I bought a set of steelies and finally fitted them today. They came with everything except the TPMS so I got a set off eBay (as I wanted the rubber ones) that was supposed to be programmed to the Defender. Needless to say they did not register today. The tire place that installed them told me to bring it in if it happened and they’d program it but I was wondering if this is something that I’ll have to do every time I switch rims or does the car “remember” multiple sets?

 

Provided you purchased 433 mhz sensors they should work fine without having to reprogram them every time you mount your steelies. Most of the sensors are shipped in "standby" mode to save battery life and need to be activated. Sometimes you can activate them by releasing air out of the tire for 3-5 seconds.

 

Thanks! Theyre the ones I got. I never thought about the activation, so hopefully thats it!

 

Related to programming - has anyone figured out how to adjust the high/light load limits? I've aftermarket tires with different load limits.

 

Well I had issues with my second snow tire set. They just didn't want to report in. They were used Range Rover ones. Couple of ways to activate them. You can try airing them up and down. That didn't do much for mine. So I found that if you hold the lock and unlock buttons down on the key fob, the car will chirp. Then hold one of those really strong magnets near the base of the valve stem. Kind of move it around and adjust which pole is pointing where. You will know it has reset, when the mirrors magically waggle, kind of cool, like an angry hippo. Do it to each one in turn. They also need to charge up a bit by running. They say if you go under 15 mph for 5 minutes, it will get them to talk to the system as well.

I did all this, the TPMS was talking to my car, based on the mirror response (or it was a whopping huge coincidence). Still never came up on the display and I would get the little yellow light. Ignore the light on the dashboard, my mind finally said. Wasted enough time on this. I was at the dealer getting my activity key and asked if he could have the tech wave the "wand" over the sensors. They did, but no avail as well. Lo a couple of weeks ago, they just started working on their own, reporting pressure and all. Don't ask me which of the Voodoo methods worked, but this went on over 6 weeks. Patience, I suppose, lots of patience.

 

The ones that tirerack sells for the Defender worked perfectly out of the box without any need to reprogram.

re the question on high/low settings—those are specific to the car no matter what tires you get. Be careful though if you switch to LT’s since the low weight setting will likely put you below the car’s weight for the tire’s load rating as LT load ratings are usually set at 80 psi.

 

That was my guess on programming. Kind of sucks since it makes low pressure alerts and the whole point of monitoring a bit useless.

 

TPMS are required by law for safety now, and I suspect the liability lawyers would never sign off on changeable settings since they were set for the car irregardless of tires. They never mention airing down in the iguide even because according to “insider” LR does not recommend airing down their low profile tires when going off road.

 

The Range Rover was like having the robot from Lost In Space waving its arms about shouting warning, warning all the time. It had nothing to do with the TPMS sensors, but rather the box and its antenna, which went wonky about 15 minutes after the extended warranty expired. Besides, it was incredibly well mannered when it was at the dealer. Apparently that system had an issue with the antenna which would randomly disconnect and then fix itself. I really wanted to pull the LED that illuminated the really bright tire symbol, except it bonged and scrolled random warnings on the LCD all the time.

I never air down, cannot figure out why I would want to. Just did a 9,522 km trip doing my geo survey in Namibia and North Cape, South Africa, pretty much all on dirt. Been doing this off road, driving Land Rovers since 1974, ouch, showing my age. The only tires we aired down were the old Armstrong Norseman on soft sand. We ran much thinner tires back then (Hot Wheels were not a thing yet), which were actually superior on desert armor surfaces. However we avoid sand like the plague. You don't get paid extra to dig the car out of sand. Only ever had three flats off road over something around 50,000 miles off road on 5 continents and some really bizarre islands. Volcanic glass, **** tire on work truck with six previous patches and a 30-06 live round (head and case) stuck in the tread through the tire (that was weird). Airing down would not have done anything based on the arguments I have heard. Hey, if it works for you, rock on.

Airing down would not have achieved anything here, sagebrush fixed this problem:

 

Fascinating experiences. Sand is the one place it’s needed. Got stuck towing a trailer on cape lookout at 30psi, and walked out of it easily at 20psi. Otherwise haven’t aired down at all with my 20’s and they’ve survived worse than the TFL video.