The challenges of a winter tire change over

It’s not as easy as it once was to simply switch over tires due to seasonal changes.

Here’s the story.

One of our co-workers owns a Hyundai Elantra SE. It’s a pleasant small car and one of the better ones under $25,000. This past fall, she purchased winter tires and wheels to make the tire change-over a breeze. She also bought tire pressure monitoring sensors so when the winter tires were installed, she could continue to use the monitoring system that came with the car. She purchased the tires, wheels, and sensors from TireRack, who graciously provided free installation of the sensors and mounted and balanced the tires on the wheels. All that she needed to do was to install the tires on her car and go. Sounds simple, right? Well, not exactly.

So she went ahead and bought the tires and wheels for about $508. Based on the advice of someone who knows tires (that would be me), she then purchased the tire pressure sensors and politely accepted the charge of $316 for a set of four. Total cost, including shipping, was $921.50. She installed the winter tires on the car and quickly discovered the tire pressure monitoring icon was lit in the instrument panel, indicating a malfunction. A call to the local Hyundai dealer revealed the car’s tire pressure monitoring system would have to be reprogrammed to work with the new sensors. In other words, they had to fix it.

I’d love to tell you that the trip to the dealership solved her problem, but her problem continues. The Hyundai dealer discovered the new sensors were the wrong ones. After contacting TireRack, they agreed to send the four new sensors with the promise to pay $50 toward mounting them on the inside of the wheels at a local shop. With new sensors in hand, my coworker had to revisit the dealer and have them installed and programmed. Finally, after these numerous visits to the dealer, the winter tire pressure monitoring systems worked, but only briefly. Now the tire pressure monitor icon is back on. Could it be a bad sensor or some other problem associated with the tire pressure monitoring system? We don’t know right now.

So what’s in store when she wishes to make a ritual tire/wheel change-over from winter to all-season tires in the spring and back to the winter tires in the late fall? She’ll have to visit the Hyundai dealer twice a year to have everything installed and sensors re-programmed for a bi-annual cost of about $40.

But in all seriousness, good technology should be consumer friendly. Having to go back to the dealer to reprogram the monitoring system is inexcusable when simply changing a tire. And it’s not just Hyundai. Other car manufacturers are doing the same.

What’s Consumer Reports take on all this? We encourage automobile manufacturers to make tire pressure monitoring systems easy to use without requiring the consumer to go back to dealers and to have the system reprogrammed every time a new tire wheel sensor is introduced. And since wheel sensors cost as much as the new replacement tires, you should consider your options:

• Accept the cost and potential inconvenience of maintaining the operation of your tire pressure monitoring system when making a winter tire change-over, which includes a second set of wheels and sensors.
• Forgo the second set of wheels and sensors and have the winter tires mounted on the original wheels with the original sensors. There’s an added cost of mounting and balancing the tires and wheels, but at least that’s absorbed in the cost of not having to buy new wheels and sensors. The potential downside is a tire technician may damage a tire or sensor in the mounting process.
• The last option is practical, but not the best use of technology: Buying a second set of wheels for your winter tires without a second set of tire pressure monitoring sensors. The rationale here is winter tires are used for a short period during the year. The tire pressure monitoring system is only there to alert the driver of a leaky tire. The system was never intended to be a substitute for routine tire pressure checks. So with this option you would be driving without the safeguard of the tire pressure monitoring system like most drivers of older cars on the road today.

Before buying, be sure to consult our car, truck, and winter tire ratings and buying advice.

--Gene Petersen

Comments

[CT Olson]

The option of installing a non-TPMS rim when you have it is resisted by several tire shops I've asked. They claim it may even be illegal in some states. Don't know if that's true or not, but a few things are clear - can't do a steel wheel with TPMS sensors that I've heard about - so that means a second set of alloys - $$$. More likely is remounting the tires, but then in many cases you don't have the advantage of changing profiles for instance for winter. Bottom line is @ TPMS is that while it's convenient for some ends up really expensive and probably unnecessary if you have an accurate tire gauge and use it.

[Cale]

Great post! And, as usual, you've covered all the bases. But I think that while there may be several options, only one makes sense to me. Buy the snow tires with dedicated rims. Forgo the tire monitoring for the winter months, keeping a eye on tire pressure and being especially careful after encountering an curbs or road debris.

Getting snow tires is a huge step towards making a car safer for winter driving. But I have no interest in spending upwards of $300 for some part (the manufacturer and dealer are gouging at these prices) only to then have to go through the nuisance of calibration which may run an additional $150. For what? To tell me that the board I just ran over had a nail in it and my tire's leaking air?

Check your tire pressure folks, even if you have monitoring!

[alba]

Save yourself hundreds of dollars and buy yourself a $3 tire gauge. They've worked fine for the last several decades.

[Michael]

I agree that a tire pressure monitoring system shouldn't be that kind of hassle. I don't think it's worth the expense, for that matter, regardless of the benefits. I second alba--a simple pressure gauge and a 12V pump are much more useful.

[david]

TPMS are a waste of money at this level of technology. ESC (Electronic Stability Control) should have been mandated earlier instead of this TPMS.

[Steve P]

What about buying the snow tire/wheel combo with the TPMS AND its own monitor? Since these can be retrofitted to older vehicles, it should be possible to use an aftermarket monitor for just the snows. It looks like the cost might not be much more than four sensors alone, either. While the OEM monitor may not function with te aftermarket sensors, you'd still have the aftermarket monitor working and can apply the Click & Clack "Black Tape Solution" during the months it is in use.

[Jason Steele]

People are a bunch of fools!