TPWS mulfunction

This message came on the display of my 2020 4runner today. The tire pressure for all 4 tires+ spare is 36.
On 2/6 I did a 5 tire rotation so the passenger rear tire does not have tpms. The tire with tpms is in the cargo area. Until 2 hours ago everything was fine. The display showed tp for all 4 tires without any issues or errors. 2 hours ago this message came up out of nowhere. Anyone seen this before? You guys think it's related to the 5 wheell rotation even though it worked fine for a week? Def trying to avoid going to the dealer for any reason if possible

 

That's what my 2020 Pro did when I added the 5th sensor to the spare. I think the system is just confused and will fix itself if you put all the sensors on the active wheels.

 

I hope you are right. I'm going to put the wheel with he sensor back on and see if it fixes itself. it's just weird that everything was fine for a week.
Did you have to take your car to the dealer to get it fixed?

 

I just hit the reset or whatever it's called and drove around. In 15 minutes it was back to normal.

I rotate tires front to back, but, the spare in a pro is different anyway.

 

Just like you said the system reset itself ocne I put the tire with the tpms back on. The mulfunction message is gone and pressure for all tires shows up. Thanks. I figured the that the pressure for the 3 tires would show fine when I do 5 tire rotation but I guess for the next 12k miles the mulfunction is gonna be there. Annoying

 

Yes the truck is "smart" enough to know that your sensor is not in the correct location.

Do you not care to have a pressure monitor in all 4 of your equipped tires? I find them useful.

 

No, it doesn't know. it is a simple tpms sensor. The sensors system is not active till the wheels are in motion. The TPMS readings are blank when you start the car in the morning.

 

Sit there long enough and they will activate though... without moving or rolling.

If it wasn't smart, how would it know that the sensor that was in your rear wheel, prior to tire rotation maintenance, is now in your front wheel, after the reset procedure? One does not need to manually configure moving of the sensors, as long as they move to an appropriate location (one of the 4 drive wheels on non-Limited models).

 

I would like to keep that if possible. I guess I would have to add a sensor to the 5th wheel to avoid getting the malfunction. Or not bother with 5 wheel rotation.

 

Sadly, I don't think we can add a 5th sensor and make that work, either. At least without a lot of work. I believe @Glenn Goodlett tried that. Only the Limited trim supports sensors in all 5 wheels.

The only option I can think of, for the inclined.. would be to figure out a software hack so that they can run Toyota's software on a personal computer.. then one could reprogram their TPMS module/system his or herself each time they performed a tire rotation, deleting the removed wheel's sensor from the software system, and then adding the sensor from the spare that is now on a drive wheel to the active system. It wouldn't be a lot of work at all once the practice was setup and implemented. Basically you'd just do what the guy at the dealership service dept. does when he reprograms your TPMS, but in 5 minutes fo free 99.

In the car world, at least for European cars, we were always figuring out how to hack the ECU's so we could manipulate things to our liking, be it turbo boost, or lighting. But it doesn't seem like a lot of that goes down around here. There is actually a lot of functionality on this 2020 Toyota - plenty to play with if anyone cared to do the work. Then again, Japanese might be harder to translate than German... and also perhaps the Japanese lock their ish down tighter?

 

That sounds like a whole lotta of work and out of my league. I'm hoping that if a new sensor is installed/registered on the spare wheel and the spare wheel is on the truck then the system will recognize the new sensor and not throw out the malfunction message. I do not care that the display will not show the pressure for all 5 wheels like the Limited. As long as it shows the pressure for the wheels that are installed. If not then back to this lol

 

A 5th sensor will just confuse the system. I tried.

On another note, you can remove the sensor without removing the tire from the rim. You do need a bead breaker and should probably rebalance the wheel when you add or remove the sensor.

 

I recently had new tires mounted at Discount Tire. The sensors were working correctly. For the past two days temps have been in the 20’s at night and 30-45 during the day. Yesterday and today I started the vehicle up sensors read pressures then I stopped at the gas station and turned it off. Once back in it the pressures did not reappear my whole 30 min drive to work. The past two evening coming from work they have not registered until I’ve been driving for 15-20 mins. The tires I’m trimming are Falken Wildpeakes C load on stock TRD OffRoad Wheels. Doesn’t make any sense.