I have recently purchased another set of rims and tires for the winter. My new rims don't have the sensors in them so i expected the TPMS light to come on. Can i disable this system while my winter tires are on the car? Should/could i purchase another set of sensors and install them? The rims i removed are the accessory 17 inch rims with Dunlop tires and i installed a set of 16 inch rims off a cooper that didn't have the TPMS system. Thanks for your suggestions. LM
I don't believe that you can disable the TPMS, but I do not own a MINI that uses it so I am not sure. If the warning light is not too obnoxious maybe you could live with it or put a piece of black take over the offending nanny light. From what I've gathered new sensors are in the $250 range. Plus not all wheels will accept the sensors. Sorry I couldn't give you a definitive answer.
+1 Either live with the light being on (that would drive me crazy) or add the sensors. I chose to add the sensors and purchased them through Tire Rack. They will work with most any wheel as long as there is enough distance between the valve stem hole and the tire bead. The TPMS sending unit occupies that space. The guys at Tire Rack can help you with those dimensions.
Thanks everyone for the helpfull hints. I was going to leave these tires on untill February or March but i'm not wild about the light being on so I'm going to look into putting sensors in the wheels. Kinda pricy though, yikes. Regards, LM
Try living with the light for a while. I have a set of track wheels and tires that I swap out several times a year and sometimes I end up leaving them on for weeks. At first the light was bothersome but slowly I got used to it and it doesn't bother me at all now.
A trick I learned from the Mustang guys is to take a set if sensors, install them in a sealed pvc pipe, pressurize said pipe through one of the valves and toss it into the trunk. They can then change wheels as often as they want without having to get new sensors all the time. I don't know if this will work on a Mini. I just dealt with the light on my Miata. Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk
I think the Mini sensors still count speed of rotation, not just pressure....so I dont think thatll work
Really? You mean they're part of the ABS system, sort of the opposite of the early cars? I drove my '09 Clubby for over a year with the light on, I got used to it after a bit. I did put the sensors in once I had to replace the tires tho...
I don't believe they are part of the ABS system. At least I can't understand how they could be. Folks who run without TPMS sensors are not reporting ABS failures.
The speed sensors are not part of the Tire Pressure System. The speed sensor on the front... Item #8 in the diagram below.
So..... Does anyone know if the MINI TPMS system uses batteries or is it battery-less? And is it indirect?? Here's what Wikipedia has to say about indirect...... Indirect Indirect TPMS do not use physical pressure sensors. Indirect TPMS measure the "apparent" air pressure, by monitoring individual wheel rotational speeds, and other signals available outside the tire itself. Most indirect TPMS use the fact that an under-inflated tire has a slightly smaller diameter than a correctly inflated tire and therefore has to rotate at a higher angular velocity to cover the same distance as a correctly inflated tire. Newer developments of indirect TPMS can also detect simultaneous under-inflation in up to all four tires using vibration analysis of individual wheels or analysis of load shift effects during acceleration and/or cornering, which can be realized in software using advanced signal processing techniques. However, the vibration analysis technique may require the use of additional suspension sensors which result in increased complexity and cost of the overall system as long as vertical chassis movements are concerned. That is why most current advanced indirect systems use the spectral content of the wheel speed sensor signals so no additional sensors are needed and the computations can also be carried out by usual processors for example in usual ABS or ESC control units.[citation needed]
OutMotoring has the best price, I've found for TPMS sensors. Search results :: MINI Cooper Accessories : MINI Cooper Parts : OutMotoring From what I've read, MINIs newer than '07 have radio based sensors and there are a couple of different frequency's used, that is explained at the OutMotoring site. I've heard of people putting all four sensors in a donut spare, in the trunk Dave
What Metalman wrote is my understanding. They need to be rotating... same reason you cannot reset an 09's TPMS while sitting still!
R50, R52, R53 = indirect. They compare the relative wheel speeds side to side and corner to corner. R55, R56, R57, R60 = direct. They use a TPMS sensor integrated into the valve stem. Externally, they're easy to tell apart. The direct sensors use a big chunky gray cap, while the indirect sensors have the regular schrader valve cap. Indirect pressure monitoring systems need to be rotating (relative speed means nothing when all wheels are zero), but you can use any wheel. Direct TPMS require compatible sensors mounted in each wheel, and it's recommended that you rebuild or replace the sensors with every tire change. The rebuild process involves new o-rings and possibly a new valve core (not sure, but I think it's more than just o-rings).