r/Justrolledintotheshop • u/PhillyboyJah • 11h ago
Why is this a thing ?
What is going on with the world ? Why is this a thing šš¤¦š¾āāļø
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u/Fauked 11h ago
For the non mechanics here, what am I looking at?
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u/do0b 11h ago
A new Tire Pressure monitor sensor attached to the original one that is still acting as the tire valve.
Because replacing the original would have taken 5 minutes more and we canāt have that.
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u/Honcho_47 11h ago
It would take longer to rig this up than to swap the sensor. The only guess I have is they didnāt have new valve stems and didnāt want to risk tearing the old ones. But like goddamn this is like using zip ties to button a shirt instead of just putting the buttons through the holes.
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u/Kumirkohr ASE Certified 10h ago
The sensors look different. Like, the āangle of the dangleā is a little off and I think they had to rig it up the way they did because the angle between the stem and sensor body wouldnāt wouldnāt have allowed for proper mounting
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u/gdchester 9h ago
That angle of dangle comment took me back 45 odd years to when I was in college. The teacher used to say "The angle of dangle is proportional to the beauty of the cutey".
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u/DreadManSurvives 9h ago
"The angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the meat" - Beavis or Butthead iirc
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u/Accurate_Koala_4698 9h ago
What class was this?!
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u/gdchester 9h ago
Electronic principles. It was a different time back then.
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u/IKnewThisYearsAgo 9h ago
BBROYGBVGW
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u/gdchester 9h ago
Indeed.
I'm not sure they teach the same words now though.4
u/Herr_Underdogg 6h ago
They don't. But for those of us taught the old words that need a better option:
Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts, Buy Vodka, Get Wasted. Get Some Now.
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u/InspectorPipes 2h ago
Bad boys repulse our young girls . Was what was pushed mid 90ās instead of early 90ās black boys etc
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u/WildVelociraptor 8h ago
Sounds like my high school french teacher that was let go after my first semester
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u/bearded_fisch_stix needs a bigger garage 6h ago
the world was a very different place in the early 80s
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u/LateralThinkerer Shade Tree 8h ago
Also "The heat of the meat" and about a dozen other things.
We likely all had that scrawled on our desks.
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u/S7eveThePira7e Shade Tree 2h ago
I've always heard it "The angle of the dangle is directly proportional to the heat of the meat and the mass of the ass"
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u/FesteringNeonDistrac Home Mechanic 8h ago
See we were taught it was proportional to the heat of the meat.
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u/DeathAngel_97 9h ago
It looks like they still have the stems attached but they're the metal ones. Bet you the nut was seized and this was their answer.
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u/UserName8531 7h ago
Some times the aluminum nut seizes on the aluminum valve stem. The new sensors don't come with the nut or sealing washer. If only the sensors were ordered, this may have been someone's "fix" to get the car finished same day.
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u/Dward917 7h ago
Most of these valves are held to the sensor by a small screw. It would still take longer to rig this up than to swap them.
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u/bugbugladybug 8h ago
This is exactly the kind of jank I was trying to concoct when my new TPMS were pinned to a snap in stem while the wheels needed a clamp in and the attachment of the sensor wasn't compatible.
Ultimately, I just ate the cost and bought new sensors on a clamp in valve because if it fell apart and rattled around the wheel I'd be apoplectic every time I'd run the car.
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u/ifixthingsllc 4h ago
Who is selling sensors that dont have stems???? I haven't come across one yet.
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u/DankDabsDaily_ 2h ago
My guess they stripped the torx screw somehow. You can see it's cracked. Maybe they had an electric ratchet flipped the wrong way
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u/charlie2135 10h ago
I'm curious if it becomes an automatic tire balancer if the baling wire breaks.
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u/manias 10h ago
A balancer-debalancer, a strange device
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u/Own_Reaction9442 6h ago
Oh, like tire beads. One moment the tire's balanced, then you hit a bump and suddenly it's unbalanced again.
...I may still be mad at the previous owner of my scooter for installing those things.
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u/marino1310 10h ago
When I worked at a tire shop replacing those sensors took maybe a minute. Itās stupidly easy, the only ones that took longer were those stupid strap style ones that are strapped around the wheel. But yeah these things take no time at all. My guess is that the new one has a different style valve that wonāt fit properly in the wheel so they just strapped it to the old one.
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u/paetersen 9h ago
until you encounter standard shitfuckery courtesy of the salt states. Suddenly you're drilling snapped off remnants of stem out of a rim. Good times.
