So we've had the Clubman for several months now. It's always garaged and has been inside every night since we got it. Well I have since picked up a new car and have been wrenching on it in the garage, which has ended up putting the Clubman in the driveway overnight several times. The first time it sat out at night, wifey went to leave for work and it threw her a tire warning upon startup. She got out, inspected the tires and drove to the dealer. The SA said he has seen alot of these lately. He told her that if there is a 20 degree or more change in the weather, the sensors would throw a false warning. He had a tech check out the car just to be sure and reset the warning. The car has been outside on and off overnight for the last 2 weeks and every time it sits out, there's a tire warning at startup. We are in SoCal and we've been having 85-90 days and 60's at night...I don't think thats too much of an 'extreme' change to warrant a false alarm.

Anyone else having this problem??

 

I have had a "false" warning on a 2-3 lb drop in tire pressure. My other cars' TPMS systems give me the actual pressure of each tire ( ex: FR=32).
It would be nice if MINI would do the same.

 

This is a first for me - to read that a change in weather temperatures effects the tires' sensors.

NEVER in all my years of owning MINIs has this been the culprit.

You haven't touched the tires yourself - no adding of air, etc.? If one were to add or remove air, the tire pressure monitor must be reset....the same goes for changing wheels, etc.

I've only had the tire pressure monitor go off for no apparent reason about two times...both times I'd been driving in very loose gravely areas...otherwise it's been, sadly, due to a nail or screw that impaled itself.

 

I haven't done a thing to them. I did put the car on jacks and REALLY inspected the tires after the dealer said they did. I just wanted to make sure for myself that all is good and I did not see any issues. I would also think if the tire was constantly losing pressure, then the warning would get thrown at every startup. Thats not happening. Only in the mornings.....and its not even real early...usually 8:30 or 9 am.

I understand that cold air 'retracts' and hot air 'expands' in tires, but our temps aren't that extreme here.

 

Just did a quick search in the sub forum about stock issues and problems where I found this thread: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...essure+monitor You may or may not find it helpful.

Apparently others have noticed a relationship between temperature changes. Perhaps I live in an area where the temperatures are too moderate in their fluctuations? I live outside of NYC.

 

I have not had any problems with mine and we have had a few days lately where the temperature difference has been more than 30 degrees between overnight low and mid day high.

I could see there being a problem if there was a 50-60 degree. but 20 degrees.

Can I suggest that you leave the car outside and do a reset in the morning and then drive off (as you are supposed to) and let it reset at the lower temperature and see if that corrects the problem. If it is a change in temp then you should now have a problem when the tires are warm in the late afternoon.

 

She already does reset it when the car is out. Are you saying I should reset it when I leave for work at 5:30am and then when she leaves at 8:30ish, see if it throws the warning?

Its weird....its ONLY when the car sits out. It has never done it when its been garaged overnight. Needless to say, her line to me is "Well, this should tell you that my car should NEVER be left out". Damn, I just can't win! LOL!!!

 

I would suggest that you do a reset on it at 5:30 am when you leave just to set it at a low temperature. Do not do nay other reset and see if it fails in the late afternoon 4-5 pm. The pressure should have increased by about 3 pounds at this point if there is a temperature change of 30 degrees.

You can see this page for more on tire pressure vs temperature. It goes through the calculations, but the long and short of it is that for every 10 degrees of change in temperature there is a 1 psi change in pressure.

http://www.arden.org/misc/pressure.html

I would think that the manufacturers have to take this into account when designing these systems as there are many areas of the country (world) that will have changes of more than 30-40 degrees from night time temps to daytime temps and this will cause any sensor that is meassuring the pressure be in accurate.

Also i jsut tested this as well as it was 57 degrees this morning and i had a TMPS failure do to not reseting it when i rotated the tires yesterday. so i checked all the pressures this morning and just went out to at lunch time and tested the tire pressure when it is now 83 degrees my pressure gauge shows a 2.3 degree change in pressure. 26 degrees and 2.3 psi change or .88 PSI for each 10 degrees.

If by setting it early in the morning and having it fail after warming up then you know the problem is the system just seeing to much change.

I am not saying that is a good thing but at least you have proof that is what it is. And with that you have something to fight with MINI about, to try and get it fixed. The warnings should not be happening.

