My father owns a 2004 Ford Freestar that has a tire pressure monitoring system on it. Is there any way to turn this system off without affecting anything else ?
Why do you want to turn it off?
maybe because the things are known to be horribly unreliable and a little expensive to fix. It’s much easier and cheaper just to check your tire pressure now and then.
We have not had any problems with tires or pressure. I did a little research on the system and found out it is transmitting by radio waves or something to the computer.It can be affected by cell phones,radio,etc.The other day my father came home with the “Tire Reset” light on and he thought maybe he had a flat.He didn’t have any problems with tires.He’s 84 yrs young and doesn’t need any more distractions while driving.
To be very blunt, if a tire pressure light distracts him enough to cause a problem, he shouldn’t be driving, no matter what his age.
It’s fairly tough to turn factory TPMS off. Find the fuse and pull it, and hope that circuit isn’t used for anything else.
The system has to be reset after a tire change or rotation. A couple of weeks after the tires were changed on my wife’s 06 Toyota Sienna the TPMS light came on. The tires were all at the correct pressure. I reset the system and the light has not come on since. The directions should be in the Owner’s manual.
Ed B.
Even if there is some risk of a false alarm, do you really want your father driving around on a low tire if he really has one? That’s a lot more dangerous than a “distraction” on the dashboard.
I wonder if the tire pressure monitoring system may work differently on the Ford Freestar than it does on later cars. I say this because I was returning with my wife and another person from a convention in a 2001 or 2002 Ford Windstar that belonged to my institution. I was driving late at night and encountered a section of interstate that was down to one lane and had been milled. The tire pressure monitoring light went on. There was no place to pull over and I certainly couldn’t stop, so I kept on driving. The Windstar didn’t seem to drive as if the tire were low, so we kept going. When we finally stopped for a break, my wife found the manual in the glove compartment and got the instructions for turning off the light. I also kicked the tires (didn’t have a tire gauge with me so it seemed like a good thing to do). At any rate, when we resumed our travels, the light didn’t come on. We surmised that the vibrations from the milled pavement must have set the monitor off. My new Toyota Sienna has a tire pressure system and I have had to drive over milled pavement with it and haven’t had the problem. For this reason, I wonder if the Ford Freestar may have had a different system.
If dad is distracted by the light, I doubt if he is going to check the air pressure often or at all, with out the system.
Just remove the bulb from the dash unit. Problem solved. No pulling fuses or hacking wires.
Easier said than done. Some instrument clusters are a bear to remove so pulling a fuse might be a lot easier than trying to get the bulb out.
After reading the section in the owners manual regarding the TPMS system and understanding how it works I played around with it.
By dropping the pressure in the left front tire 1 PSI at a time I found that the warning light comes on at 28 PSI.
The owners manual instructs to reinflate the tire & simply drive 20 continuous miles to reset the system.
I drove 9 miles & the light went out.
The fuse list in the owners manual shows the only thing wired to the TPMS fuse is the TPMS. So on an 09 Kia Rondo pulling the fuse would not cause other problems.
Since my wife commutes 80 miles a day in the Kia I kinda like the idea of the TPMS.
If she picks up a nail & the pressure drops, she will have an early warning.
remember to check spare…depending on the system a low spare tire pressure will trigger the warning light.
Good point, but-at least on an 09 Rondo-the TPMS does not monitor pressure in the spare.
Also on an 09 Rondo there is no reset required when tires are replaced or rotated.
Kia seems to have made this a pretty painless system. The only thing that will trigger a warning light is a defective pressure sensor or low pressure.
These things are harmless enough when they work correctly. When / if they malfunction or the batteries need replacement in the tire sensors, it’s time to put some black tape over the light…
at about $40 each plus labor … I agree with tape over the light. Why not replace with old fashioned valve stem?