Hi Folks.

I just had a new set of tires put on my 2008 Civic. When they were replacing the tires the mechanic said that one of the tire sensor stems was bad and needed to be replaced--he said he'd order one and I could come back and they'd install it.

When I left the shop (Farm and Fleet--if you're not in the midwest they are sort of a WalMart for Farm-related products and have a pretty trusted auto shop) the TPMS light was on--which was expected.

Well today I went and go the stem thing replaced, and the mechanics reset everything several times but while the TPMS light is now off, the low tire pressure light is on, and (get this) is blinking. There's nothing in the manual that I can find about it blinking. The mechanic ran codes and did the whole nine yards and rechecked all the tire pressures but still can't get the light to stop blinking. He said if it doesn't go off on its own, I'll probably have to have Honda look at it.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Mike

 

Your post is over a month old, so I assume you've had this taken care of already. I'm not an expert, but based on some reading I've done in regard to TPMS in general (not necessarily Honda specific), the sensor gets 'paired' to the car and you can set the required pressure as well. Perhaps that's not set correctly?

I'd be curious to know the final solution.

 

^ yeah pretty much. When ever you install a new TPMS sensor, it has to be "read" by a special scan tool and programed into your cars ECU. The light won't stop blinking until the new TPMS is programed into your car.

Considering this job was all done by a "walmart" type shop, I'd be suspect to how the original TPMS sensor was damaged in the first place. There's a different process when mounting tires with a TPMS valve stem. If you don't know it, you'll almost always break the sensor. My guess is that this is what happened. I'm sure that because of the type of shop this is, they also don't have the tools to program the TPMS.

 

Okay, so get this. The Farm and Fleet guy had gone around to all four tires and tried to link them up with the TPMS--he did that several times. His final answer was "derp, maybe it will just go off on its own."

I read other suggestions that it had to be driven at a certain speed for a certain amount of time, etc.

Well we drove it around with the light blinking for about a week and then I had to go out of town for work for a week. The following week it was still blinking all the time.

After, well, how long has this been? Maybe four or five days ago I started the car, drove about two miles, the blinking stopped and the TPMS light came on. Then after a few moments it went off, maybe blinked once or twice, and then shut off.

And neither the TPMS light nor the blinking tire light have been on since. So I guess my old mechanic dude was right and I just needed to drive it a while?

Either way, it finally went off, so I'm happy. This weekend was going to be the weekend of driving back to Farm and Fleet and arguing with a manager about how they were going to be paying for me to go to Honda to get something fixed that was working fine until they replaced my tires. Looks like I don't have to have that conversation now, so yay for me.

Thanks for the replies, folks!

G.--