The first flat tire fiasco she had, a year ago, thirty miles from home in the pouring rain on the side of the Parkway with truck after truck after truck spraying water plumb over the fencerows.

I am no novice when it comes to anything tires (except pressure sensors).

I loaded everything I possibly thought we could need and headed to her rescue.

When I got there, the first thing I did was to hang my boot in the very dead very rotten soaking wet fur-bearing creature that was laying right where I needed to put my knee and slung it as far down the holler as I could send it; as hard as it was raining and as much water as was coming off that blacktop, within seconds any residue and maggots were washed away.

Hoping that a simple push-through plug would get her up and running and out of the pouring rain, I strung the air-hose up to it and commenced airing it up; --- the air was whistling out quicker that I was putting it in.

So, in the pouring rain, she worked about an hour and tossed two semi loads of women's in-the-car junk from on top of the spare tire cover to over the top of the seats to land wherever it did.

When she got enough junk out of the way, I lifted the cover to find the never-used little temporary tire that I had been harping to her for four years that should be checked was flat as a pancake --- good that I have on-board air and plenty of it.

I removed all the lug-nuts from the flat wheel; I don't know why they even bothered; it didn't need them; John Henry couldn't knock the wheel off with a nine-pound hammer.

Did I say it was raining ?

I laid flat on my back under there with the provided dinky scissor jack and one of my 12-ton bottle jacks holding it off the ground --- three of the lug-nuts screwed back on a couple threads --- just in case --- and commenced to hammering on the back side of the wheel and turning it a few inches every few licks --- I didn't have a nine-pound hammer.

After at least an hours hammering, I saw it move about the thickness of a dollar bill; encouraged, I didn't give up and after another couple hundred licks she give it up and popped loose.

I bolted on the little dinky temporary spare and sent her on her way --- to Harbor Freight --- to get one of those little trolley jacks and the biggest dead-blow hammer they had; I should have gotten one of those trolley jacks years ago --- those little things are extremely handy and will fit down in that spare-tire well right beside the spare and are way ahead of the little death-trap jack that came with it.

I spent the next day, using the new dead-blow hammer to knock loose all the rest of the wheels --- none of them came easy --- I right-angle wire-brushed the hubs and slathered on half-a-bottle of anti-sieze per wheel.

The new dead-blow hammer got placed in the spare well, along with the new trolley jack.

I hand-tightened every lug-nut to torque specifications --- I will shoot-to-kill any fool that touches any lug-nut on anything of mine, big trucks and all, with an impact wrench --- those things should be outlawed and thrown to the bottom of the rock quarry --- and I probably remove more tough nuts than any other man alive.

Then, we got on E-Bay and ordered a real wheel to match the other four --- if you can call a pot-metal alloy wheel "real" --- I would much rather they were genuine steel with some decent wire-basket hub-caps.

Used E-Bay wheel in hand, I bought and installed a brand-new tire and put new tire - wheel and all - in one of those big lawn-and-leaf bags, tied the top to keep dirt-daubers out, and put the whole mess in one of the storage trailers where either I could get it or whoever she was able to get ahold of could get it and take it with us when we ever have to rescue her again.

Here we are nine months later --- pouring the rain --- she comes in complaining that her steering wheel is lurching back and forth and the car is wobbling " from 20-mph to about 40-mph and then it smooths out".

She just described the typical steel-radial tire with a broken belt --- I hate radial tires.....

I went out in the rain, jacked it up, and removed the wheel to where we could actually see the tire; and, sure enough, one side of the tire looked good as new and the other side was all bulged out with a million sharp wires poking out and almost worn plumb through to the air inside --- it wouldn't have went another thirty miles.

I went and got my brand-new tire on my E-Bay wheel and discovered it was flat as a board.

When I aired it up and sprayed a bit of my secret recipe Joy dish-warshing detergent/water mixture around the valve stem, it was foaming like a mad dog.

I let the air out and placed the sidewall under the back of my truck.

I put the base of a 12-ton bottle jack against the rim and commenced putting the pressure on it until the bead finally broke free --- did I say I hate radial tires ?

I had plenty of all variations of stainless bolt-in valve stems and a sack-full of pop-in rubber lawn-mower stems --- but no TPMS stems.

It was dark and raining and I had never before ever messed with a TPMS.

The outer portion is way back in that deep recess where you can't see and can't get a tool.

On the inside, I could see the brass air tube that went from inside to out.

With the tire still on the wheel and it dark and raining, I couldn't see that little torx-headed screw that holds the sensor to the removable brass stem.

I did the next best thing --- I poked the small Harbor Freight bolt-cutters in there and snipped the sensor loose from the stem --- of course the sensor fell down inside the tire and we spent the next two hours fishing it out.

