Does TPC display quickly after exceeding 6mph? Mine did--stopped after a tire change

Howdy,

I have 30,695 now on my the '16 RT I bought new. With this RT, and the '13 F800GT before it, always tire pressure would display within just few seconds of rolling past at least 6mph. I've had 5 tire changes between both bikes, and this had zero impact on TPC readout. A few hundred miles ago the same dealer shop that has done all my tire changes installed a set of Conti RA3 GT on the RT. When I left the shop that day, TP didn't display after 4 miles or so, so I stopped and called the shop and they said this was typical, 'they all do this...' so give it some time to reestablish communication. OK, even though this never happened previously to me on either bike. A few miles later both F & R pressures displayed and worked all 20 miles of the way home that day. Ever since then it's been erratic, and getting worse. Today the F came on after 1/2 a mile, and the R never did display. In the past week or so I've only been out a couple other times, and once it started right up displaying as per usual, but the other few times the typical pattern appears to be the front displays after .3 to .7 miles, and the rear displays after 7 to 9 miles, or in today's case which was less than 7m in total the rear never came on. I tried deflating and re-inflating tires and did another test ride, and no joy.

That both front and rear seem to be affected makes me think the control unit that receives sensor inputs might be starting to fail; as well the batteries are hopefully are only a couple years old in the sensors as the bike was manufactured between Jan-Mar 2016 so it seems doubtful it's a sensor battery issue to me.

Again, the shop told me essentially 'they all do this', which is patently false in my experience. Has this ever happened on your wethead TPC system? For those familiar w/ changing tires on these, what might possibly have been done during the tire change that might have caused this?

Thanks in advance. I've got a 4K mile ride starting on Tuesday so I'm guessing I'm hosed for this trip as to getting a warranty repair as clearly is behaving abnormally and this is jeopardizing its value for me.

Why not take it back to Ozzie's before the trip? At least you've got a failure point of reference for future warranty claims.

I think we have had a few times where the front did not display for a 1/2 mile. Leaving a residential area it may take that long before going 19 MPH. It takes 19 MPH to have enough centrifugal force to trigger the sensor.
Pretty sure I have never gone a mile without the rear displaying.

The only time I had a problem after a tire change is when I put my back wheel on my wife's bike and her wheel on my bike

Does anyone know if too much tire lube can mess up the TPM sensors?

Lee said:

Does anyone know if too much tire lube can mess up the TPM sensors?

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I would say no, the sensors seem well sealed to me.

Batteries can fail at any time so who knows. You could get a trigger which would wake up the sensor and display without starting the bike. I have a Ateq VT31, it triggers the sensor, the bike will display the pressure. It's costly if just used for this. You could get an EL-50448 Auto Tire Pressure Monitor Sensor TPMS Relearn Reset Activation Tool for GM Series Vehicle, it’s cheap about $17 on Amazon. The first thing I would do as other have suggested is make sure the dealer has this reported in the system, you'll be out of warranty in no time the way your are eating up the sMiles. If it is the battery they aren't easy to change, BMW won't they require a new sensor, expensive.

Jay

ExGMan said:

Why not take it back to Ozzie's before the trip? At least you've got a failure point of reference for future warranty claims.

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That's my plan John. We were going to leave around 8am Tuesday which is when they open, so I will def stop by at 8am and see what they say.

Lee said:

I think we have had a few times where the front did not display for a 1/2 mile. Leaving a residential area it may take that long before going 19 MPH. It takes 19 MPH to have enough centrifugal force to trigger the sensor.

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Says 6mph which matches what I've noticed driving out my 300' street as I'm never going over 7 or 8mph or so during that stretch and it has always lit up on queue until this tire change:

strataj said:

I would say no, the sensors seem well sealed to me.

Batteries can fail at any time so who knows. You could get a trigger which would wake up the sensor and display without starting the bike. I have a Ateq VT31, it triggers the sensor, the bike will display the pressure. It's costly if just used for this. You could get an EL-50448 Auto Tire Pressure Monitor Sensor TPMS Relearn Reset Activation Tool for GM Series Vehicle, it’s cheap about $17 on Amazon. The first thing I would do as other have suggested is make sure the dealer has this reported in the system, you'll be out of warranty in no time the way your are eating up the sMiles. If it is the battery they aren't easy to change, BMW won't they require a new sensor, expensive.

Jay

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Both front and rear is affected by this, but it seems front still is displaying, but only after .3 to .7 miles or maybe more, whereas the rear is much slower to turn on, up to 7-9 miles has been my experience very recently. Since both front and rear seem to be affected though variably, it could follow that the problem should be in the common part of the TPC system, which would be the RDC Control Unit which lives behind the rear seat and is accessible by removing the rear seat I believe. The only problem is changing tires doesn't seem like it could possibly affect the RDC Control Unit. Do the sensors get removed during a tire change, then reinstalled? I wouldn't think so, but if that were true perhaps they swapped the F & R sensors. I wonder about goop on the sensors. I don't know which tech did the job but if it's the main guy I don't think he would do that, slop lube onto to the sensors. I wonder if it isn't some kind of contaminant on the sensor which looks like this:

ncpbmw1953 said:

Says 6mph which matches what I've noticed driving out my 300' street as I'm never going over 7 or 8mph or so during that stretch and it has always lit up on queue until this tire change:

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That's interesting, I figured all Wetheads would be the same.
The 6 MPH figure matches for ASC on the RS but the RS manual shows 19 MPH for TPC.

The RT and RS use the same sensor.

I've always changed my own tires, been through 5-6 sets on my RT. The sensor isn't removed and shouldn't be disturbed while changing tires. The picture of the sensor isn't complete the opening contains the electronics and battery, it's filled with some epoxy or glue. I've taken the filling out and replace a battery, not easy, ever try to solder a battery? I was told the battery is a CR2032 it's not it will work but the correct one is CR2050 it's thicker.