 

Happened to us this morning. Wife came up and told me she had a flat tire and took the other car to work. I got up, checked the tires, 32# all around (Which is wierd because they had 38 one week ago). Pumped them up to 38 again, reset the monitor and AOK. We have had hot weather but finally cooling off a lot at night...that's probably what's going on. I'll just blame it on the s**tflats.

 

It is not just a problem with runflats. If it is a reduction in pressure do to temperature then it is going to be a problem for all tires eventually as soon all cars will be required to have TPMS.

My neighbor has a new Toyota with out runflats and has TPMS in her car.

 

My false alarm was actually a nail that come in at a 90 degree angle, parallel with the tread.
TPMS worked great for me.

 

so it really wasn't a FALSE alarm.......




for some reason .. .my system went into reset mode.. all by itself...

just once.. but odd, just the same

 

Astra, I recommend doing the Feel Test.
My tires rolled 50 yards and the sensors picked up a nail.
It took minutes to confirm I had a nail. I knew to do this.
I hope you don't have a nail, but roll the car back 3 feet and feel the tread on each tire, then roll back another 3 feet and check again.

Plenty of places will patch a run-flat without question.
Only the dealers say you must replace a run-flat for $375.

 

Well it did it again this morning....this time the car was IN the garage. Its been 85 during the day and 60 at night....but the garage was warmer with 2 warm motors in there overnight, so it only got to about 70 in the garage last night....so I'm not believing the temperature variation anymore.

She's taking it back to the dealer this morning.

 

It sounds like there is something wrong with one of the sensors. We have been having 80 degrees during the day and low to mid 40 at night and i don't have a problem. but it i add air to one or all of the tires even just 2 pounds it causes the sensor to go off.

So there has to be some sort of temperature sensing unit as well on the car to compensate for the pressure change for temperature.

 

Well HOPEFULLY they will find it this time. I know when I put the CarboTech brake pads on when the car was new, I rotated the tires (before I found out NOT to rotate the tires) and that set the sensor off. I just reset it and no problems in 5k miles.....until now.

 

Why not rotate tires as long as they are on the same side of the car?

 

Thats what I did.....then several nights later, wifey read in the book NOT to rotate the tires.

I don't know if its a runflat thing or not...but as soon as those tires wear out, theyre gone!!!

 

Keep the tires and consider rotating the wife.

Anyone have a good rear speaker upgrade recommendation?

 

LOL!! Hey, She was just following the Mini 'bible' that came with the car and I was just "OK dear"ing my way out of trouble for setting off the sensors in the first place. Its her car.....as they say..."happy wife, happy life'

So the update is the dealer wanted the car for 8 hours to trace the problem. They did determine that the wheel sensors themselves are all working properly but now theyre questioning the 'brain' that the sensors answer to is now in question. But according to them, you just don't go in and 'change' that.

We couldn't leave it today. She will make an appt for next week and get a loaner.

I will keep you updated.......

 

RaceFace, do you have any update on this?

I had this happen to me on Sunday afternoon when I went out. Lady G is garaged. Temps were upper 70's Sunday, and 50's Saturday night. Tire pressure was fine, so I did a reset and everything seems fine. I'll see if it does it again tomorrow morning.

 

Just happened to me the other day - my Clubman had been sitting for a day and then when I started her up, in the garage, "Bong!" and there was that tire sensor light! Forgetting that the Tire Monitor Reset is now on the "stalk" that controls the OBC (on my non NAV), I started to sweat a bit as I looked around for the place the reset button used to be...thinking I'd tripped it myself...

I ended up resetting it and it's been fine since then. With previous MINIs, I have had this odd tire warning for no reason happen before, but only once or twice.

 

Ooops, sorry about the updates. I forgot.

We never did take it back to the dealer. I rotated the tires (the book says not to but the front shoulders were rounding pretty good). When I rotated them, I pumped the pressure up to the tire max for the runflats (51psi) and haven't had an issue since. I usually never run max pressure, I run pressure according to tire wear but I guess Mini's dont like less pressure than whats recommended. It even sat out last night....58ish degrees. No issues when I fired it up this morning.

Try bouncing your pressures up to the max recommended on the tire and see what happens. It worked for me......so far.

 

I had a false TPM warning today. To correct this I:
1) Reset the TPM
2) Went to the pistol range

 

this just happened to me this morning for the first time.

I was out before my usual time. It was 7am, chilly and dewy. DING, light comes on. I checked the tires visually and knew it was a false alarm. Reset it and all seems OK.

My 03 Coupe used to give me false alarms when it was overloaded for some reason.