this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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A local city proudly mentioned on the news that they had a system that could track TPMS sensors. Pretty much all cars after 2008 uses TPMS sensors that each broadcast a unique identifier to the car. They aren't hard to remove, and you can buy valve stems that fit your car (0.452 hole) at any auto parts store.
EDIT: The sheer amount of replies to this post days later that basically state "This is too hard to do, and it won't work anyway, so you are stupid to try and shouldn't do it", all from people who clearly have no real idea how the TPMS system on a car works, have confirmed for me that I was correct in spending a half hour removing these devices.
They aren’t hard to remove, and you can buy valve stems that fit your hole at any auto parts store.
Good to know.
They are hard to remove, and require a variety of expensive specialty tools to do properly.
You can get close enough just clipping some weights of the same weight as the sensor to the valve stem. A static balance isn't hard to do - not nearly as good as the proper dynamic balance the tire shop will do, but often good enough.
You still have to remove and reinstall the tire...
One side of the tire. I did not have to remove the tires from the rims, and I didn't have to balance them.