Winter Wheels - TPMS Cloning

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COEV

Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2017
Messages
16
Thought I'd write this up because I saw some of this information during a search, but not everything in one place.

I have a 2017 SV which has 215/50/17 tires on it. I'm setting up a winter wheel set and got some never-used Nissan OEM Steelies on Craigslist. They are 16x6.5 wheels and I'm going to put some 205/55/16 winter tires on them. The question was ... what to do about the TPMS? That usually means registering the wheels to the car every time I swapped wheels, which would be a pain because it would involve a drive to a dealer or tire store. I'd prefer to just swap wheels myself each Winter/Summer season since it's at most a 15 minute job.

After some research, I found the Autel MaxiTPMS system and thought I'd give it a go. You need the 315MHz sensors
https://www.amazon.com/Autel-MaxiTP...07581803&sr=8-10&keywords=autel+maxitpms&th=1
With this system, you can clone the OEM sensors to some new ones so that the car never knows that you switched wheels. You have to buy a sensor programmer and four new TPMS MX-Sensor stems. Grand total on amazon was about $230 ... way cheaper than buying new sensors from the dealer at $100 a piece! The process is pretty simple, just copy each individual TPMS of the stock wheels and program the codes to the new Autel MX-Sensors. Here's some pics of the process:

1. First gotcha is to install the software and MaxiTPMS PAD on your Windows laptop. You probably have to go into setup and do an upgrade of the software and PAD after installing to get the latest firmware for the PAD.
TPMS-1.jpg


2. Then head out to your LEAF and bring your gear. Turn on the car so that it activates the TPMS in the wheels. You can make sure it's all working by placing one of the MX-Sensors on the scanner PAD and hitting TEST
TPMS-3.jpg


3. Next, go into Copy Sensor tab in the software and hold the PAD up to your wheel. It should only take a few seconds to read the code off of the original TPMS. Click Test and it should read the code off of the OEM.
TPMS-2.jpg


4. After you have copied the code off of the OEM wheel, place one of your MX-Sensors on the PAD and hit "Program". This will clone the code onto the new sensor. I wrote the wheel location and code on each box so I would know where to install the wheels when I did the Winter swap. You probably don't have to do this, but this way the car will not have to relearn the position of each wheel.
TPMS-4.jpg


5. That's it! Repeat the process three more times and you're done. You now have two sets of wheels that you can swap back and forth without having to reprogram the TPMS each time.

One thing to note is that when I ordered my parts, one of the MX-Sensors was bad so I had to send it back to Amazon for a replacement. I don't know how well these are inspected before shipping from China so if you're on a time crunch, order a couple of extra sensors in case you get a bad one, too.

If you already have your tires mounted... Check out this guy on YouTube for a video walk through of installing the TPMS on existing wheels.https://youtu.be/Maunq29ow2U
 
Uggghh. On my other cars I have been able to program the TPMS from in the car when I switch wheels and tires. I was just about to order a set of wheels and tires with TPMS from TireRack and figured I could change the wheels myself like I always have. It is complete BS that Nissan is trying to get us to go to the dealership for this. I refuse on principle to this type of behavior from manufacturers and I will not go. The stops manufactures are taking to try to prevent people from being able to work in their property themselves is shameful.

Shame on you Nissan. Designing barriers to prevent owners from doing work in their own cars is pathetic. Nissan has earned my scorn for this but not my money.
 
I thought you could add new TPMS via Leaf Spy?

I am still living on the edge and all winter with the snows on I have no TPMS and check the tires the old fashioned way...
 
Ok so I broke down and bought the Autel MaxiTPMS PAD with 8 programmable sensors for the snows on our van and Leaf. I installed the software and started with our Honda Odyssey van. It read each sensor and I was amazed how simple it is. Then I walked over to the Leaf and switch the software to the Leaf, but it couldn't read them. I thought maybe the sensors were sleeping so I drove the Leaf around looked in Leaf Spy and saw the pressures display, drove back in the garage, left the Leaf in "on" and tried reading them again with no luck. I tried all four with the same result. The Leaf has the original TPMS, but with new tires, but again Leaf Spy can see them. I swapped the software back to the van and it read the van tires instantly.

I tried all the years for the Leaf and even tried a dozen or so other Nissan's with the same years, but no luck. Is there something special with the Leaf's TPMS?

Any ideas?
 
Just a suggestion. The picture depicting reading existing sensor with tool shows incorrect tool position. You need to position tool against the tire side wall (rubber) where valve is located, otherwise (shown position) the wheel alloy is shielding the sensor antenna. I have TPMS tool and had issue reading the sensors putting it agains valve cap. Once I read instructions - I was able to read all sensors on my Leaf and other vehicles I own. I have other tool to read/write sensor data from/to vehicle as well. Just a reminder, when you rotate tires or just got leaf and looking at leafspy - the leafspy may misreport tire sensor positions due to previous tire rotations. Fortunately, you can recalibrate it with leafspy pro following procedure (different pressure in specific tires), so it will re-map wheels according to actual sensor position. Then you can just use pattern when performing tire rotation to remap sensor locations.
Good luck!
 
I'm also on the same boat on my leaf 2018 SV with Autel MaxiTPMS PAD, I'm unable to get the readings. I've also tried all the 407003XXXX, and 407004XXXX PNs and nothing.
@BrockWI, Have you found the way to get a reading?
 
