Steel to alloy wheel tpms workaround

First off, I'm hard headed. I've got a practically new 2021 tundra with perfectly good tpms sensors and have a hard time swallowing 200 dollars or more for more sensors simply because the angle on the thing is 40 degrees vs 20. I bought a set of oem alloy wheels off the net for cheap and just had them powder coated. Painted the center caps and bought new black lug nuts so I've got some good looking wheels for little investment. I've spent what seems like hours researching the issue of the problem going from steel to alloy wheels because of these sensors Toyota uses and am wondering if I've found something that'll work for basically just a few dollars.

Looking around, I've come to the conclusion that the tpms doesn't need to be physically attached to the valve stem to work. That's basically just a way of mounting them to the inside of the wheel. Many commercial truck companies, trailer vendors and Ford in particular use a band around the inside of the wheel with the sensor mounted on it. That got me thinking why wouldn't that work. Even if I had to zip tie the sensor to the band, as long as it's in the correct orientation and secure, the sensor isn't going to know the difference. All its gonna know is there was a pressure drop when the wheels were switched. Same sensors, so no reprogram etc. I couldn't care less what it looks like because nobody will ever see it. I can get the four bands with brackets for a little over 20 bucks which is way better than the 200 plus I was seeing for new sensors plus the headache of whether or not they're going to work and have to break down the wheels again potentially damaging my new powder coated finish.

In all the threads I've seen on this site I've never seen this idea mentioned and I know it's caused a lot of headaches to some on here. I'm wondering if anyone has any input on this or even if anyone had tried this before? I like being able to see the pressure on the fly and don't want to start slicing wires on a 43000 dollar truck to try and fool the system. Any thoughts are welcome!

 

Update. Well apparently it depends which alloy wheels you use. Lol. Bought the bands and put them on and told discount tire to use them. The guy said they may be able to make the tpms sensors work with the valve stems like they were originally. I said if they could, great use them. Sure enough he said they worked fine as they were and didn't need the bands. Pressure reading on the dash works and no low tire light. Maybe I got lucky.

 

Never heard of this method but yeah you must be definitely hard headed as you said if $200 for sensors is hard to swallow when you have a $40K plus truck. Just my .02.

 

So they were able to mount the steel tpms to the TRD offroad alloys without any modification? Or did you get different alloys?

 

My truck had steel wheels, upgraded to methods, now im on trd offroad wheels. All with the same tpms. Not sure how they did it but it has always worked

 

was it one of the chain tire places that did the swaps?

 

1 offroad shop,
1 chain

never leaked

 

Yep. Your 2 cents is spot on.

 

Mounted them up just like they were originally. No problem.