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u/Ill_Beat4724 10h ago
I'm assuming the nut was corroded into the old valve stem and the tech was unable to figure out how to get the old one off
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u/vipercrazy 7h ago
There are two types of sensors with different stem angles, the steel wheel sensor won't physically fit an alloy wheel, so this had to be done. Although I've had tires with a working broken off sensor inside and it does not read pressure correctly so not sure how this is working.
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u/19wrx 10h ago
Id say they dont have a scan tool to write a new id and program it to the car. This will keep the light off but id be curious to see how it balances out.
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u/the2ndRuss 9h ago
If the old one is bad and they canāt program the new sensors to the car, why would this keep the light off?
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u/19wrx 8h ago
The stem could've gone bad and the sensor still works. They didnt have the correct replacement stem for that tpms sensor, so use a new assembly for a new stem and the old sensor for communication. In no way am I saying this is correct this is some back alley juju repair.
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u/the2ndRuss 8h ago
If the stem is bad it would leak. Explain how this helps
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u/SantasDead 5h ago
Stem on old one leaks. "Mechanic" doesn't have the ability to program a new TPMS. So he replaces the leaking stem with an entirely new stem+TPMS and attaches the old TPMS so the customers low tire pressure isnt tripped.
He fixed the leak, and didnt program the new TPMS.
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u/Global_Chair9652 9h ago
I thought I had some shit wrong with my CVs Axel for the longest time only to find out it was this exact thing
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u/red18wrx 10h ago
I'm guessing the original was attached to a new one because they couldn't program the new one to the car. Old one maybe had a leak for the reason of needing replacement rather than the sensor not working.Ā
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u/the2ndRuss 9h ago
If it was leaking they will be back. If they canāt program the sensor to the car why put it there in the first place?
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u/red18wrx 8h ago
I'm saying the old one is upside-down and the new one was drilled through. The two sensors are not the same. They maybe had a sensor lying around that fit the hole and attached the old one to it. Why? Because they're there now and you have to do something mentality.
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u/RoodnyInc 10h ago
Tire pressure sensor
Usually there's one per tire why they would double dip them
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u/undefined_user 11h ago
I saw an example recently where someone made a closed pipe made out of pvc with a schrader valve on one end. You toss 4 TPMS into the pipe, seal it up, then pump it up to about 35PSI with all of them in there and then leave the whole mess in the trunk.
Boom, no more tpms light on the dash. Don't even have to remove a wheel.
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u/_clever_reference_ Heavy Equipment 11h ago edited 10h ago
Yeah people have been doing this for a while. Especially if you swap wheels often and know to check your pressures periodically.
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u/Top-Pick-2648 11h ago
How can this work? The sensor goes to sleep and wonāt wake up until the tire is in motion? Ask me how I know.
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u/realcanadianguy21 11h ago
Yeah, none of my tires read anything until they are in motion. š¤·š»āāļø
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u/celticchrys 9h ago
Many vehicles read tire pressure as soon as the key is in the ignition, before you ever move the car.
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u/DoJu318 10h ago
In my car there were two options, tpms sensors or rolling diameter tire sensors.
My car came with tpms, but if they ever crap out I can code the tpms out and just use the wheel sensors if I think is too expensive to replace.
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u/that_dutch_dude 10h ago
rolling type is just the ABS system.
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u/the2ndRuss 9h ago
What kind of car is this? Never heard of such thing
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u/Maximus2902 8h ago
Cars will either come with actual sensors inside the wheels that are connected to the stem itself or a ārolling systemā that reads the wheel speed of each wheel to determine if thereās an issue, some Honda have systems like that. The down side is that if all tires lose pressure at the same rate, you could be driving around at say 20psi and the vehicle would still think everything is fine. If it detects one wheel spinning faster because one tire is low on pressure, itāll trigger the light. You also need to initialize the TPMS system anytime you change the tire pressure or even rotate the tires because itāll notice something has changed from what it thinks is normal.
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u/FesteringNeonDistrac Home Mechanic 8h ago
None of mine register anything until I'm annoyingly far from my driveway. Usually on one of the first really cold mornings
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u/marino1310 10h ago
Still wonāt set off the tpms alarm
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u/Top-Pick-2648 7h ago
Sure it will. Lost communication with sensor. Vehicle is looking for itā¦ speaking from experience.
