This post has had some interesting content discussed about upgrading the 97 to 00 TPMS to the newer/cheaper 01 to 04 TMPS. It may be a direct swap upgrade. If you swap out the TPMS,RFA, and FOB. This has not been tested yet, but the theory looks pretty solid.


Hello All!! This is my first post and I am glad to see so many Enthusiasts about.

Here is my situation. I just upgraded my 98 Vette rims to the thin spoke 2004 style. I know that they changed the tps sensors in 2001 to a new style. And i'm curious to find out it it is possible to upgrade the body sensors on my car to accept the new sensors without going through the pain of swaping sensors to the original ones. Plus with my old sensors being old and probably geting towards the end of their battery life. I would love to be able to stick with the newer sensors and just modify the body/fob sensors to work with my car. Has anyone tried taking this route? or is this way to involved? And while I'm here, will my old style sensors work with the newer rims? i'm thinking this might pose a issue becuase of how the valve stem hole is situated with the new rims.

Thanks for the help, And I apologize about the long winded question.

 

You can NOT upgrade your TPSs. You must stick with generation I, they will fit all OEM wheels.

The TPSs and Key fobs share a radio receiver and interface with the computer.

 

Your old sensors will work with your new rims but the 2001 - 2004 sensors will not work with your 97 - 2000 receivers.

 

Good news is you can get the new TPMs from one of several forum dealer vendors and not have to pay the "spread your cheeks" price of a local dealer.

 

you need the old style sensors

www.gmparthouse.com

may specials you can check his prices out within the linked message....

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...light=specials

97-2000 Sensors

10438853 - sensor –
15234846 - nuts –

 

I just got through with the same upgrade. Put thinspoke OEM's and New Tires on my 97 and took off the Wagon Wheels. I ended up taking out some of the old sensors because two of them were relatively new but needed to buy two brand new ones. Like everyone says you need to keep the older style sensors. Hunt on the internet and you can find them for about $60-$70 each. Or maybe get brave and replace the batteries in the old ones??? I wouldn't go to a dealer cause it is about $135 each OUCH!!! Hope all goes well and believe me it really is a nice upgrade although I have seen plenty of Vette's with the original wagon wheels that look absolutely fantastic also. I guess we all are different and make the world go round.

 

The rate of response from this forum is beyond belief. to already recieve this many responses within a hour. I'm still siting here in shock.

Thanks alot guys, You Rock!!

 

I apologize about resurecting an old post, but I found this on flebay and I wonder if it would work. If you swap out the Fobs, Transmitter antenna dohicky. , and tire pressure sensors. I wonder if all the 97-00folks could upgrade their system.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/97-00...spagenameZWDVW

 

 

You can do better than that .... why go with an EXPORT solution where parts will be hard to find ....

The 2001-2004 RFA is a direct plug-in replacement (from everything I've seen) for your 1997-2000 RFA. Once you've installed that (a 5 minute job) you need the fobs and TPMS

Train the new fobs and TPMS to the car ... you're done.

Supposing I offered a "kit" to do this ... the price would be $500.00 ... is that worth it to you (remember - every time you replace a TPMS it will save you $50.00, and a new key fob will save you $20) and JUST to replace your 4 TPMS is almost $400.00 ???

 

I don't think it is that simple. The TPSs report and function differently. I don't believe a 1997-2000 BCM (computer) could handle the Series II TPSs' output. Series I report constantly, whereas Series II only periodically, unless they lose pressure, then they report immediately.

 

I really looked into this ... and discovered some interesting things ....

The BCM has almost NOTHING to do with the TPMS ... but we'll come back to that later ....

The way the system works is the RFA receives the signals from the TPMS. The RFA is the computer that "knows" which serial numbers of which sensors are on which wheels. Neither the BCM or the IPC knows or cares about serial numbers ... only the RFA. Under "normal" operation the RFA sends messages to the IPC as to the pressures in the tires (the messages look something like "LF is 30 PSI"). The IPC stores the pressure data so that when you request to see tire pressures on the DIC it can display them without having to go back to the RFA.

The "early" RFA reports the tire pressures on a "regular" basis to the IPC, even if they haven't changed since the last report. The "later" RFA only reports tire pressures if they change. I cannot find any indication that the IPC actually "times" the messages from the RFA ... that is, if it doesn't get a pressure reading within x amount of time, there is no apparent error message that the IPC could issue, other than, worse case, a Uxxxx DTC that would have no bearing on the functionality of any system.

It is the RFA that "commands" the IPC to display messages such as "RR TIRE LOW PRESSURE or FLAT TIRE ... or whatever.

The ONLY part that I can find for the BCM is when you put the car into "training mode" for the TPMS, the RFA sends the BCM a message to honk the horn whenever a sensor is "learned".

The wiring between the "old" and "new" RFA is identical .... the only real change internal to the car is the "rate' at which the RFA updates the IPC, and from what I can see, again, the worst the IPC can do is post a Uxxxx if it thinks it didn't get an update when it should.

I'll bet money you can swap the RFA modules and the car will not know the difference.

 

WOW; appreciate your investigation and typing all that in.



I too was concerned if there were more changes other than just the RF frequency. Seems like there is; but whether these additional changes would cause problems down the road - is still an unknown.

 

This is sounding like a more valid experiment now. Thanks for the in depth research BlackZ06.

I already have the 01 to 04 TPMS, now I just need to round up a Fob and RFA. If this works out, I'm sure there would be a lot of early C5 owners interested in converting over to the newer and more cost effective system.

 

Is there really that much of a savings? I'm figuring that there is a difference of $180-200 for a set of four sensors (Gen I vs Gen II). My sensors were 10 years old when I replaced them, so assuming you keep the car for 10 years your annual savings would be in the $20-25 range. This does not take into account your initial set up costs. If you don't keep the car your savings would be even less.

 

The savings are not that big, I think it would really apply to a certain niche crowd of early C5 owners.

Here is a situation I found myself in about a year ago.

I had the original wagon wheels with the original TPMS sensors on my recently purchased 98 coupe. I wanted to upgrade to the newer thin spokes found on late C5's. My sensors were getting very close to the end of their life expectancy, and I could tell that because I would intermittently loose information from one of the sensors from time to time. I'm told that is a good indicator it is about to die.

So my plan was to get a used set of newer C5 wheels, and I did find a great deal on the wheels/tires/sensors pulled from an 03 coupe for about $400 shipped. The tires had a about 7/10ths tread life left

But since I could not find any evidence that I could not use the newer sensors that were already installed in the wheels I just bought new set of 97 to 00 sensors and swapped them into the new wheels I just got. which cost me an arm and a leg, not to mention the price of having the local tire shop to swap the sensors for me. they charged me $200 just to swap the sensors and re balance the wheels.

So to make a long boring story longer,

It would have been nice to just use the newer sensors that where already in the wheels I bought. And go get a new Fob and RFA.

The cost of new 97~00 Sensors was $400
The cost of swapping in the new sensors $200

I would have liked to upgrade the Fob and RFA and never have to worry about getting the expensive TPMS sensors again and be done with it.

I know it seems like I'm but i'm trying to save the next guy in line all this trouble.

 

Any updates on this swap?

 

There was a recent thread on this subject and several members have made this conversion with good results.

 

 

been there done that, but have not installed the 2001 and later tps sensors yet, will give an update when I do, but the new key fobs work great.

More Than Zero