makeshiftUK
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Thought I'd post this up in case it helps anyone for future reference. Kicking this whole saga off was the dreaded 'TPMS unavailable' warning on my dash accompanied by the illuminated yellow warning symbol that typically precedes a facepalm moment... at this stage I figure it's one of the 4x TPMS sensors that's triggering the error due to low charge within their internal batteries. Temperatures were cold during December/January, and this had happened almost to the day a year back - but this time the error would not disappear when attempting to reset by 'recalibrating'. Thus, I fired a mail into Eurospares with my VIN, and had these matched and recommended to me: 312450 - of which I ordered 4x because it made sense to just do them all at the same time (I opted to go OEM vs. 3rd party). And relieve my wallet of the best part of £500 in the process.
All seemed to be fine when having them fitted by the good folk at SportsItalia, the new sensors were transmitting and displaying pressure readings on the dash. Until my TPMS ECU decided to keep registering an error, which we soon realised couldn't be cleared... various people think that running TPMS sensors triggering errors for a sustained period of time (about a month in my case) 'fries' the ECU rendering it a meaningless paperweight. This is Maserati, of course, so this is all perfectly logical and fine - until you realise that the TPMS ECU (part code 235303) is no longer available to order. The search began for an alternative Beru part that matched as closely as possible all the fine print on my now duff ECU (the most important part circled in red):
My research online lead me to a thread from the the 'other' forum here - which rather usefully explains the v1 TPMS ECU line of succession. 200811 was the first, replaced by 221360 and then 235303 which is what my 2010 Quattroporte Sport GT S came with. Interestingly enough, Maserati introduced a new line of v2.5 ECUs which started coming into effect in 2008 (263953 followed by 310225)... for some reason my 2010 car came with the earlier generation v1 ECU.
Anyway, I managed to find an example of 221360 - and paid £200 for the below from an eBayer seller in Germany, on the off chance it'd be compatible with my car (and only one 'hop' removed in the ECU line of succession). Crucially, the voltage and current values match:
After fitting the above today, I can confirm that (for now!!) 221360 works! Big thanks to Ashley at SI for getting that fitted for me today. It's strange not having the glare of the TPMS warning light on the dashboard... it's almost like something is, missing.
This however represents nothing more than kicking the can down the road using used components salvaged from other cars. Longer term there are two alternatives as I see it:
All seemed to be fine when having them fitted by the good folk at SportsItalia, the new sensors were transmitting and displaying pressure readings on the dash. Until my TPMS ECU decided to keep registering an error, which we soon realised couldn't be cleared... various people think that running TPMS sensors triggering errors for a sustained period of time (about a month in my case) 'fries' the ECU rendering it a meaningless paperweight. This is Maserati, of course, so this is all perfectly logical and fine - until you realise that the TPMS ECU (part code 235303) is no longer available to order. The search began for an alternative Beru part that matched as closely as possible all the fine print on my now duff ECU (the most important part circled in red):
My research online lead me to a thread from the the 'other' forum here - which rather usefully explains the v1 TPMS ECU line of succession. 200811 was the first, replaced by 221360 and then 235303 which is what my 2010 Quattroporte Sport GT S came with. Interestingly enough, Maserati introduced a new line of v2.5 ECUs which started coming into effect in 2008 (263953 followed by 310225)... for some reason my 2010 car came with the earlier generation v1 ECU.
Anyway, I managed to find an example of 221360 - and paid £200 for the below from an eBayer seller in Germany, on the off chance it'd be compatible with my car (and only one 'hop' removed in the ECU line of succession). Crucially, the voltage and current values match:
After fitting the above today, I can confirm that (for now!!) 221360 works! Big thanks to Ashley at SI for getting that fitted for me today. It's strange not having the glare of the TPMS warning light on the dashboard... it's almost like something is, missing.
This however represents nothing more than kicking the can down the road using used components salvaged from other cars. Longer term there are two alternatives as I see it:
- Getting someone to 'hack' the ECU and remove the TPMS related code from the software... no easy task
- Chatting to folks like McGrath who sound like they're able to make replacement ECUs to order, I imagine these wouldn't be OEM but would certainly trust them based on reputation... this was my fallback option if the used ECU hadn't worked