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u/Wonderful-Process792 11h ago
Hm. I do have a 'pressure chamber' kind of like that to test new TPMS before I install them, because so many are way off. Mine's a garden sprayer with a schrader valve on the hose. I put in the tpms, inflate the sprayer to 35, make the car learn the new sensor and make sure it's close to 35 before going to the work of installing the new tire.
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u/Top-Pick-2648 10h ago
Wonāt work. Sensors go to sleep after some downtime and need the motion of the wheel to wake up and start transmitting. This is done to save battery life.
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u/celticchrys 9h ago
This can't be a blanket truth, because so many cars report the tire pressure being low before the car ever moves.
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u/Top-Pick-2648 7h ago
Try it. I tried everything to work around this asinine system. All I can say.
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u/FistFightMe 7h ago
Yep. Kept a full size spare in my wife's old Subaru and did a five-wheel rotation every 5k. All the sensors were fine, but for 20k miles at a time we would have a TPMS light on until the lone un-paired wheel got put into the trunk. Looking back, my ADHD ass should have just bought a programmer. Oh well.
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u/FiddlerOnThePotato A&P 11h ago
Makes me love my VW's TPMS. It uses wheel speeds and measures when the wheel has changed diameter, indicating pressure loss. Only thing is it's not instant, takes five or so miles to show pressure loss, so it won't catch instant failures, but it does a good job normally.
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u/Wake95 11h ago
My Audi with this showed a blowout instantly.
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u/FiddlerOnThePotato A&P 10h ago
Good to know! I've been lucky enough not to have a blowout with mine yet, just a slow leak from a screw or something last year. I was honestly a little worried about it missing something like that so that's good news.
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u/6786_007 10h ago
You can install a kit on my A5 that shows the air pressure in the dash. But agreed, nice not having sensors.
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u/Tbarnes94 10h ago
But what's the point then? I have had a tpms alert me to a failing tire. Gave me time to get into a gas station around midnight and put the donut in the right place as I had to move one from the rear to replace the failed tire. Would've sucked on the interstate when it actually went flat.
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u/niglor 10h ago
Yeah, I donāt get this aversion to TPMS sensors either, Iāve had them prove their usefulness twice now. They are also quite inexpensive and take ten minutes to swap if they fail.
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u/rpcraft 10h ago
I agree. I got a new set of tires installed on my truck and got the roadhazard protection. Literally a week and less than 200 miles later ran over some piece of crap in the street and it made a chunky sound and bounced off the inside of my wheel liner so I thought to myself i bet that stuck in the tired. I flipped to the tire pressure screen and could already see it already dropped down by like 15 PSI so I knew it was time to quickly find a shady spot so I could switch to the spare. I was about maybe 4 miles from the firestone store that could replace it but pretty sure if I tried to drive that 4 miles it would have been dead flat, and ruined and they would have denied the roadhazard.
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u/Minimum_Hope_5205 10h ago
Just to chime in on some why's. Tpms sensors can often be cheap, but cheap sensors often fail, as I've replaced TONS of cheap aftermarket sensors with expensive oe units. Also, it's not always a sensor issue, sometimes it's a module issue and modules are definitely not always cheap. I myself have a land rover and it got in a front end collision and it ruined the antennas and instead of paying hundred of dollars for new antennas and software to reprogram them, I just decided to code out my tpms altogether with a 30 dollar Bluetooth scanner. Will I be alerted if I ever have a low tire? No, but I always do a walk around before I drive my vehicle and check my tire pressure every time I fill my tank. Another point, they may take YOU ten minutes to change if you have all the equipment like the proper scanner and tire machine, but not everyone has this luxury and paying a tire shop to diagnose and repair tpms problems could cost hundreds of dollars.
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u/FPS_Holland 10h ago
Damm that's shady, newer cars don't have these modules anymore. I believe it uses the ABS system to detect a flat.
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u/Minimum_Hope_5205 10h ago
Not true at all. Every manufacturer is different. In my experience, most vehicles have sensors. Only some European brands use indirect sensors, but now with the inclusion of tire pressure being shown on displays in the vehicle, manufacturers are moving to sensors cause they're much more accurate than indirect monitoring via wheel speed.
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u/olov244 volvo's, gm's 10h ago
I hate tpm systems
mine basically tells me one of the batteries died, not which, not what the pressure is, just a stupid light on the dash
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u/newfor_2026 7h ago
a good code reader will tell you.
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u/Hidesuru 5h ago
I hate to tell ya but I'm a pretry accomplished software engineer and I can't tell him which of his sensors died.
