Looking at a 2008 base that has C7 rims on it that the owner bought from some guy. The owner said there are no TPMS sensors on the rims, My question for everyone is, can the TPMS sensors be added to the C7 rims and what is evolved. Will the car reconnect or recognize them at all or does the computer need to be flashed to connect to them? How about the cost for the parts and for a dealer to install?
Thanks
New Vette Man

 

Don't know about prices as the shop would just need to break the bead on the tire to add them and air them back up, but TPMS can be added. The tire shop should have the tool needed to program them to the car.

 

You should just be able to use the same sensors that would have normally come with your car and then have the TPMS nanny computer learn the sensors with the proper tool. I had a local Firestone replace a sensor I brought them for $16 on one wheel and I have the tool to learn the sensors. The sensors can be found for about $100/set online. If you wanted a dealer to do the whole job, including provide the sensors, I'd expect to pay around $250 at least.

 

does anyone know if the car can be synced to 2 different wheel sets?

 

One set of sensors at a time. You'd have to relearn every time you switched wheels. You can just buy the generic relearn tool online for like $10. Search for EL-50448 on a popular auction site.

 

Not at the same time. There are 4 programming 'slots' for the TPMS sensors in the car's electronics. You can only sync to 1 wheel set of 4 sensors at a time.

 

Thanks to both responses. I bought the learning tool in the previous post to re-learn every time i swap to my track wheels/tires.

 

There are clonable TPS available that allow you to change wheel/tires without going through the relearn process each time. You just have to store the unused wheels about 50 feet away from the car, so when the car pings the sensors for info, it doesn't receive any from the wrong wheels. If the car picks up the signal from wheels not on the car, it'll self-correct in a couple minutes after you leave the storage location. If you're swapping wheels for temporary use at the track, you're better off without clonable ones, due to the difficulty of distancing.

 

Kind of, and what you do is clone the current TPMS sensors of the tires on the car, so when you swap tires, the cloned sensors in the other rims will not have to be reprogrammed to the car. Hence RCDLR will only allow you to program in 4 at a time, and it learns the position of the senors in the correct order they are triggered one at time as well. Hence first sensor to trigger during the RCDLR TPMS relearn, is the driver front tire, then passenger front tire, then passengers rear tire, and the last tire to be programming in is the driver rear tire.

Also to note, mark both sets of tires so you know which is the right hand side, and which is the left hand side tires. If you swap them up on the tire changes, then RCDLR is going to think that the tires are on the opposite sides of the car. Also to point out, TPMS sensors only send a signal when they are rolling, so if you do have a set of tires on the trailer behind the car with clones sensors that are on the car, only the tires on the car will be sending out signals for the RCDLR to pick up.

 

The RCDLR sends a signal to the sensors in the order they were programmed about once every minute. The sensor then reports back the tire pressure at that time and the RCDLR goes to the next one, and so on.
If you have cloned sensors, the RCDLR sends (pings) a signal and the sensor with the strongest signal reports first, which triggers the RCDLR to ping for the #2 sensor, and so on.
The wheel sensors do not need to be rolling to respond to RCDLR requests, nor do they have to be on the car to be programmed. It's why I mentioned that the wheels in storage need to be about 50 feet away from the car to avoid initial communication at startup. Once the car moves away from the stored wheels (sensors), only the ones on the car will have the strongest signal.
If the wheels had to be rolling to receive and respond, then packaging sensors in a PVC pipe and pressurizing it to fool the RCDLR, would not be possible.
The clonable sensors I had used in my second tire set, were purchased from Orange Electronics about 2009. I sold those wheels a couple years later and made it a point not to park real close to him at any events.

 

The reset tool is cheap, and setting the sensors is a piece of cake (anybody can do it in less than 2 minutes). I can't imagine it's worth the hassle of cloning sensors and all that. I change my tires a couple of times a month autocrossing....resetting the sensors is a non-event:

 

I have a set of OEM wheels with all season tires, and a set of summer-only tires on aftermarket wheels, that have TPMS sensors in both. I change the tires/wheels out in Spring and Fall. I reprogram them each time with a T-5 tool I got several years ago from TireRack. It works every time.
As you may already know, summer tires are half the price of all-seasons, thus my reason for going this route.