Does tpms tire sensor need to be activated by a tool?

There's the usual button under the steering wheel on Gen2 to do this but don't know about Gen 3. But in general if you have the right TPMS sensors they're compatible with Gen2 and Gen3 and probably most other Toyotas of similar age.

For example I bought a set of worn out tires on some Gen3 wheels that had been sitting for years for my Gen2 project car and they sat for a year at my place as well and then I had new tires put on them a month ago and put them on my Gen2 and went on a road trip with no tire pressure warning light at first. After about an hour into the trip the light came on, but after road trip was over warning light went away after car not driving much.

Then soon as I drove lots of freeway miles in a single day it came back, then went away after that. I assume that's failing battery electrolyte that's impacted by too much centrifugal force, but perhaps the worst problems to deal with on a car are the ones just intermittent enough to get you to procrastinate.

And yes I do have techstream and plan to diagnose which wheel when it comes back and get some huge tire irons and follow the Youtube videos on replacing it myself, which I'll post about... But more to the point, you don't have to program anything and TPMS is standardized across most Toyota vehicles of similar age, but once they get old, you'll have problems.

 

It's one of those things you can DIY fix by buying one for $10 online if you have the tools to do it. Or go to place that did your tires for you and have them charge you $50 or more... What I learned from this thanks to PriusChat a month ago is TPMS have their batteries embedded inside the plastic & you can't simply replace the battery, but have to buy a new TPMS.

 

I like to use a hand pump for the exercise when adding air to car tires... Also, do you have a link to the you tube video you watched? I haven't got around to researching it...

 

Did the one in question come with the ID? On a piece of paper maybe? (I have been buying Dorman units that are pre-programmed with and ID but they did not include the ID).

I would say you got 3 good ones, and now 2 bad ones, (the seller replaced a defective one with another defective one), since you got 3 to work so should the fourth….

 

Near a Walmart? They have pretty reasonable tire service pricing. I believe it takes 40 PSI for the bead to seat, usually beyond a 12V tire pump’s capability (while air is seeping past the bead)…

 

Some sensors are universal and may come blank, without an ID. (I have not gotten my hands on one yet)…

I hope you get a new one programmed in soon…

 

Pacific is the brand on you're car new . E bay and Amazon have this brand . They also make the center caps and trims for most of the wheels that Toyota sells look on the back of the center caps of your Prius and it will say the word Pacific show the word specific. The logo has green and red in it but if you look for the Pacific logo in eBay or Amazon you will be shown that logo that company is the same company that made the original sensors in your Prius when it was shipped from the factory.

 

It's really helpful to have a tool that can "ping" a TPMS sensor to confirm that it works. You enter the year make & model so the tool can send the correct "wake up" signal and read the response.

The sensor you received might be the wrong one, defective, or might might be not programmed correctly. (Universal sensors need "to be told" what frequency, ID#, and message type they should use.)

The fancier ($$) tools can program their own sensors (example- autel tools can program the autel MX sensor). The high end ones have a OBD2 cable to automatically enter the ID's into the car's ecu.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

The button under the steering wheel doesn't have anything to do with waking up the transmitters in the tires. What the button does is tell the ECU inside the car that whatever pressures are in the tires right now are the pressures you want, and it sets its warning thresholds to be so many % below those. So the only time you would have a reason to press that button would be when you have changed your mind about what tire pressures you like. (Or when you have rotated the tires, if you keep different pressures front to back, because it will remember the pressures you liked before according to the transmitter IDs, not according to where they are on the car.)

There are various ways of waking up a transmitter so it will transmit its signal. To maximize battery life, they generally stop transmitting if they aren't moving and the pressure isn't changing quickly, or if the pressure is just atmospheric (like when the transmitter hasn't been installed yet). One should start transmitting if there's been a sharp change in the pressure, or if the tire rolls down the road a ways.

Or, as mr_guy_mann mentioned, there are some tools that can send the sensor a signal that wakes it up.

 

Do you mean “a piece of equipment designed to perform a specific task” or “an donkey?”

There’s no shortage of people who are tools.

 

In hand no signal . In tire with pressure it's signal transmitting ready . Movement or pressure changes wakes transmitter.

 

Anything else you own in said frequency. Will wake the transmitter too. A ham type radio tuned correctly etc.

 

Get an old pressure cooker The kind with the locking top drill four holes in the top of it and mount the TPMS sensors to the lid Lock the lid down the two pieces together and then squirt 30 lb of air into one of the valve stems pumping up the old pressure cooker. I imagine you could do this and carry the pod out to the car and boot the car up with the pot sitting on the front floorboard see if it detects the sensors or something like that. That just sounds like it'd be easy because to find an old pressure cooker It wouldn't be an issue and then you could just have that around test TPMS sensors I guess kind of funny but it might work then again most people just pay the $39 with the four with new batteries