I was parked at the gym the other day and upon returning to my car I noticed that the valve stem appeared to be loose. I put my hand on it to feel if it was loose and it immediately broke off and all the air leaked out of my front driver's side tire within seconds. Subsequently I discovered it was the TPMS that broke. It snapped in half and appeared to be corroded from salt and road grime. I was due for new tires anyways so this forced me to buy them a few weeks sooner than expected.
I am going to take my car to the dealer to try and get this fixed under warranty as soon as the new tires come in.
I noticed that other people have experienced the same problem. It seems to me that Mitsubishi is using extremely cheap TPMS's on the Ralliart. Not only am I going to ask them to replace the broken TPMS but I'm also going to request that the dealer replace ALL four of them. The car is a bit over 2 years old with 30k miles on it. That seems somewhat early for a TPMS to corrode and break.
Any thoughts?

 

They dont use anything that is less cheap than anyone else. They are all 3rd party products.

From my understanding, the TPMS should be warrantied for the duration of the car warranty.

 

TPMS warranty is the same as your basic warranty. 5/60 or 3/36 depending on what you got with the car. As long as you kept the broken piece, make sure to bring it with you and they should warranty it without question, unless you had aftermarket bling valve caps or something.

As far as the cheapness of the sensor, phreak is correct in that all of them are from 3rd party companies, no matter the car brand. Our sensors are actually compatible with a number of dodge/chrysler/jeep applications...

 

It's also a fairly common problem with TPMS.

 

what time of valve caps did you have ?

 

The ones we have on our car are....Siemens I think. They're sitting in the failed tpms pipe bomb in my garage otherwise I'd check right now. And yes, the stems are brittle, especially in the cold and it's not the fault of the metal valve caps (the metal valve caps are only a concern with corrosion, really).

 

just for people who may be using aluminum valve caps...

there are a few TSB's out by other manufacturers that specifically address the issue of broken TPMS and metal valve caps with brass inserts.

When brass and aluminum come together, galvanic corrosion can/will occur between the aluminum valve stem and the brass threads inside the valve cap (even tho most valve stems say they are aluminum the insides/threads are actually brass), the corrosion can cause them to fuse together or make the aluminum valve stem brittle.