I haven't tried again with the Leaf. It works so easy on the van, so it should work, I will try again this weekend.

Did you try it right after the car was moving? I thought I read the Leaf stock sensors go to sleep really quickly and the Autel reader doesn't wake them up.

The other thing people said that wakes the Leaf sensors up is letting at least 10 psi of air out, although I haven't tried that myself.
 
I tried a bunch of things and nothing was working. As a last try I dropped the tire pressure to 20 psi and guess what, the Autel reader suddenly found them. I went to all 4, cloned them to the new sensors and moved out of the garage and double checked the new programed sensors and they were all good.

One thing that was annoying (but good for the car) is that once the sensors "wake up" they transmit for a long time. So as you move around to each tire make sure your not reading one of the previous tires (yes they transmit pretty far), I was reading rear left while trying to read the front right and so on. The last tire took the longest becasue I kept reading the three other tires until finally I found the new code. If you have the tires off the car you could just move them 50 feet (15 meters) apart to avoid reading the previous tire.

Now I have to get the new sensors in the snow tires (Blizzacks), I usually put the snows on in late November or early December depending on the weather and condition of the summers (Eco 422+) that are on, which were new this spring so they are pretty good.
 
WOW!! I have to try it too. I'm kind of busy the next couple of days, I'm crossing my fingers to have the same results too.

By any change do you recall the PN of the sensors? are the ones transmitting at 433 or 315 Mhz?

Thanks again.
 
I have the Autel programmable MX-Sensors, they are 315 or 433. They were the same prince as just the 315 programmable ones so i thought why not them in case I ever move them or whatever. I got them on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FTLX2L4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It was odd that on the Leaf I have 3 TMPS in series, only the very last digit changed, then one of them was quite a bit different, not that it matters, I just thought it was odd. They are the original ones that came with the Leaf.

They are indeed 315 MHz on my 2013 S anyway.
 
BrockWI said:
As a last try I dropped the tire pressure to 20 psi and guess what, the Autel reader suddenly found them.

Glad to hear you were able to get them to read. I had the same problem a few weeks ago. Just a slight, rapid drop in pressure was all it took to wake mine up. After that, reading and programming was simple. I was also happy to find out the car automatically updated the new sensor locations.
 
For our Odyssey, I bought the Autel TS408 for $116.43 (eBay) and 4x 315mhz sensors for $99.50. So it was about the same price as the $220 kit with pad+4 sensors. I like not needing a laptop to use the tool. I haven't tried it on the Leaf, because I had already been using a set of non-clone-able sensors on my Leaf winter tires, and have used LeafSpy to learn them when I swap tires. However, if I had already bought the TMPS cloner, then I'd have cloned them instead. That seems simpler. And since the Honda has no option to learn new TPMS codes at all, it was either pay $116 once for the cloning tool, or pay a shop to swap the tires seasonally ($80 to $160 per car per year... the cloner pays for itself in 1-2 years). My guess is that we will eventually see TPMS reading/cloning functions folded into one standard ODB2 tool (I use Autel CRP129), so someday you won't have to buy two tools.

FYI, when I was cloning the Honda wheels, I was able to do each wheel in succession, without the TS408 accidentally reading the wrong wheel. Maybe I just got lucky. To be sure, I was keeping a list of the codes I'd already seen, so if I saw one a second time, I would notice.
 
I would agree now having the pad and using a laptop I would prefer the Autel TS408, basically the same thing but a hand held stand alone unit. It would be quicker and easier to use than the laptop and pad.
 
BrockWI said:
The last tire took the longest becasue I kept reading the three other tires until finally I found the new code. If you have the tires off the car you could just move them 50 feet (15 meters) apart to avoid reading the previous tire.

I had that same problem and that was my solution in the end. Since I was cloning the TPMS while also swapping on the new wheels, I would just take the stock wheel off, let out 10psi or so to activate, and then take the wheel out of the garage to read it. Once I found that trick, it was pretty straightforward to clone them all.
 
I am in the UK . I have read that the UK TPMS valves are 433mhz ??? can anyone verify this? USA is lower mhz.
I have found a UK supplier that can program the aftermarket sensor to the make and model so it should be plug and play.
https://www.tyrebaydirect.com/product/oe-r-tpms-sensor-valve/

Hopefully these will be ok to use on my aftermarket Bola B1 alloy wheels. Has anyone brought pre programmed sensors and had no problems.? These are cheap so I not filled with confidence.
 
specialgreen said:
I bought the Autel TS408 ... I haven't tried it on the Leaf

Update, I finally had a reason to read the TPMS in our 2017 Leaf wheels using the Autel TS408, and it worked fine.

note: I read in the following post that the Autel's TS408 will not work with the 433mhz sensors on the 2018 Leaf:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=26697#p539150
 
Woot.com has the Autel dual frequency TPMS sensors for $19 each.

https://tools.woot.com/offers/autel-dual-frequency-315mh-1

I ordered four and I'm going to try them in the wheels that I was using on my 2015 that has the 315 Mhz sensors. I need to figure out which Autel Pad to use.
 
I used the Autel TPMS sensors referenced in the post above and programming seems to have worked OK. I used the Autel TS601 TPMS tool to copy the sensor info from the car (through the OBD II) port and then create clones out of the Autel sensors. The onboard computer recognized them right away. I don't have the sensors in the tires yet so they're reporting at 0 PSI.
 
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