TPMS replacement

[strokeofgenius]

I bought 2 tpms from ali express very cheaply.I also bought the learning tool.You need this in conjunction with the motoscan tool/gs 911.Easy enough to delete the old ones and learn the new ones which I did before I dropped in my wheels to have new tyres fitted.Unfortunetly the tpms I bought were missing a piece thats sold seperately so I had to re fit and relearn on the old tpms.They lasted a further 2 months and now I have flashing lights and tpms faults.Bike is a 2015 k13 ms so valves over 7 years old.I will not be removing the wheels again until next set of tyres needed or a puncture.I deleted the 2 tpms valves tonight but still flashing a fault.Black insulating tape going over fault lights next.Interestingly the cheap ali express valves and original ones both looked identical and said schrader valve on both.

[alancu]

Folks,

Just to say, after both my TPMS sensors gave up the ghost on my K1300R I did the battery replacement thing (several you tube videos show the approach), apart from the hassle of getting the tyres off the wheels the actual battery replacement was pretty straightforward. If you have access to a small tip soldering iron, a steady hand and a good magnifying glass it is not very difficult. Then you have the benefit of retaining your original known quality BMW units and no coding issues. Two things I'd recommend:

1) buy the replacement batteries that have the tags presoldered (per the previous posting) and get decent quality, the last thing you want is to buy some low quality battery off ebay that might fail early. In my case I ordered these:
https://uk.farnell.com/panasonic-electronic-components/cr-2032-hfn/battery-lithium-2pin-horiz-cr2032/dp/1298246?CMP=i-ddd7-00001003

2) epoxy the new battery in place and using this cheap "wake up tool" on amazon or ebay (EL-50448..seems generic, in my case I got the cheapest) then fully test your work before you remount the wheels.

[richtea]

BMW confirmed they are not covered by my extended warranty. Pretty disappointing for a useful bit of safety equipment.
They also gave me a price - £111 each (plus several sundries) which approximately matches the Motorworks price of £131.

I'll not embarrass BMW by saying how much their quote was for the parts & labour, but let's just say it makes their 6k service look extraordinarily good value.

So, here's the plan:
1. Buy two cheapies off Amazon
2. At the next tyre swap, get one Amazon one fitted (I presume this is possible by Wheelhouse - they just screw in, right?)
3. Practice battery replacement (as shown by YouTube) on the secodn Amazon one
4. Replace the batteries on the BMW ones
5. Pop refreshed BMW ones on shelf and wait for cheapie Amazon ones to fail
6. Put BMW with their fresh batteries back in

So - that time has come. Two tyres required, and the rear pressure monitor no longer seems to connect, whereas the front is still going strong.

Here's what I intend to purchase (using the MAX BMW website for the part number for the rear monitor which gives ' 36 31 8 532 731'):
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255690469537

Then that will be steps 1 & 2 completed.

I just need the cheapie to survive for 2 months as a minimum.


Dear Andy - please can I nip over & borrow your 'wake up' tool, whilst simultaneously casting a jealous-yet-appreciative eye over your K1600GT??

[andym2]

Dear Andy - please can I nip over & borrow your 'wake up' tool, whilst simultaneously casting a jealous-yet-appreciative eye over your K1600GT??

No problem... WFH most days so I'm usually here.

[richtea]

V kind of you - thanks!

Is it worth waking them up before putting them in the tyre - just to make sure they work? (is that possible?)

[andym2]

I've never tried, but can't see why they wouldn't wake up before fitting, though they would then send a pressure of zero and there might be some 'don't activate you're still in the box' logic built in. Do they have a sticker with a number on? If they do you can just enter that in GS-911. From memory you can have two front and two rear sensors registered in the TPMS ECU, in which case you can pre-register them and they should work as soon as the new tyres are fitted.

[richtea]

So, here's the plan:
1. Buy two cheapies off Amazon
2. At the next tyre swap, get one Amazon one fitted (I presume this is possible by Wheelhouse - they just screw in, right?)
3. Practice battery replacement (as shown by YouTube) on the secodn Amazon one
4. Replace the batteries on the BMW ones
5. Pop refreshed BMW ones on shelf and wait for cheapie Amazon ones to fail
6. Put BMW with their fresh batteries back in

An update:

TLDR: the 3rd party TPMS units work well once you remove the original one from the vicinity of the bike
If you have two working & registered TPMS units (i.e. 2 rears, or 2 fronts) near/on the bike then they'll clash, and the TPMS system won't know which is the one inside the tyre.