I used my stem puller to pop the leaking stem out and pop the new rubber non-TPMS stem in --- I sprayed plenty of PAM cooking spray on the new stem before popping it in.

I saturated the bead that I had just broken down with the rest of the can of PAM and aired up the tire --- a quick squirt of my secret recipe leak finder showed all was good to go.

I bolted her on and sent her on her way and called and ordered up another brand-new tire to replace the broken-belt tire and put back inside the lawn-and-leaf bag and back inside the storage trailer to be on hand for the next episode.

When I checked on her a while ago, she said the TPMS warnings were about to drive her crazy.

Sooooo, I have no idea whether this sensor that came in the E-Bay wheel is good or bad.

I am confident that nothing I did last night, including whacking it in two with the bolt-cutters has hurt the sensor in any way --- but it may have already been junk.

My question(s) is, will the vehicle read the tire sensors when it is sitting still ?

Can I place this E-Bay wheel's sensor on top of the tire, or on the wheel beside the valve-stem and the vehicle sense it's presence --- showing a flat tire, of course, as it would not be in a wheel ?

If this trick will work, that would tell me whether this sensor is worth getting a new stem for and putting it back in the wheel

A friend put a fancy set of wheels on his truck and moved the truck wheels, sensors and all, to his cattle trailer; he claims the TPMS in the truck will read the trailer tires.

 yes, it 'should' work..show a flat tire..though the TPMS 'computer' will have to 'learn' the sensor's there. Ask google for instructions for your vehicle (they ain't the same...)

for about $20 ? , you can get a 'module' that FOOLS the TMPS computer, get the one that broadcasts on both the 3xx and 4xx MHZ bands

about 5-6 years ago,friend was really PO about changing summer -winter tires... as only one set had the TPMS. so I spent the weekend and designed and programmed  a TPMS 'computer' that would AUTOMATICALLY locate all the sensors when you changed any of them...'silly' add-on I did was that if (when ? ) the tires/rims get stolen, it'd alert you

'theft in progress......'

TMPS is another one of those USELESS GIMMICKS that is a HUGE money maker while really doing NOTHING .

There must not be any sensor in her spare tire as it was flat as a pancake and nothing ever warned her; actually, seeing as most people neglect them until ten years later when they have their first flat tire and discover the spare is also flat, it seems to me that it would be more important to have a sensor in the spare than anywhere else.

I can't remember the year it went into effect; but, it is federal law that all vehicles have them and they are really a big headache to anyone who services tires as these little old ladies will absolutely worry you to death wanting you to air up their tires for free and then be back the next day claiming it is telling them they have a low tire --- you can walk them around the vehicle and show them that every tire has 38-PSI --- none of them are low --- and every one of them has the same amount --- and they will argue with you as if you were trying to pull something over on them; they believe the stupid technology before they will believe factual evidence.

I 2nd the AAA membership !!!

 Got the wife one and less than 12 hrs later she called  as her friends car had a flat (BTW TMPS lied......). 20 mins later the spare was on and they were on their way.

I've got car,truck and house insured with  CAA  and membership lowered the premiums. The savings PAID for the upgraded membership( 4 service calls, 200km tows) !! Costs me 72 cents a day for the pickup AND my Kubota tractor is INSURED in the house policy.

I needed to get a new furnace into house before being insured. All insurances are on the same day, my birthday so I can remember when to pay them....

In our neck of the woods, you would be waiting for days before a AAA wrecker or service truck would show up; none of the local businesses will fool with them; I think the closest one now is something like 85-miles away and they will send a kid in a car if they think a jump-start or bolt on the spare is all that is needed.

All some punk kid in a car could have done when the wife was on the side of the parkway was to let her borrow his phone to call me.

Several of my friends and business acquaintances are in the wrecker business.

I have asked them why they removed the big silver stickers from their equipment and am told that there is not much future in working for free as in they make these service runs and somehow never seem to get reimbursed for their efforts.

Of course, some new upstart will get himself a wrecker or rollback and commence to show the old-timers how things are done and they let him learn for himself the costs of having one of those big silver stickers on his machine.

Several years ago, a relative who lived in one of the larger metropolitan areas was bragging about the wonderful 24/7 road service he had paid for at one of the chain-gang tire shops when he bought a set of four new tires.

It's not like he lived way back in the bushes.

I made a bet with him; I told him to go to a parking lot at a mall or somewhere similar, in broad week-day light, in the middle of business hours, and remove the core from one of his wheels, letting the tire down about 2/3-flat, and then call his wonderful 24/7 assistance and see what happens.

We put a big portable air-tank in his truck and concealed it, so that he could re-inflate his tire after the failed experiment.