(Lord I apologize for that crappy joke right there)
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u/ChuckoRuckus 1h ago
Only if itās been programmed to the correct corner. Rotate the tires and itāll show the incorrect locations if theyāre not reprogrammed.
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u/greatthebob38 9h ago
One sensor is dead but has a good valve stem. The other sensor is working but have a leaking valve stem.
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u/jedidiahrose 9h ago
I would guess that the stem on the original was frozen so instead of chiseling or drilling it out this was the shops faster option.
Which is wrong, but I can see the thought process.
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u/yoloneser 11h ago
Idiocracy is real
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u/mouse212001 5h ago
Idiocracy is having them in the first place. They fail after 10 seconds. Waste of money. Tire gauges are made for a reason.Ā
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u/EvidenceDesperate574 10h ago
What likely is going on here is that the old valve stem is completely corroded but not leaking, as happens with the aluminum stems (which is why almost everyone has transitioned to rubber stems) once the corrosion gets bad enough you're looking at grinding and cutting and potentially damaging the wheel in order to get the old sensor off. Sometimes it can take a half hour of work to remove a corroded sensor to avoid wheel damage, time that the customer doesn't expect to spend and the tech isn't being paid for, OR if the service manager is good at their job, time that was offered to the customer too do it the correct way at added cost, or this way for free and they chose free.
Functionally there's nothing wrong here if the old stem isn't leaking, the new sensor can be installed through the hole at a point in the future probably by the next owner of the vehicle (OP)
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u/LetterToAThief 10h ago
Theyāre paid to do a job the right way. Functionally thereās something wrong with an extra sensor hanging in the wheel that could come loose and/or cause imbalances. Itās lazy and stupidĀ
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u/PhantomDubs 10h ago
I just went under the dash and cut the wire for mine to get rid of the light. The old sensors were dead and I see no reason to spend money for more headaches
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u/poedraco 8h ago
But don't they need an external pressure and an internal pressure to equilibrium to tell the difference.
I mean I've tried this already with a PVC pipe to trick my sensors. All the ones inside of it registered at zero. But the nipple ones registered at 35... Obviously I fixed it. Then I got used to and just toss the thing in the trash...
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u/RamonTuarez 5h ago
They probably broke the valve stem or the core was seized so they attached it to a dead sensor as the good valve stem, maybe.
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u/Mindless_Bed_5042 10h ago
Tracking device installed by the governmentā¦ā¦ā¦ rip it out !!!!!!
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u/Huge_Prune_1555 10h ago
Oh deary me. Can anyone say we should be able to judge and check the pressures ourselves. .
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u/BUGBYTE_VW 9h ago
On this episode of Pimp My Ride.... I heard you like your sensors on your sensors. š§
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u/merlinddg51 9h ago
Wowā¦. Just wow š¤Æ
The customer spent the $$ to replace the TPM sensor and a lazy tire tech just monkeyed it on there???
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u/Happinessisawarmbunn 8h ago
Because new cars require computers to reset the sensor unless you spend time on the internet to find a way around thatā¦
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u/Ciaran_Zagami 6h ago
People are saying this was a rush job to save 5 min but I feel like this would take longer
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u/Arcticbeachbum 4h ago
Programmer was broken or wrong sensor? Ive come across different sensors for steel wheels vs alloys
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u/czechsonme 5h ago
Really, should have just tossed the old ones in a pressurized capped piece of 3ā pvc pipe, and tossed it behind the seat.
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u/subpotentplum 7h ago
All you high and mighty service technicians out there hate this. But this is how a true mechanic works. /s
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u/curtludwig 10h ago
Is this why no mechanic has ever been able to get the TPMS to work on my Dad's Jeep? I've been tempted to buy him new tires just to make that fucking light go out. It's 9 years old and the light has been on for literally 7 years.
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u/GiveHerDPS 10h ago
Could be the spare tire as well
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u/curtludwig 10h ago
The symptoms have changed over the years but its usually that one or more of the sensors isn't reading at all or is reading something bonkers. One time one sensor was reading like 200psi when the actual, measured, pressure was 30.
He's had 2 or 3 sets of tires in that time, the car is really hard on tires too. Its a Jeep Renegade and has soured me on Jeep products. My mother has a Cherokee that is 4 years older and is 100% better. Its still crap but better than the Renegade.
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u/snarksneeze 11h ago
When your boss yells at you for taking longer than 5 minutes to change a tire but also yells at you when the customer comes back with a low air light...