This is kind of long but it’s what you need to know to make an informed decision when it comes to buying new wheels if you have a tire pressure monitoring system on your vehicle. We have several ways to handle tire pressure sensors. I will start with what we have found to be the most trouble free and most cost effective way.

Option 1: Take your vehicle to your preferred tire/rim shop or dealership. Have them remove your tire pressure sensors and replace them with just some standard valve stems. When they remove them PLEEEEASE make sure they label each one as to the location in which it was removed from. They need to be labeled driver side front, passenger side front, driver side rear, passenger side rear. Do NOT label them left front, right front, left rear, right rear. The reason for this is because some people consider the left and right position from the driver seat, and some from the front or rear of the car, so if they are labeled passenger and driver then there can be no confusion as to where each sensor goes. The reason they need to be labeled at all is because they are programmed to the vehicle in a specific location and need to go back to that same location so you do not have to spend money to have them reprogrammed. Once the sensors are removed and labeled you simply ship them to us and we installed them in your new wheels and tires and when the new wheels and tires get to you they will be labeled so you can put them in the correct location on your car and you are all done. Your low tire pressure warning light on your dash will come on for a few days since you will not have any tire pressure sensors in your wheels and tires until the ones we send back to you are put back on the car but it will not have any long term adverse affect on your vehicle. Most places will charge you about $40 to remove your sensors so you can send them to us. So there is no other extra expense besides that plus a few $$$ to ship us the sensors. For this reason plus the fact that if we do the installation and mounting and balancing here at our shop we know it is done right and we do not have to worry about any other shop going in behind us and damaging our wheels or tires or your tire pressure sensors, all the liability falls on us. So if there does turn out to be any sort of problem we know that we are the only people to touch the rims and tires so we won’t be guessing what someone else may have done.

Options 2: This is our least favorite and usually costs our customer a little more money than option 1. We mount the tires and ship them to you mounted but not balanced. You take them with your car to your preferred shop and they will break down your wheels and tires, remove the sensors, install them in the new rims and tires, then balance them and install them on your car. Most places charge about $100 to do this and you run the risk of having a rim or tire damaged in the process. When it happens every single place we have ever dealt with on this matter always denies that they did it and claims that the wheels came to them already damaged, which we always reply “then why did you continue to do the work if the rim(s) were damaged, why did you not stop and let the customer know before continuing?” to which they never have a good response then it turns into a huge debate about who did what and who is responsible for the damage and everyone walks away with a bad taste in their mouth.

Option 3: Eliminates the hassle of having to take a chance on anything getting damaged or having to get your existing sensors removed or shipping us anything but it’s the most costly way to do it and I only recommend it when your existing sensors are 4-6 years old which I will explain in just a minute. Option 3 requires you to buy a new set of sensors from us which can run anywhere from $100-$350 per set depending on the vehicle. Then we install them in your new wheels, then we mount and balance the tires and send them to you already in place and ready to go, all you have to do is program them. Programming is another issue that is easily overcome in a couple of ways. Depending on the car sometimes you can program them yourself with no tools, sometimes you can buy a $30 tool that we sell and program them yourself, sometimes you have to buy a $250 tool and then you can program them yourself and sometimes you have to go to the dealership and they charge anywhere from $20 to $200 to program them. It all depends on the specific vehicle. This is why this is the most costly way to handle it. I only recommend this option if the sensors in your vehicle are 4-6 years old. The reason is because the expected battery life on the sensors is approx. 5-6 years at which point the batteries are no longer able to transmit the data to the receiving unit and your system no longer functions at which time you have to buy new sensors anyway and pay to have them installed and programmed which can range anywhere from $200-$500. So if the sensors are near the end of their life expectancy I always suggest getting new sensors so that you don’t reuse your old ones and 2 months down the road they go bad and you end up have to spend the big bucks to get them all replaced when you could have saved a lot of labor and bought them when you bought the new wheels and tires.