That is the statement of the seller we met yesterday when finalizing the lease the soccer mom Odyssey.

We got quite a lot extra stuff including 2 winter tires and we were discussing the interest of buying extra rims to put the winter tires on or go to the dealer every 6 months to changes the tires on the rims (I hope you understand, even in french yesterday night, it was not that clear... so tired right now).

He told us that if we go with new rims for the winter tires, we will have to buy TPMS with them, and come anyway to the dealer to reprogram the car with the new TPMS.

I told him that I can live with a yellow light on the dashboard for 5-6 months and that I did not need the TPMS, just the rims with regular valves. That is there that he told me that not having TPMS signals for the car will foul the ABS and the stability system and could be dangerous.

It is the first time I hear this argument. Nobody at Nissan told me that and I know a lot of people going with the TPMS light on during winter time.

We decided to put winter tires already on the car, so I have 6 months to find out if it is true or if it is bullsheet from the seller (who knows that much on oil that when I asked him what type of oil the algorythm of the MM use, conventional, semisyn, or synthetic, he answered: 5w20...twice ).

In theory, this is true, but not in your particular application. When your tires are severly deflated, the diamater changes, and this can mess up the ABS and TCS systems - it's the same thing as with putting larger or smaller wheels/tires on your car and changing the rolling circumference. These systems work off wheel rotations and sizes - if its not the right size, it could affect it.

If you keep your tires inflated to the proper pressure and they are the same size as your other tires, you won't have any issues with ABS or TCS systems not kicking in.

TPMS is a independent system. You can run without like Marlin sez just fine.

I have a aftermarket TPMS anyway on my winter tires that gives individual pressures and temps. Requires no programming. I didn't want to freeze my patui checking tire pressures.

Ooops, sorry, I mislead you about my 2 tires for free: We got two tires for free with the car but we bought the other two.

I will NEVER drive with two different types of tires (except if I have a flat and until the tire is repaired or changed).

The car will have always 4 tires of the same spec, either 4 winter tires (Blizzak WS60) right now, either OEM 4 seasons tires in summer (I think he told me they are Firestones).

I am just wondering when the system doesn't have anymore the TPMS information, if it falls into a degraded mode which can lead to an ABS or VSA use less efficient.Do the ABS and VSA systems NEED the TPMS information to work at their maximum?

I still have to call their service department to have a second opinion on that.

As mstrmstr said and I eluded to, the TPMS system is completely independent of all systems in your car - the only thing it does it monitor the pressure of your tires, that's it.

ABS and TCS systems have been around much longer than TPMS systems and have worked properly since.

Whether you have the TPMS sensors or not on your car will not affect your ABS and TCS systems - TPMS and ABS/TCS are completely different from one another.

The only way you can screw up the ABS and TCS is the following:

1. Using wheel/tire combinations that are not the same size as your OEM sizes (eg, if you have a 215/60/16 size tire to start and put a 225/60/17 on aftermarket, you are going to mess the systems up).

2. Not having the proper amount of brake fluids.

3. Crashing your car.

That's about it. There is nothing to worry about with the TPMS and ABS/TCS systems intertwining.

Thank you, that is what I thought, especially coming from this seller .

It scared me by making me believe they improve the use of the ABS with more/new information.In theory, it is a good idea to know each tire pressure in order to modulate the braking power wheel by wheel to achieve a more straight and powerful braking.It is probably more complicated than that to achieve this goal.

Thanks.

Good post. Got me thinking....What if I went from standard OEM 225/60R/17 (SL model) to standard OEM (S model) size 215/70R/16 in a winter tire and winter rim? Will that screw up the ABS and TCS?

That would be fine, seeing that the difference in size is .8% - it would not affect your systems. The stock 225 is 27.6 inches, and the new 215's are 27.9 inches in diamater.

chove1437 wrote:Good post. Got me thinking....What if I went from standard OEM 225/60R/17 (SL model) to standard OEM (S model) size 215/70R/16 in a winter tire and winter rim? Will that screw up the ABS and TCS?

Nissan won't spend engineering time to configure two different ABS, one for the S model, one for the SL. The systems will work fine with your set up, I have the same (SL model with S winter tires).

As long as you don't go too far off the spec (few %), you will be ok.

Sellers are dumba$$, and I am one too believing in what he told me .