Hey. Is it possible for the tire pressure monitoring system to give a false reading when it is extremely cold outside?

 

Anything's possible, but it's more likely your tires are at a lower pressure due to the low temperature. This happened to me yesterday with it being 15F outside. When I checked them this morning, sure enough, my tire pressures were about 20% down at 30 psi. IIRC, 20% drop from when they were calibrated is what the system reports on.

 

I figured that was the case, but I wasn't sure if maybe the system hates cold weather and reads falsely. The system worked great when I actually got a flat, so when it came on again, i had a sinking feeling! I was dreading changing a flat in 9degrees weather! BUt i got out and everything was fine, no hissing or anything.

 

Did you manually check the pressures? They may have dropped to dangerous levels just from the cold.

 

i am doing it after work. It was not safe to do it at the time. Thanks for the wonderful advice. Everyone is so helpful.

 

cold weather also exacerbates slow leaks...

but if you want to see what cold can do to tire pressures with no leaks, get a balloon and fill it inside (either air or helium, doesn't matter)

take it outside for 5-10 min and watch it "deflate"

bring said balloon inside and watch it "re-inflate" as the air warms back up...

HTH.

 

The manual says that snow and/or cold can cause false reads. The snow sets mine off everytime. R56 Aug07 build.

 

Funny this thread pops up at this time in my life. I was just down at the Texas coast for a winter retreat and my TPMS kicks in and tells me that I have a tire problem 200 miles from home on a sunday.

Fortunately, I had my trusty portable tire pump and tire guage in tow with me, (since I had no spare) and reinflated the tire enough to get me home. After very close inspection, I found a 3" all weather screw imbedded deeply into my new tire. This threw a "check tire" signal. I reinflated and reset the code and had no reoccurance for the rest of the trip home.

This past evening, the temp went down below 25 and when I woke up, the tire was as flat as a pancake. Again, I reinflated and went to work. After work, spent 3 hours at discount tire having the tire fixed and tires rotated.

THe cold really seemed to increase the shrinkage of the tire.

 

I added more air to those bad boys and reset the monitor and the light has not come back on.