DIY: Enable the Tire Pressure Menu

MikeUCFL

Images taken from Motorvate DIY's G37

First off I'll say I take zero credit for figuring any of this out, I saw it on one of the latest Motorvate DIY video (who he also attributes finding some of this info out by someone named Gareth Bryan), and tested it out for the 370z. Worked for me without any issues so far (only a day of testing). I will say this is experimental and you are taking a risk doing these commands, any issues that arise would be your responsibility. Motorvate DIY said he has been running with this on his G37 it for about 3 months with no issues, only a day for my 2012 370z

Video:

Here's just a breakdown of what I got out of the video and steps I took. I would suggest watching the video over my steps, as his instructions are pretty clear, and can explain things better if you get lost.

Necessary Hardware Items:

1. 370z with Navigation and a USB port in the center console (not sure if the 2009 models had the USB port?)
2. Windows laptop (video says to use Windows 10 or 11, believe Windows 7 needs a driver that wasn't readily known)
3. USB A to A cable (male to male)
4. USB memory stick of 4 or 8 GB (I see an update in the description stating he was able to get 16GB and 32GB working, but I tested on an 8GB stick). Also the stick needs to be using FAT32 filesystem (not exFAT or NTFS or anything else)

Steps I took:

1. Plug the memory stick in the laptop and create an empty file on the root drive called "UsbDebugStart.ivanaX".
2. On your laptop, download putty https://www.putty.org/. This will be used to send and receive commands from the vehicle.
3. Go to your car, turn the power on to Acc and wait for the system to boot up.
4. Once the navigation is booted up, plug the USB stick in to the USB port in your center console. You'll see the navigation display "Reading USB memory". I believe this step is to just tell the system to enable access to send and receive commands.
5. After a few seconds of "Reading USB memory" displaying, unplug the USB stick and then plug in your USB cable in the USB port in your car.
6. Now plug the other end of the USB cable to your PC.
7. We need to know which COM port to use for sending and receiving data with Putty, so open your device manager (start menu -> type 'device manager'). Look under Ports (COM & LPT) and should hopefully list one COM port (e.g. COM6 is what is shown on his system at https://youtu.be/hVikE-EOncg?t=427)
8. Run putty on your machine that you downloaded.
9. Go to Session -> Logging and turn on 'All session output' and save the log file name somewhere on disk. This will keep a log of what you saw and sent just in case.
10. Now click on Session on the left and change the connection type to 'Serial' and set the Serial line to the COM port you found earlier (e.g. COM6). The speed should be 9600 as well.
11. Click open. This will open a serial connection to the unit and you may see some spam of messages come in.
12. Hit enter once to see a command prompt of 'xanavi>' show up. Now you're able to send and receive commands
13. Type in 'xrcnf 2' which lists the current configuration. The first time you run this you should see: TPMS information = 0 (OFF), after enabling you should see it say the value is 3 (ON)
14. Then type in 'sys 2 9 1 13 3' to enable TPMS. This should say Write Item = 3
15. Then type 'xrcnf 2' again and now it should say TPMS information 3 (X61A type)
16. Now turn the car off for 10 seconds and you can unplug your computer and USB cable
17. When starting the car (not the Acc mode, must be in the ON position). Tire pressure menu should show up. You need to be moving for the tire pressure to show up. MotorvateDIY also figured out the ordering of the values is Front Left, Front Right, Rear Right, and Rear Left.
    

__________________
Magnetic Black Touring/Sport/Navi/6MT < Stillen G3 | ZSpeed Stage 1 Clutch/Flywheel/CMAK | RJM Rev 3.2 Pedal with Tilton Master

MotorvateDIY

MikeUCFL: Thanks for sharing your experience with enabling the Tire Pressure menu!
I thought about making a post here, but I didn't have any proof that it works on the 370, even though the 370z uses the exact same navigation unit (known as the 08IT) as the G37.

Sooo, it is good to know it works on the 370!

MotorvateDIY

If you have a newer laptop with a USB C port, you can use the standard USB C to USB A cable to reconfigure the nav unit.

I never thought about this, as my 8 year old Mac Pro only has USB A.
However, a comment on my channel this morning asked if a USB C to USB A cable would work.
I tested it on a newer desktop and it worked!

bugers

Amazing discovery! Thanks for sharing.

Unfortunately, I did try this modification on my euro version of 370z and menu "Tyre Pressure" showed up but no readings. I was driving my car for 30km and all of them are still showing "**"
Do you think that changing type 3 "(X61A type)" to something else is a solution?
Do you know other possible options and what they mean?

MotorvateDIY

Can you post or PM me your xrcnf 2 / configuration file?
I'll reconfigure my unit and see if I get the same behaviour.

Also, the next time you are connected to the navigtion unit, please type"
verall

and post / PM that as well.

MotorvateDIY

I person just commented on my YT video that it worked for his UK 370, so I'm not sure what is going on.

Before you did the re-configuration, was the TPMS light on?
I'm wondering if the BCM is programmed for them and if they still function.

bugers

No. I have seen this light only when there was a pressure difference between wheels like 0.4 bar. Last was like 6 months ago.
Isn't TPMS light shown always when any of the sensor dies?

In UK they have a steering wheel on the right side so I'm wondering if they have different configuration of the unit?

MotorvateDIY

Correct, if a tire is low or if a TPMS sensor dies, the TPMS light will turn on.

I'm not sure on what the differences are between the North American and Europe version of the nav system as I've never seen the version for Europe.

I would think that they would share a common "core" of code and the other differences would be for languages, radio frequencies, DAB (digital audio broadcasting - Europe Only) and lack of XM (satellite - North America only) radio.


What year is your 370?

MotorvateDIY

On my test bench with the North American version of the NAV unit, any other TPMS setting didn't do anything, no new menus or anything else.

MotorvateDIY

Troubleshooting Tips:

If there is no COM port, means the nav unit is not in debug mode.
The most common cause is the windows default setting of "hide file extensions"

The filename looks like "UsbDebugStart.ivanaX", but is really "UsbDebugStart.ivanaX.txt"

In windows explorer, click on View > Show > File Name extensions
If you see the .txt, delete it, that was the problem.
Shut down the car for 10-20 seconds and try again.

The other thing you can try is to use the sdcard.org "SD formatter" to format the memory stick. Sometimes a windows formatted memory stick doesn't work BUT this one seems to always work!

rupertgti

Hi! Thank you MotorvateDIY for this kind of content

In my case 2018 european 370z, I see the navigation system display "Reading USB memory" but when I plug my USB cable (usb-a to usb-c) in my laptop with win10 no COM comunication (my laptop don't have a usb-a port)

I tried with 3 USB sticks 4-8GB and 3 different USB cable (yes i'm sure put the correct filename UsbDebugStart.ivanaX and not UsbDebugStart.ivanaX.txt )

Maybe in a restyling units this port was restricted?

MotorvateDIY

I know of two other European 370s that were able to enable the Tire Pressure menu. However, one was not able to see tire pressures, just ***.

Try the sdcard.org formatter and make sure the USB cable is not a "power/charge only" cable.

rupertgti

Hi! I tried with sdcard formatter and yeah I activated menu but the values are ***

I could PM you with my xrcnf 2 / configuration file if you want

Thank you

Esoteric

Just tried this on a 2018 USA 370z, the tire pressure menu is there, but ** for all readings unfortunately. Not sure if anyone figured out the issue that causes that.

BoilardZ

I did it on a 2017 US car. Worked perfectly. Obviously, the wheels have to be spinning to activate the TPMS sensors.