SLK280_Steve

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Hi everyone, I picked up my new '08 SLK 280 a couple weeks ago... just in time for what is beginning to look like a tough New England winter.

I can limit how often I will need to drive in snow but wanted to be prepared so I went to TireRack.com and ordered a set of 4 rims and snow tires.

While ordering I made the mistake of not realizing that my car came with tire pressure sensors (i thought it was an option). Of course, as soon as I got on the highway this morning I found out that I did have the sensors.

Can anyone offer advice on my options and the consequences?

I can personally live with the warning light for a few months... but, how will that affect the car? Does it have an impact on ABS or ESP?

Can I just disable the tire pressure system until I put the stock wheels back on?

Do I NEED to buy the sensors, have them installed, tires remounted and balanced?

I would appreciate any suggestions/opinions (as long as they don't make fun of my ignorance)

DansSlk

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It wont have any negative impact on the cars systems the Low Line TPMS fitted to your car just picks up the data and reports it on the CANBUS nothing listens to that info apart from the cluster to display that information to you.

Basically its perfectly safe to drive the car in its current state.

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mtiede

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Can whatever was on the original wheel be fitted to the new ones? Just curious.

DansSlk

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Technically yes but in practice no.

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herve431

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I had 16" rims on my 280 and I changed for 18" rims and there is no problem with the tyre pressure sensor. The only thing you have to do when changing rims or tyres is to re-initiate the sensor using the onboard computer,that's it.

DansSlk

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Steve has a 2008 US-Spec car so he has direct pressure monitoring not speed based monitoring

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herve431

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The spec are different in US ? are the sensors located on the rims ?

DansSlk

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Yeah the 2008 US cars have Low Line pressure monitoring i.e the sensors are located in the tires mounted to the valve, they transmit information to the control unit and it forwards it on the cluster.

In contrast the ROW car's use the ABS sensors and ESP control unit to measure the time it takes for the wheel to complete a revolution in comparison with the others, a wheel rotating outside of tolerance it's flagged as flat.

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herve431

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OK by the way it happens once to me I had the alert "loss of pressure" I've controled immediatly and instead 2.4 I had only 1.4. I do think that the alert is coming a bit too late.

SLK280_Steve

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Thank You for your quick reply last week Dan. I really appreciate the helpfull information.

I was pretty worried about how those sensors would affect the car. I don't enjoy seeing the yellow "flat tire with !" light but at least I know it's nothing to be too concerned about. I've lived with checking my tire pressure for the last 20 years of driving. I can live without tire pressure sensors for a few months a year

The day I posted that message we had a snow storm. My normal commute time home from work is 40 minutes. It took me 3.5 hours to get home that afternoon but it wasn't because of my car...it was because nobody else can handle driving in the snow.

I was impressed by how well my car performed. I drove around a number of people who were getting stuck. I'm sure the snow tires made a big difference but it seems that the car is fairly well balanced as far as the weight distribution. I think I'll add a little weight to the back when I know it will snow but I don't think it's as necessary as it was in my previous car, a C230 Kompressor.