Steps so far:
1. Buy two cheapies off Amazon.
Done. eBay actually.

Step 1a. Visit Andym2 and register the new TPMS units:
- admire shiny K1600GT
Done! It looks good in the flesh - better than an RT. And some very subtle crash bars added too - none of your mad tangle of tubing like on GSes. Tasteful.

- 'pre-wake' the eBay cheapies, and then register them with my K1300S
Done, but only after a Battle of the Dongles:

We tried Motoscan + UniCarScan, then Motoscan + OBDLink, and then finally GS-911. No points for guessing which worked best:

- Motoscan + UniCarScan: struggled to connect the UniCarScan dongle to Bluetooth for some reason, even though it worked fine at home. It also refused to accept the manually entered unit IDs (tried that at home beforehand).

- Motoscan + OBDLink: connected easily to Bluetooth, but Motoscan still didn't see either of the new TPMS units when auto-scanning for them. The auto-scanning also 'lost' the existing two units in the actual tyres in the Motoscan UI, and on the dash. Eeek.

- GS-911 to the rescue: connected easily, re-found the existing TPMS units, discovered the new TPMS units too, and added them as the second pair (you can have two pairs of TPMS units registered with the bike). Andy also added the TPMS ID manually just to see if that worked. Of course it did.

All that was done with the help of Andy's £10 'waker upper' gizmo and his extra dongles.
Thanks very much Andy!

Step 2. At the next tyre swap, get the eBay one fitted
Done. Result:
Initially impressive. The dongle worked straight off - no need to re-enable it. I rode out of Wheelhouse, and it immediately read 2.9! Woot. Result. Better than the original battery-failing one. And then 5 miles later - red triangle warning sign plus 0.0 pressure. Eeek. Park up, examine tyre. Perfectly solid and pumped up. Switch bike off, and on again, and the dash is back to reading 2.9 again. Off we go, 2 miles later, red triangle. And so on - all the way home.
Grrr.

[EDIT]
The solution is to remove the old TPMS unit from the vicinity of the bike, and then re-test.
I had the original BMW one in my tank bag whilst riding home, and it with it's weedy battery it occasionally managed to connect to the TPMS system, and of course then showed 0.0 + red triangle.

 Final impression: the cheapie works OK. Happy days.


3. Practice battery replacement.
Next step.

I now have a genuine BMW one after that, which (if I can manage to extract and replace the battery) I can re-use when the second BMW one fails.

[andym2]

Hi Richard,

I assume you've still got the old BMW one? Could it be that that was waking up in your pocket, deciding it had hight priority as it's Rear A rather than Rear B and confusing the poor old ECU? Maybe make a note of the number then delete it from  the ECU and see if that lets cheapie stay connected. If you enable the temp display in Motoscan that might give you an indication of which sensor it's reading too.

[richtea]

Hmm, very good point!

I'll ride out again tomorrow, with the original TMPS nstaying at home, not in the tank bag.
And I'll report back...

[richtea]

You are one smart cookie, Andy. Thanks for saving me the thick end of £200.
Once the old TPMS unit was removed from my tankbag the new one worked perfectly. Silly me.

I've edited yesterdays post to give the true result - to avoid confusion when someone reads the result in the future months/years.

[andym2]

It's good that sorted it out.

I was looking at getting some smaller wheels for my car today, so bothered to look up how to code the sensors using VCDS (diagnostics for VW group cars). Turns out they auto learn; you just fit them and drive until they are recognised. So all you'd need to do in VCDS is re-enable TPMS if it's been turned off. I also found out you can set the auto transmission so it thinks it's in a Porsche Cayenne rather than a VW...

[richtea]

Hmm, very good point!

I'll ride out again tomorrow, with the original TMPS nstaying at home, not in the tank bag.
And I'll report back...

And a quick update: 3,000 fairly hard miles later, it's still working well.

Thoroughly recommended. Just be sure you have a trustworthy way of waking the new sensor up!

This is the link:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255690469537
£21 for a pair.