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Really, it is not necessarily programming but rather registering the sensors. The receiver in your car, which receives the signal from the sensors needs to know which sensors to pay attention to. Otherwise it would be receiving all the TPMS sensors in traffic or parking lots. How would it know? Really by driving it around it literally forces the system to accept the ones it seems to always hear after a while. The wands, which are simply electromagnetic coils force the sensor to send out something akin to a pairing request. You can use a regular strong magnet to achieve the same result. You also need to have the vehicle in a receptive mode.
On a fun note, my own system got terminally confused yesterday. I had to transport my wife's Range Rover wheel to be repaired down to Phoenix, a 2 hour drive with the tire & rim in the back. When I re-started to go home the system now didn’t recognize any of the wheels or spare. Stayed offline for the next two hours. Got better by morning. It is an old, by tech standards, system in its design. Has its deficiencies, kind of; live & die by a bad design.
Bringing this thread back from the dead. Recently put OCTA wheels on the truck and used generic 433 mhz TPMS. The truck did not see them, the wand didn’t seem to wake things up, nor did deflation and reinflation. As a few have posted, I gave it a month of driving and today was apparently the magic moment. Driving on a short local trip and the truck decided that it was time to acknowledge that there were indeed sensors in the wheels! All now good…it’s a mystery.
Has anyone tried doing one or two wheels at a time?
I recently swapped my wheel out with the spare and took just a short while to register. I don't think the wheel has been used at all before.
I know from my motorbike, if I do one at a time, it will auto register which wheel it is. But I cannot do both simultaneous as it will not know which is front and which is rear. Having said that, the bike only has one sensor to reads both wheels. I believe the Defender might have one at each wheel?
Yes - it has to have a radio antenna at every wheel. So it knows which is which. You can swap any combo of wheels around, add in new etc and it will auto detect. I've noticed that if it's a new tpms to the car it takes longer to detect. Perhaps to avoid false adds. Whereas eg winter to summer wheels is immediate. But it's all automatic / you don't need to do anything.
Few weeks back with mate @GavinC and company, I broke the silly metal valve stem off the original TPMS sensor on a wheel which caused a debeaded tire. Swapped on spare. I was amused to watch TPMS figure itself out and it was reading air pressure 20 mins after I left the trail.
Fast fwd to this wknd: I decide to swap on the spare set of new wheels and tires which have been on my side porch since Nov 2023! Take offs from a 2023 Defender - W the crappy Wrangler tires. But I’m driving to Bozeman and a long road trip w the family this month and thought I might as well enjoy the smooth ride. This spare set of “onroad” wheels has the updated rubber stem TPMS - LR156918. Note: They shouldn’t be in “sleep mode” bc they came off a Defender on the dealer lot. Anyway.
Before swapping all 4 wheels I thought …. well why don’t I stick one on the front left to see if TPMS registers? Bc I want to put these rubber stem TPMS in my offroad wheels. “Curiosity killed the cat”
After awhile it gave me the warning - pics below. And now I’ve driven it around at least a day more and deflated / re-inflated the tire. Nothing. Interestingly no other tires are reading pressure anymore either, but those are the original sensors in my Ko2’s… havent swapped em. (Yes I am running one new wheel and wrangler LF and 3 K02’s in other positions w the metal stem TPMS while I test)
All this to say: Octa wheels guy above seems like a good plan. Just drive for awhile? They’ll sort? Is there any point in going to a shop to “wake these up” or even any programming they can do? (No…. Right?)
They'll all come back to life eventually. When I first got my second set of rims they were off and on WRT TPMS readings for a week or two. GAP tool will probably tell you you have a fault due to incompatible equipment. Clear this fault and things resolve. That's a workaround if you're feeling impatient.
THEN based on all of that advice, I bought this $250 tool on Amazon because I figured I can return it if it doesn’t work (because I also just bought 4 new TPMS sensors which may need this). It’ll take 7-10 days to get to me and then I’ll report back with the results. Bartec TechRitePro Tool (Just the tool, not the sensors in the kit) -- It was $228.
I’m going to try to wake these puppies up from “Ship mode” to “Park mode” which I believe is the issue. Apparently this has happened to others... we’ll see.
Note on below. Our sensors are made by Continental. Here’s a page from the user’s manual.
They'll all come back to life eventually. When I first got my second set of rims they were off and on WRT TPMS readings for a week or two. GAP tool will probably tell you you have a fault due to incompatible equipment. Clear this fault and things resolve. That's a workaround if you're feeling impatient.
BTW - pretty sure you’re right and I could wait it out but I can’t stand not understanding why a dealer can activate sensors when I can’t -- so curiosity got the best of me so I bought this TPMS scan tool to see what’s going on under the hood a bit more. No faults in Gap today btw.
Tonight I swapped BACK on the original tire & TPMS, within half a block it registered the pressure and error went away. Harumphf.