Jay

Looks like the CR2050HR has tabs on it for soldering.

ExGMan said:

Looks like the CR2050HR has tabs on it for soldering.

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Yep that's the one, not an everyday battery sold at CVS or Walmart.

Jay

Well, after researching where the RDC Control Unit lives, I think I might have discovered the culprit, or at least am cautiously optimistic. When I installed a rear-view wide angle camera on the bottom rear of my 28L top case a few month's ago I made a loose coil of maybe 6 or so loops of excess cabling with a 3.5" diameter in each loop and draped it near and and touching the RDC Control Unit. I had no idea what the little black box did. Plus, to make matters worse, since it is in a confined area there was no real need to secure the insulated wire because it really couldn't go anywhere anyway. So my lasso of cabling I'm thinking is warping the signal from the tire pressure sensors, just enough to make it difficult to pair consistently. Plus it moves and jiggles around a little over bumpy roads etc, and this once again alters signal transmission to the RDC Control Unit from each sensor. This would be compatible w/ its erratic behavior. I have no idea what protocol this connection is made so the whole theory may not hold water, and also I did not have the issue after installing the camera in the first place which was maybe a month or so before I had the tires installed. Despite thisit seemed plausible enough to go ahead and secure the loop of cable well away from the RDCCU, so I did. Test ride: took .5m for the front to wake up, another 3.1m before the bloody rear lit up, so I'm thinking I'm still screwed

Well, I rode on another 3 miles or so, stopped and turned the bike off. After starting up and riding it took maybe 30 seconds at speeds over 6mph and suddenly both front and rear woke up. That's still much longer than default, but promising for sure. I rode another 4 miles or so, stopped, restarted, and this time both front and rear woke up very quickly again as per normal. So this does look hopeful as I've not seen both front and rear awaken together since this began a short time ago. If it's still funky in the morning when we depart on our 4K mile trip we will stop by Ozzies BMW on the way out and at least document the issue.

Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the update.

Interesting experience..

Interesting to hear about the minimum speed required, but I had an experience this last weekend that seems to go against this description.

I was out riding and my TP reading on the dash showed my rear tire being 2 Lbs lower than I target. I pulled into a Kwik Trip because I have used their "automated" tire inflation system before on car tires with great results. Theoretically, you set the desired pressure on the display and then hold the inflation valve on the tire until the system beeps at you - easy peezy. BUT, after following the directions and hearing the beep my bike display showed that my tire was now 15 lbs lower than when I started!!! I went through the routine very carefully again and had the same results! Luckily, I had my portable inflator with me - so I put the bike on the center stand, attached the inflator to the bike and started it up. I noticed that the bike was powered on and- much to my surprise - showing the inflation level of the rear tire (only). As I watched the display kept rising as the pump worked it's butt off until I hit the desired pressure and disconnected the pump. It was really handy to be able to monitor the pressure as the tire was being filled - but I'm not sure how I got it in this mode - maybe it was related to the severely under-inflated condition of the tire?

Ski

PS. By the way, this is the second time I stopped at a gas station and found their tire inflators not working - the first time I had to drive about 1/2 mile on an almost flat tire to get to a working one.

This is exactly what happened to me the first time I tried to top-off the front tire on my then new-to-me RT. I don't know as I type this what year bike yours is but on mine the front valve stem doesn't stick out far enough to allow a gas-station fill valve to seat fully. Though it sounds like it's working, it's actually letting air out.

In my case I had to ride it home with only 22psi in the front wheel. Thankfully I waited until I was almost home to top it off, from that gas station it was only a mile on a 40mph street. I limped home at 15 mph. Lucky for me, I've never had a front tire go low on me before but I was utterly SHOCKED at how horrible it steered. I mean, I took a corner at 10 mph and had to fight it through. I now have some actual experience and know that should the low pressure red ever go off while riding at speed I need to get off the road RIGHT NOW!

On the plus side I got to test the TPMS warning (red) light and know that it actually works.

The next day I went out and bought Ryobi air pump for the garage, a patch kit, and a six-pack of 20 gram CO2 canisters and a valve stem adapter to carry with me. Not doing that again!

Just returned from 3200m trip and the problem continues. I have no idea now what the heck caused this but on no uncertain terms it happened directly after getting the tires changed. I will be taking it in next week. It's lost its reliability now completely as I got the alert 3 or 4 times now that the rear tire pressure dropped precipitously, and it hadn't changed at all. I wonder what the heck they did to it. Could be the tire carcass perhaps? Apparently if there was RF interference that may show on a fault code check.

Thanks for the update.

Well, since returning home from our 3.3k trip I've ridden the bike twice now, the first was about 40m and the second about 170m and dang the TPC worked flawlessly the entire time. This, to me, rules out the tire carcass since nothing material has happened to it other than some normal wear. This also seems to want to rule out the wiring issue I mentioned, tapping into a power lead that feeds the right front accessory socket. Which now leads me to believe something the shop did during the R&R of both tires did something to the sensors that appears to have resolved itself after 3,400 miles of misbehaving persistently but erratically. So now I'm wondering did they use some kind of compound lubricant that got stuck on the sensitive part of the sensor as it were, and now has slowly flung itself free? I don't know what else to think at this point, and I'm not sure I believe it will stay fixed! I have another 1993m until the end of the warranty so I hope it fails quickly if it's going to again!

Anyway, today's 170m was mostly spirited curves and man these tires are clearly the best as far as handling is concerned for me the bike just feels so solid and planted and turn-in is just right. 10 out of 10 and I will be buying another set if they wear reasonably well and don't commence to howling