My tire pressure light came on last night as I was driving home. Stopped, checked all the tires...pressure dead on. Tried to reset tire pressure light by reading the instructions in the manual, but when I went into the info/setting site, then to tire pressure, there was no "reset." I drove the car as the manual suggested but to no avail.

Bottom line, the car is in my garage with no apparent low tire pressure, but the dad gum light won't go off, and apparently won't reset.

Anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?

 

Odd, my light came on today too. When you go to SET/INFO, hold the button. Click until you see the tire pressure symbol. Hold the button down until it says resetting. Let go and drive. A couple minutes later, you should be good.

Hope this helps...it's not really anything the manual doesn't say, maybe you just misread it at first? Take another look. Good luck.

 

I hate tpms, I park in a warm garage at night about 60 degrees. My tpms has come on 3 times now after parking outdoors at work in the 30s. I am going to air up again in the morning before driving and see if that helps. Would love to disable the tpms but don't think there is a way to deactivate it.

 

I have had my TPMS on for about a week, and cant seem to get rid of it. I reset it constantly, and sometimes works, only to pop back up again after I turn my MINI off. Strange...

 

Then your pressure might be a bit low. When you drive, your tires heat, and the air inside them wants to expand. That's why you should measure tire pressure only after the car has been sitting for a while.

 

Mines came on today. Could be because I changed them to snow tires or the weather. I was driving on the high way on light traffic. I fumbled around for the tire reset button and held it for a good minute. Let go and a couple minutes it went away.

 

Likely cold weather, in some cases. Seen it before with Mini and other vehicles with TPMS. The cold snap causes a mis-read with a slightly lower pressure, then you check them and they are fine. Odd behavior, but are you in a cold area that just got much colder in the past day or two?

 

Sketch,

You didn't mention it, so I have ask: have you checked your tire pressure?

 

I once had a Corvette and every time the temperture would drop the low air warning light would come on. I filled the tires with Nitrogen and when temperture would go down my warning lights never came back on.
I just filled my JCW tires with 38psi of Nitrogen and the temperture went down and my warning lights are not on at all.
The Nitrogen is the way to go for me because the pressure in the tires will be 38psi weather it is 90 or 20 outside temperture.
Ronnie

 

I definitely agree nitrogen is the way to go. Either that or buy a small compressor from sears and check your tires weekly in the comfort of your own garage without freezing hands.

Just be careful and not assume that once you fill with nitrogen your all done.
It all depends on the moisture content at your filling station. I used nitrogen on aircraft tires for 20+ years and there was still fluctuation, just not as much as regular dry compressed air. Even the best nitrogen servicing units can only get 95% pure nitrogen as opposed to the 78% available through the air we breathe. IMHO, of course.

 

how much would filling your tires with nitrogen cost?

 

What pressure are you dead on at? TPMS are designed to go off at +-5psi from the pressure printed on the door label, so if you're keeping your pressures at 32 instead of 38 (not sure if that's what the 2nd gen's pressures are to be at) then your light will go off.

 

Tire pressure on door of 08 MCS says 33psi all around. That is the pressure I checked for and all were dead on.

Problem I'm having is when I hit SET/INFO and then get to the tire pressure light, it doesn't say RESET down at the bottom. Therefore I can't reset it. I will pump them up to 35 psi and see if it will let me reset.

BTW, the temps here in Birmingham (AL) last night dropped down to 26, so yes, the cold temps may have something to do with it.

 

I got mine filled at the Chevy dealer and paid $39.00. This is for as long as the tires last. I can stop by and have the tires checked and topped off if needed with no charge at all.
I will probably stop by every month or so and have them checked. I'll go early and have coffee and donuts while they check my nitrogen pressure. They put on special green caps but I will still take my reciept. I'm sure they have my Mini in their computer so I'm probably covered anyway.
The service writer at Downtowm Mini said they will probably get Nitrogen after they move into the new building.
At least my warning light did not come on this morning when the temperture dropped to 35 DeGrees.
Ronnie

 

Price has gone WAY down for a nitrogen fill. My dealer charged me $5.00 per tire onmy Vete and have been spot on PSI for almost 7 months now.

 

Ya same here with the tpms. Temps are getting cold here in Chicago and the light has been going off, even though i have been filling them back up.

 

I had the same thing happen...this morning was the first day below freezing and my TPM light came on. I have a red icon in the tachometer display that says "low tires" and a yellow icon in the speedometer display. I checked the pressure and it was at 33psi, tried to reset but it wouldn't let me. I had the option of RESET show up (unlike one of the above posters) but nothing happened when I chose it.

This is really annoying. I'm going to try the nitrogen thing this weekend.

 

You may want to check your high school physics book on that one!

Temperature has an effect on any gas, whether it's Nitrogen, Oxygen, or CO2.

Some light reading:

Boyle's, Charles's, and Gay-Lussac's Laws

Boyle's law holds that in isothermal conditions (that is, a situation in which temperature is kept constant), an inverse relationship exists between the volume and pressure of a gas. (An inverse relationship is a situation involving two variables, in which one of the two increases in direct proportion to the decrease in the other.) In this case, the greater the pressure, the less the volume and vice versa. Therefore the product of the volume multiplied by the pressure remains constant in all circumstances.

Charles's law also yields a constant, but in this case the temperature and volume are allowed to vary under isobarometric conditions—that is, a situation in which the pressure remains the same. As gas heats up, its volume increases, and when it cools down, its volume reduces accordingly. Hence, Charles established that the ratio of temperature to volume is constant.
By now a pattern should be emerging: both of the aforementioned laws treat one parameter (temperature in Boyle's, pressure in Charles's) as unvarying, while two other factors are treated as variables. Both in turn yield relationships between the two variables: in Boyle's law, pressure and volume are inversely related, whereas in Charles's law, temperature and volume are directly related.

In Gay-Lussac's law, a third parameter, volume, is treated as a constant, and the result is a constant ratio between the variables of pressure and temperature. According to Gay-Lussac's law, the pressure of a gas is directly related to its absolute temperature.

 

That's the first I've heard of the TPMS standard. 5 pounds seems like a decent trigger, but I wonder how accurate those sensors are, since some posters seem to have them constantly going off, and some report that they didn't go off until the tires were down over 10 pounds. maybe the MINI TPMS sensors have a higher than usual error rate.

 

yeah, I just did a google search re: nitrogen use in tires and there doesn't seem to be much of advantage to using nitrogen.

I just didn't want to have to adjust my tire pressure/deal with TPM warning every time the temp drops.

 

I think Fishbert is provides good info here. The best thing to do is to test the tire pressure and reset the TMPS when the tires are cold, before you drive off in the morning.

 

Are you doing this with the car running? I think that it has to be running, because you must drive for it to reset.

 

Indeed. According to the manual the car should be running when you trigger the reset, then you must drive for a while before the reset completes.

 

33psi??? . The one on my door says 38! {probably coz i have perf runflats}. Wat kind of tires do u have?

 

Our temperature went down to the lowest yet this year last night and sure enough I get a call from my wife this afternoon about the tire looking thing with an exclamation point popping up.