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Hi all. My TPMS system seems to need a reboot or relearn. Any help is much appreciated. Here's the story -
2011 E350 Wagon, 120k. No previous issues with TPMS.
Wife took wagon out of town. Stopped for gas, found nail in driver-rear tire. Went to local tire shop, they patched. No more issues. She came home a few days and 400 miles later.
I daily drive the wagon and after 3 days the TPMS alert "no sensor" comes on for the driver-rear. I also heard a knocking sound and figure the tire shop didn't tighten the sensor and it was knocking around.
Went to my tire shop, they found the sensor was broken and had been epoxied back together (!). So they replace with a Shrader 33200, told me the alert would go out after a few miles.
Light has never gone out. Dash still shows driver-rear sensor missing. I also did the reset function several times. Dash graphic was something like this:
32 32
--- 38
I'm a DIY type so after a week and 200+ miles I decided to swap the rear tires to the front (and properly inflated for each corner).
Dash still shows driver-rear sensor missing. However the dash is showing the correct rear pressures as being on the fronts, and correct passenger-front pressure as being on the rear. So the fronts and rears are reversed on the dash.
Dash graphic is now like this:
38 38
--- 32
This tells me the new TPMS sensor is working - the system is reading that pressure correctly.
It also tells me the computer does not know the position of the sensors, and not seeing the driver-rear wheel.
I pulled fuse 70 from the rear panel. Left it out for several hours, drove for 15+ miles . Re-inserted, same issue. I've driven another several days, 100+ miles.
I've searched all around - is there a way to reboot, force a relearn or discovery?
Or is this a dealer-only thing?
I hesitate to go back to my local tire shop since they probably don't know what to do, or they would have done it.
If the reading stays blank at the same wheel after wheels swap - that would indicate bad receiver at this wheel.
Looks like the tire shop did quite a number to your car.
I never took the system apart, but having 1 tire with small leak, I swap it from front to rear.
My worry was that front wheel would read as rear and vice-versa, but to my surprize the car recognized wheel swap (I compared different pressure). That lead me to conclusion that each corner of car has separate receiver.
The pdf konigstiger linked says the car has sensors A69/1 to 4 who communicate with controller via radio.
Whole thing gets pretty confusing when you have tire sensor and car sensors.
Also my W212 is year 2014 and in those years technology change at lighting speed.
I never took the system apart, but having 1 tire with small leak, I swap it from front to rear.
My worry was that front wheel would read as rear and vice-versa, but to my surprize the car recognized wheel swap (I compared different pressure). That lead me to conclusion that each corner of car has separate receiver.
The pdf konigstiger linked says the car has sensors A69/1 to 4 who communicate with controller via radio.
Whole thing gets pretty confusing when you have tire sensor and car sensors.
Also my W212 is year 2014 and in those years technology change at lighting speed.
Yes, the car has a sensor in the wheel and receiver in each wheel well to read it like we can see in the documents stiger posted. This is nice as after tire rotation you don't have to teach the system what tire is where like I had to do with my long gone Tahoe. "Do this and that with switches and let air out from each tire in a certain order...". This is a lot better system for that.
It really seems OP has a problem with the rear left receiver, which seems to be a coincidence with the tire shop first breaking the sensor at the time of tire repair. It worked for several hundred miles but then stopped working. Tire shop hardly had anything to do with this but still...
This sensor stuff can be confusing as I experienced this with my system.
I purchased a new set of wheels and decided to get another set of sensors so the tires with new wheels are ready to go as well as the old ones with sensors on them. The shop doing the job got sensors for my car from the MB dealer based on the WIN but when they had installed them their sensor reader could not detect them. Without even driving the car they went to get another set of sensors and swapped them out. This time their reader detected the sensors fine but my car did not. They drove it for about 15 miles, which should be enough but nothing. They took it to an indy MB shop and they could not fix it either. I drove the car for about 3 hours but no luck.
Took the car back to the shop and they went to MB and got the sensors they had installed the first time. They drove the car for a few miles but no luck. They gave me the car back and asked me to stop by the indy shop that is located only 2 miles away and on my way there the system suddenly came alive.
Seems like my car reads a different frequency than what the general understanding is. It has been working fine ever since this incident but I'm a little worried when I change to those other wheels. It should work just fine as the sensors on those wheels are the originals that worked fine before I swapped the tires but...
My TPMS is all good after 3 visits to the tire shop. It turned out to be a problem with their tool getting the proper software update.
Thanks all for the help!
Good it works now but the tire shop getting the tool software update does not make sense.
The way this works is you need to have correct tire pressure sensors with the correct communication frequency for the car receivers to read. The tire shop cannot change this with any software they have. They can only read the signal the sensor sends. If the car receivers in each wheel well can read the signal then it all works.
Just to reiterate what we learned above, the 2011 E350 does *not* have signal receivers in each wheel well - there is a single receiver located above the rear left axle (I also got underneath and visually checked it).
The tire shop did talk about having to inflate the tires to a particular pressure as part of the procedure (and I had read about this online). The tech explained they had applied a recent update to the tool for recent car models, but discovered that it overwrote the earlier models. They did the update again and made sure to include all years. At least that's what I understood.
From the internet reading I've done and watching the Schrader tool video, it seems the TPMS sensor needs to be programmed to know what kind of car model it is communicating with.
It's nice to have zero warning lights on the dash!
Just to reiterate what we learned above, the 2011 E350 does *not* have signal receivers in each wheel well - there is a single receiver located above the rear left axle (I also got underneath and visually checked it).
The tire shop did talk about having to inflate the tires to a particular pressure as part of the procedure (and I had read about this online). The tech explained they had applied a recent update to the tool for recent car models, but discovered that it overwrote the earlier models. They did the update again and made sure to include all years. At least that's what I understood.
From the internet reading I've done and watching the Schrader tool video, it seems the TPMS sensor needs to be programmed to know what kind of car model it is communicating with.
It's nice to have zero warning lights on the dash!
Any explanation how the central receiver recognize at which corner certain TPMS is?
09-20-2018, 07:03 PM