I told him to be sure and bring a cooler and something to read.

He called = "Yeah, we'll be right out."

After a three hour wait, he was foaming mad and gave up on them, re-inflated his tire, and left.

By then, it was getting down in the shank of the evening, when most people are thinking about locking the doors and going home.

I told him to move to a different location and let his girlfriend make the call --- she has a phone voice that could work for dial-a-sex.

She was sitting in her car beside the truck when she made the call and then she relocated to the other side of the highway to observe the proceedings;  and, in less than fifteen minutes, some loverboy showed up, ready to rescue this damsel in distress ----- he was terribly disappointed when  all he found was my big dorky cousin --- he actually got hostile and hateful and never even offered to change the "flat" tire.

An easy fifty bucks for me and a lesson not soon forgotten for my cousin and a chain gang tire company that will never see another nickel from him.

CTuckerNWIL wrote:  A little Black tape over the light on the dash seems to be the easiest fix.

I have used that trick on several occasions; it is even better if you can get the tape behind the clear plastic and over the source of the annoyance.

By the way, can you pick that flat-top you are holding in your picture; I mean really walk all over it like Doc Watson ? Salt Creek ? Bill Cheatham ? Billy in the Low Ground ?

It is good to know that we can reset the sensors using technology within the vehicle itself, instead of involving others and having to buy a scanner.

The style sensor her vehicle has consist of two parts; the sensor device and the pop-in valve stem.

I had hoped and thought that I could just place the uninstalled sensor in close proximity of the wheel with the missing sensor and the vehicle would identify it and read it as a flat tire; but, from what I am gathering from the video and other reading, for the vehicle to recognize a sensor, it must have some air pressure.

In our quest to get this figured out, I showed her how to access an information center that tells her all manner of interesting things that she had no idea it was capable of.

Ahh....if only everyone and everyone's wife were as awesome as you and yours  just so sad that it's not that way.

That computer mess of crap is the wife's --- I never drive it.

My newest truck is a 1991.5 --- well, actually that one is her's too; my newest is plain old 1991; but, the one I drive is 1985.

In a big truck, I want the dimmer-switch on the floor, sealed beam headlights, turn signals that stay on until I turn them off, real West Coast mirrors, wing-vents, saddle-mount wipers, a stand-up walk-in sleeper, and the front bumper so far from the front seat that I have to stop and rest when I walk around to tilt the hood; --- round headlights are a plus.

I will not drive anything with E-logs and I will never drive anything Volvo ever again.

I had the sensor that had came in the used EBay wheel that ended up leaking around the stem when the new tire was installed.

At the time, all I had that would fit were plain old rubber stems, so one of those got installed and away she went.

I got on Amazon and ordered up a set of four complete sensors and a package of five replacement sensor stems.

The stems are replaceable and pop-in just like any old rubber stem.

The stem is also the sensor's antenna.

I put the old EBay sensor temporarily on one of the new stems and had her drop it in the dash pocket; ----- it rode around for a few days and never did get picked up by the vehicle.

Then, I had her swap it for one of the brand-new sensors and just placed it in the dash pocket; --- she didn't get out to the main road before the Service TPMS Soon light went away and it was being read by the vehicle.

Curiously, though, even though it was just loose in a bag, under no pressure, it was showing 32-psi.

As the EBay wheel/sensor is probably dated from 2012, the first year for that style wheel, I figure the internal battery on that sensor is dead.

If something doesn't derail our plans tomorrow, I intend to actually install the new sensor in the wheel that currently has the plain old stem.

If I can get a hose rigged up to not leak, I am going to try a new trick to get the bead broke loose without having to remove the wheel from the car; I saw a YouTube video where a guy used a ShopVac and sucked all the air out of the tire until the bead pulled loose; in all my years of doing all my own tire work on everything from wheelbarrows to 18.4-38 rear tractors, I had never before seen anyone suck the beads loose with a ShopVac.  

I had never before seen anyone suck the beads loose with a ShopVac. 

That would be a lot of vacuum. I did not think they were that strong.

Maybe helping a little with a 'bump' from a hammer in the right place?

I am disappointed to say that I didn't get to try the ShopVac bead-breaker trick at this time; I just had too many pressing things to accomplish before the coming super-freeze to spend a day rigging up some sort of leak-free hose adapter to adapt the huge ShopVac inlet to fit a 3/8 hose.

It's not that it would have taken me a day to get it together, but the searching the place over for things that would work would have eaten up a lot of time.

I just used the bead-breaker feature on my trusty Harbor Freight manual tire-changer and it took about five seconds to get it loose; it sure helped to have an assistant to hold the mechanism and pole up out of the way while I positioned and then re-positioned the tire/wheel.

