TPMS owns me...

Searching this site and finding bad information owns me...

I feel stupid now...

I read somewhere on this board that you can cut the valve stems off of your TPMS sensors and it does not affect their operation.

So I did, to get them to fit in my new wheels using banding.

The inside barrel of my rims doesn't allow much room for these. It's pretty much flat - the same diameter of the bead. except for a very narrow channel. If I mounted them as a whole piece, with the stem pointing in the same direction as the channel, they stick out like /\. I thought they'd be more out of the way if I mounted them flush.

So I bought four sensors, hacked them apart, and banded them.

Dealer says they can't see any of them with their scanner. @%^&!

I search outside of this site and confirmed with several different web pages that the sensors use the valve stems as antennae.

So I am posting my self-induced pwnage so that others may learn. The banding with the breeze make-a clamp kit (per the banding threads) is perfect. These things aren't going anywhere until I try again

Someone please tell me I'm wrong and the dealer just didn't do it right.

Anyway, pics of the carnage:

On noes! Don't do it!


It is nice and flush:


There's just no room in these rims for these TPMS sensors:

 

 

LOL...whaaaaaaaat the hell....mann..I give you props for posting this.

 

Thanks... Yeah, I laugh at myself on this. I don't want anyone else to go through this.


I am just pissed that I have to dismount and re-mount the tires to fit new sensors. Every time you do this, you take a chance of damaging the rims.

Now, I was leaving my GT rims in-tact, with tires, sensors, and all, but maybe I should have the sensors pulled from the GT rims (noting their positions on the car) and just re-use them (?).

Then I can sell the tires and keep the rims in case I ever want to go back to stock. I dunno...

There's still the whole "do pre-07 sensors work in an 07" issue, for which I found one thread that says they do, but with my luck, that post will be wrong like the one that said to hack the stems off and I'll buy and mount another set just to find out that pre-07 sensors dont work on 07's...

 

I always wondered what they looked like.

 

You can hack off some of the valve stem but you went kind of crazy there. Also you can find a metal bracket that attaches to the band and sensor at any local hardware store and it works much better with no need to remove that much of the stem. From my understanding both the valve stem and upper holes need to be uncovered for it to register. I would turn it sideways and see if it changes anything

 

Oh Noes!!
Thanks for the heads up, my respect to you for sharing~