Is it possible to calibrate the PSI on my TPMS?

belchfire · October 19, 2022

I bought new tires yesterday and they had to replace two TPMS sensors. When I got the truck back, I noticed that they were all different pressures. No big deal. When I got home, I grabbed my pencil gauge and aired them all up to 45 PSI, but the dash is still showing different pressures. The two OEM sensors are accurate, but the two replacements are several PSI off. Is it possible to calibrate the PSI on the system to a known good number?

CamGTP · October 20, 2022

No, not exactly.

All you can do it set the pressure with a mechanical gauge and then you can re-learn the sensors to the truck. They should be pretty close to what the mechanical gauge is set to.

The TPMS tool is like $12 on amazon, they work good. Then just follow the TPMS procedure to reset them.

If that doesn't work and the aftermarket sensors are still off, then they are to blame and the only way to fix it would be to replace them with different sensors.

belchfire · October 20, 2022

The shop that replaced my tires has four OEM take-off sensors and said they'd swap them for me for $20. I figure that's an easy solution and not a bad price to pay to demount and remount two tires.

Edited October 20, 2022 by belchfire

LDM · October 20, 2022

Aftermarket sensors tend to be hit or miss. You can try using the tool to reset them but if they are still off you can't calibrate them to make them more accurate. I'd go with the OEM option as it will probably give you the most accurate reading since you have the option available.

JimCost2014 · October 20, 2022

1 hour ago, belchfire said:

The shop that replaced my tires has four OEM take-off sensors and said they'd swap them for me for $20. I figure that's an easy solution and not a bad price to pay to demount and remount two tires.

Not sure if you asked, are the sensors the correct frequency for your truck?

It's Tim · October 20, 2022

1 hour ago, belchfire said:

I figure that's an easy solution and not a bad price to pay to demount and remount two tires.

All depends on how old the batteries are...

rav3 · October 20, 2022

38 minutes ago, JimCost2014 said:

Not sure if you asked, are the sensors the correct frequency for your truck?

If they weren't correct frequency they wouldn't connect at all & have no readigs

The Zip · October 20, 2022

It's Tim is correct. Although the oem sensors may work, you won't do yourself any favors by using old sensors. The batteries in TPMS are not replaceable and once they go, you have to replace the entire sensor. I haven't seen a guage that tells how much life is left in the batteries.

16LT4 · October 24, 2022

A pencil gauge is far from accurate. Verify with a a quality dial gauge; cheap gauges like HF gauges can be off by up to 5 psi, and pencial gauges by 10 psi or more; theyr'e entirely dependent upon application speed.

I don't use the dash readout for tire pressure; in fact, I've removed it from the queue to avoid having wasted, useless displays in the cycle.

Edited October 24, 2022 by 16LT4

belchfire · October 24, 2022

17 hours ago, 16LT4 said:

A pencil gauge is far from accurate. Verify with a a quality dial gauge; cheap gauges like HF gauges can be off by up to 5 psi, and pencial gauges by 10 psi or more; theyr'e entirely dependent upon application speed.

I don't use the dash readout for tire pressure; in fact, I've removed it from the queue to avoid having wasted, useless displays in the cycle.

I realize that all gauges can be off. However, given that I used the same gauge on all four tires, I can tell that the replacement sensors are not reading the same as the two OEM sensors. I scored a set of four OEM sensors from another set of tires/rims that I had, so I am tempted to have those two swapped for the OEMs that I have, but given @It's Tim and @The Zip's comments about battery life, I wonder if that would be smart. I don't know how old the batteries are in the extras I have.