Help! TPMS Malfunction Light

[BigFatRaccoon]

Anyone ever experience the TPMS Malfunction screen and dash light appear and turn off after a few mins? Feel like I'm chasing my own tail trying to diagnose this.

I'll just be cruising and randomly the tire error light comes on and after about 5 mins and then it goes away. It doesn't happen on short drives, I would say it occurs every 30-40 mins on longer drives and again it clears itself after 5 mins.

I've tried resetting the tire pressure calibration through the iDrive a couple times but that doesn't seem to affect anything. Goes from 0 to 100% fine.

The actual tire PSI is fine, local tire shop even scanned TPM sensors and showed me the battery status and frequency of all 4 sensors is OK and no errors on the Autel.

Any opinions on what it could be? Should I just replace my TPM sensors anyway?

[M3SQRD]

This sounds like a tough one if it results in no stored codes. Did the check the TPMS sensors on the wheels or also the ones on the chassis side? When the error pops up, is it the same corner of the car or is it different every time?

Not sure if this will do anything but try adding a couple of psi to each tire and then manually reset TPMS. Perhaps a new recalibration with different tire psi will eliminate this random fault. Good luck.

[BigFatRaccoon]

Originally Posted by M3SQRD

This sounds like a tough one if it results in no stored codes. Did the check the TPMS sensors on the wheels or also the ones on the chassis side? When the error pops up, is it the same corner of the car or is it different every time?

Not sure if this will do anything but try adding a couple of psi to each tire and then manually reset TPMS. Perhaps a new recalibration with different tire psi will eliminate this random fault. Good luck.

I checked the TPMS sensors on the wheels side. The error doesn't show it on any specific side, it just says the malfunction and displays the grey tire graphic on all 4 wheels of the iDrive.

I'll definitely try adding a couple PSI to each tire, doing a reset and see what's going on. Thank you for the input!!

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by BigFatRaccoon

I checked the TPMS sensors on the wheels side. The error doesn't show it on any specific side, it just says the malfunction and displays the grey tire graphic on all 4 wheels of the iDrive.

I'll definitely try adding a couple PSI to each tire, doing a reset and see what's going on. Thank you for the input!!

There must be a way to test the receiver unit using ista/d or ista/p. Doing a quick search showed if your reseat stops at 49% then it’s a wheel TPMS sensor that’s bad. Your case is in agreement with that because you’ve had your sensors checked so it seems like it’s on the chassis side of TPMS.

[Groganrocket]

I had a tpms error randomly and it got to the point it would get stuck at 49percent and the. It wouldn’t even get up over 10percent. I used a tpms tool to check the battery and signal strength and all was good, so I used bimmerlink and cleared all the codes and it has come back since, not sure what caused it.

[gunsmoker]

I had the same thing last year when I flashed my car with BM3. I could not tell for sure if the problem was related because at the same time I switched to my summer set of wheels and had new tires installed. No problem on short drives, but then every 30min tpms would malfunction and then recover. First I thought the dealership had damaged a sensor during tire installation. Went back to them, they said the controller was fine and the sensors read fine with the handheld device and recommended all sensors replacement for $1000 assuming the batteries were dying. The sensors were a couple of years old and I passed on that. When I switched back to the winter set of wheels the problem disappeared - it was not the controller. Then this March when I put the summers on again, the problem did not reappear. So my guess is that something did not clear the memory well last year when I reprogrammed the DME and perhaps the car was searching for some of the winter wheels as well. I wouldn't expect bm3 to mess with that memory but a hypothesis I have is that I initially flashed the car when it had the winter wheels, then put the summer ones and flashed to the stock tune and locked the dme prior to the first dealership trip. I guessed that messed up the tpms memory. This year I did not flash the car after I switched the wheels, only reset the tpms to pair with those sensors.