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Home / Symptoms / Tire Pressure Light

Four common causes for a “tire pressure” warning light on the vehicle and their related parts.

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Is Your Car's Tire Pressure Light On?

The tire pressure light warns about a tire-kinda-empty(at least 25% below proper air), a flat tire, or broken sensors. If it’s the sensors, the tires should look normal. Alternatively, the tires might have overheated and want to cool off. The warning light that pops up on the dashboard is typically yellow color featuring a tire and an exclamation point.

Watch out: Stay alert if your car's dashboard begins to pop the "tire pressure" warning light. You might be driving under flat tires, causing progressive damage and requiring hefty repairs in the future; it'll also feature considerable safety risks. Alternatively, it can be electrical issues with the car's computer.

The most common causes for a tire pressure light

The most common causes for a TPMS warning light are:

Faulty tire positioning sensor: The positioning sensor is essential to accurately display the tires for the right location to the instrument cluster, which controls what pops up on the dashboard. The cluster is a part of the computer module that activates the TPMS light.
Faulty wheel speed sensor: A wheel speed sensor tracks tire rotation speed. Then, they compare the four wheels' speeds to see if they match. The logic is that an under or over-inflated tire rotates at different speeds than a tire with correct pressure. Unfortunately, an ABS failure can disable the tire-pressure monitoring system.
Faulty tire pressure sensor: The TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) light notifies about the pressure on the tires, indicating if it’s time to add air to the tires. The pressure is measured in pounds per square inch (psi). A TPMS module relies on readings coming from pressure sensors in the tires. Note that these TPMS sensors last around 6-10 years, and their battery gets low at this range. Plus, these sensors can also fail due to road impact, rough terrain driving, and overheating.
Overheating tire: Your vehicle’s tires and wheels can endure ambient temperature but might overheat for different reasons, like a sticking brake caliper. If the wheels overheat, meaning their temperature rises, the tires might overinflate, causing the sensors to pick up a sudden pressure change, triggering the warning light on the dashboard.
Low tire pressure: You have to regularly inflate the tires to ensure their pressure doesn’t drop too much. Tire pressure naturally lowers over time, but it can also drop due to damaging reasons like road impact, tire damage, etc. If the tire pressure drops 25% off the ideal range, your dashboard will show a warning light.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is your tire pressure warning light on?

This warning notifies the driver when a tire's pressure is possibly under or above the recommended specifications. You can quickly confirm this by visually checking the state of each tire. Additionally, you can also use an air gauge to check how much pressure a specific tire has.
Is your tire pressure warning light flashing?

If the notification is exclusively flashing or randomly disappearing, there might be an issue with the car's tire pressure monitoring system. So, you may or may not see low tire pressure, and there might be no other noticeable symptoms.
Is the warning popping on the dash even though your tires are good?

Maybe you're noticing a tire pressure warning light on the dash concerning a specific wheel. But, when you check it, everything seems fair. This commonly happens after rotating the vehicle's tires at an auto shop.
Does your tire look flat even though there's no warning dashboard light?

Most modern vehicles don't feature sensors inside the tires. Instead, they use wheel speed sensors to calculate tire rotation. Unfortunately, if these sensors fail, they'll send wrong calculations to the anti-lock brake control module(ABS). So, even though the tire has low pressure, the sensors don't compute it. In many cases, the ABS or traction control light may be on too.
Does the tire pressure warning come on in cold weather and vanish after?

When the vehicle moves, its tire pressure changes, warming up and cooling down throughout the day. You might notice one of the wheels is warmer than the others; in this case, investigate the reasons since this is an issue symptom. Take the car to an auto shop and tell them about a temperature discrepancy between the tires.
Does the tire pressure warning flash randomly even though all tires are fine?

If your car's dashboard flashes the tire pressure warning periodically and without context, it needs additional testing. Sometimes, this can be the work of trouble codes, and a quality code scanner picks up on it, detecting tire pressure sensors with a weak battery. Still, different trouble codes can send the car's computer a warning message.

Typical fixes to address the cause(s)

These are typical processes and repair services that fix a check engine light issue

The most common cause: Low tire pressure

The most common reason for a car dashboard to show a tire pressure warning light is due to low tire pressure. The tire pressure in every wheel drops naturally, and you’ll typically need to inflate the tires every month or so to avoid the pressure from getting too low. This happens naturally most of the time, and modern vehicles let the driver know it’s time to inflate the tires with a dashboard warning. However, tire pressure can drop faster due to other causes like tire damage.

Symptoms it causes: Apart from the tire pressure warning light on the dashboard you might also notice sluggish driving and humming noises.
Medium risk of priority: Proper tire pressure is needed to ensure your vehicle responds wheel to the steering wheel, terrain, and acceleration. Low tire pressure means a sluggish vehicle that might not offer enough control in demanding situations.

How exactly do the tire pressure drops?

Tire pressure is defined by the air amount inside the tires. Every time a tire is properly inflated, it’ll have enough air to endure the vehicle’s weight and driving demands for a few weeks. However, during that time, the air inside the tires slowly escapes; no tire sealing in the world can prevent a little bit of air from leaking out every day. But modern vehicles have sensors that detect whenever too much air has left the tire, and these sensors shoot up a tire pressure warning light. Tire pressure only drops abruptly if the tire is damaged or too old.

Go safe: Ask for a mechanic to inspect your vehicle’s tires to investigate if the tire pressure is dropping naturally or if there’s further damage. Many shops do transparent vehicle inspections and lay out your options after investigating your vehicle’s conditions.

What’s a vehicle inspection? It’s “detective work” on your vehicle, checking its systems to see if anything prevents the car from working as expected. In this case, mechanics examine different parts of your vehicle to track if anything is causing the tires to lose pressure abruptly. They’ll also check the condition of components during their inspection, noting which are causing the problem and which got affected by it, recommending to replace them in order of priority.

Transparency example in a low tire pressure service

A tire and wheel inspection is the most transparent process to understand why your vehicle’s tire pressure is dropping. This is because many components surrounding the wheels and tires can have a say in the issue, meaning they might be culprits, causing overwear.

Let’s read an example of how this kind of inspection helps to service a worn brake pad.

The mechanic started with a test drive, which revealed the tire pressure warning on the car's dashboard. Then, when they measured the tires' air pressure with a tire pressure gauge, they found an issue; one of the tires had an extremely low air pressure level.

The customer allowed additional testing, which the mechanic performed by removing the tire in question and examining its inner part. Unfortunately, the inspection revealed that the tire had catastrophic damages, and repairing it wouldn't solve the issue.

So, the auto shop replaced the tire with a new one that would match the vehicle's driveline. Then, they applied the proper tire inflation on the wheels.

Even though the shop found the issue's cause during a vehicle health inspection, the additional tests were crucial in isolating the problem as underinflated tires.

Low tire pressure

In this case, the mechanic put the “Immediate Action” tag on the tires.

Similar Symptoms

Below are just a few examples of typical Symptoms and Fixes your car might be experiencing

Four common causes for a “check engine” light on the vehicle and their related parts.

Is Your Car's Tire Pressure Light On?

The most common causes for a tire pressure light

Frequently Asked Questions

Is your tire pressure warning light on?

Is your tire pressure warning light flashing?

Is the warning popping on the dash even though your tires are good?

Does your tire look flat even though there's no warning dashboard light?

Does the tire pressure warning come on in cold weather and vanish after?

Does the tire pressure warning flash randomly even though all tires are fine?

Typical fixes to address the cause(s)

The most common cause: Low tire pressure

How exactly do the tire pressure drops?

Transparency example in a low tire pressure service

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