Now. Once you program an ID into a sensor, it's permanent. I know of no way of reprogramming a sensor. So you would need to get blank sensors and program them. You cannot use used sensors for this, or preprogrammed new sensors.
Just read Ransom's thread. Thanks for the insight. I think I look into clones. Any preferred ones?
Error404 said:
A small square of electrical tape and just check your tires visually? You could also use a rectangle. Or a triangle. Maybe go exotic and do a rhombus or trapezoid, a higher order polygon is just showing off.
Not sure on the FR-S/BRZ but some cars prevent the driver from turning off traction/stability control if there is a TPMS fault, so it's ideal to keep the system happy in many circumstances.
Yeah, I would really go read around on the FT86 club.
I think I just bought new sensors for the new wheels so I wouldn't have to worry about any of this.
Appleseed said:
Just read Ransom's thread. Thanks for the insight. I think I look into clones. Any preferred ones?
I bought the Dorman TPMS reader/writer, it uses Dorman replacement TPMS' which are reasonably priced and claim to have quality batteries. I'm happy with it, and I would recommend it.
You can also reprogram the TPMS sensors to a new ID if you want, although you have to dock them in the reader/writer so you would have to dismount them.