After our in-the-dark in-the-rain ordeal of losing a sensor down inside the tire when I clipped off the brass stem, I was looking over the old retrieved sensor and noticed that it (and also the new ones I bought) has two molded-on loops/eyelets/holes of about 1/8" id; it didn't take me a second to realize that the purpose of these loops must be for threading a long string through them to prevent loosing the sensor down inside the tire.

I threaded a length of strong feed-sack string through the loops and looped it around my wrist while I installed the stem and attached sensor.

A quick squirt of Pam cooking spray on the rubber stem enabled it to slide securely into place.

Before I started, I investigated and found the tiny screw that attaches the sensor onto the bottom of the valve stem was loose as a goose; I turned it two full revolutions before it took up the slack and then I snugged it up tight.

If I hadn't checked this, it would have vibrated loose and fallen inside the tire before she got to town.

Now, with the tire aired up and bolted back on, the car recognized the new sensor and the Service TPMS warning went away.

Ever since she had owned the vehicle, some ill-advised previous owner had rotated the tires, but had not re-programmed the vehicle; so, the tire positions were all wrong.

I grew up in a huge tire shop and if I came away with one thing, it is that rotating tires is one of the biggest scams out there, right up there with quickie oil-change places that pretend to change your oil --- your tread/tires will last a lot longer by leaving them right where they are.

That being said, I searched and found http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCmKoTsD9iY" rel="nofollow - this video   that explains how to reset the system to recognize the proper tire positions with technology built right in the vehicle and no need for any special equipment and no need to pay someone else --- which is always a plus.

However, when we went to employ the technique, the vehicle in the video is a 2008 and her's is a 2012 (Chevy Captiva Sport); her Info display does not have the "Relearn Tire Positions" option.

While I was puzzling over this omission of vital importance, she got on her phone and found updated instructions = Engine OFF and key in Run position, set the Park Brake, then simultaneously hold the Lock and Unlock buttons on the key fob thingie until the horn toots twice --- at which point the left-front marker will come on.

Let five or more seconds of air out of the left-front tire and wait a bit for the system to recognize the change and then the horn will toot once and the right-front marker will light.

Do the same at right-front, then right-rear, and finally left-rear.

Once the left-rear position is recognized, the horn will toot twice and you are done.

Of course, you must now replace the bled-out air pressure.

I inflated all four tires to 38-psi by my dual-wheel big-truck gauge; I got it at Harbor Freight and it is identical in every way and just as accurate as the forty-dollar ones that the tire service vendors sell; I know as I have several of those as well.

Within minutes of setting the air-pressure, the vehicle readout showed all four positions to have 41-psi.

Mission Accomplished !

With three more new complete sensors and five new stems at hand, we are much better equipped to handle the next leaking valve stem --- and not have to do the work twice.

 I learned a lot during this experience and I hope that my experience is of benefit to others.

Thanks to everyone for their input and comments.

My next project is to make checking the air in the spare much easier.

As delivered, the spare is loaded valve-stem down; --- probably for two reasons --- one being the wheel center is much closer to the face side and mounting it face down can be done with a much shorter mount assembly; and, two, considering people's habit of piling anything and everything in on top of the spare, having the stem on the bottom side prevents it getting knocked off or bent over in such a way that it leaks.

Amazon and EBay have all manner of various shapes of rigid valve-stem extensions available in various angles and even in complete "U" shapes; they also have various lengths of flexible braided stainless extensions.

I utilize the long braided flexible extensions on my inside duals to facilitate accessing the valve stems, especially since I have Centramatics between the wheels and they make valve-stem access impossible without some sort of extension.

I have the rigid "direction changers" on the inward-facing stems of the outside wheels.

I used a combination of the rigid direction changers and long flexible extensions to allow me to check and inflate my well pressure tank without the need to remove two insulated panels on the insulated cabinet I built around it.

I intend to use this same line of thinking to make checking and inflating the spare doable without the need to dismount it and flip it over.

I may even get fancy and route the extension through the floor and terminate it in a bracket somewhere easily accessible from outside the vehicle; thus, no matter how much junk she has piled on top of the back floor/spare-tire cover, I can easily check the spare-tire's air pressure --- of course, this would need be easily un-screwable to remove and use the spare --- I could up the pressure a few psi to allow for the bit that would be lost in un-screwing the extension.

GREAT you got her back on the road !!!

Must be nice to have a help for tire changing work ! I've never had anyone,even the OWNER of the tires, be around when I try to have 'tire time troubles'

I don't have  ANY 'free space' to bolt it in the garage, so I bolted it onto a jig that slides onto the forks of the A-C forklift.