Tire air Pressure

[George Bokros]

Contrary to George's experience, on my Acura, I can see the individual tire pressures whenever I like. I don't need to wait for a low tire warning. I can actually watch the pressures change as the tires heat up while driving.

This is great. All vehicles should have this type of system.

[Bert Kemp]

Tire pressure can change dramatically with temperature changes, if its cold you can lose pressure if its hot you can get more pressure . My motorcycle is always changing Its 40 in the morning and 80 in the afternoon. The constant up and down over the course of a week really effects how the bike rides and handles. Very easy to feel when my pressure is down even a couple lbs. So its gets checked often the car not as much. I've put 28000 miles on the bike this year and 1200 on the car.

I don't see why you need to check them that frequently.

I check when I do oil changes, which is about every 4-5 months or before a long trip.

[Ronald Blue]

Both my vehicles tell me exactly what each tire has in it. So at the press of a button I can see where each tire is. It is interesting to see how tire pressure varies by ambient temperature. You will see 2-3 psi difference between 80 degrees and 30 degrees. So you should adjust tire pressures if you are where you see the seasonal changes from summer to winter.

[Brian Henderson]

Unnecessary, modern cars check them for you.

[Mac McQuinn]

Both vehicles are checked once a week, more often if there's a large temperature variable. My motorcycle tires are checked twice a week. I tend to get maximum mileage out of a set of tires and owe this to my somewhat anal attention to TP's. I don't check tires after driving or even if car has been sitting in the sun, waste of time imo. My gauge reads in tenths which comes in handy to get a perfect balance to get good tire wear, ride and performance in the rain. I check thread depth once a month and if need be, alter my TP settings to keep the tires wearing correctly. I never use the monitors as I feel they're inaccurate enough to not reply upon.
Mac

[Brian Elfert]

Both vehicles are checked once a week, more often if there's a large temperature variable. My motorcycle tires are checked twice a week. I tend to get maximum mileage out of a set of tires and owe this to my somewhat anal attention to TP's. I don't check tires after driving or even if car has been sitting in the sun, waste of time imo. My gauge reads in tenths which comes in handy to get a perfect balance to get good tire wear, ride and performance in the rain. I check thread depth once a month and if need be, alter my TP settings to keep the tires wearing correctly. I never use the monitors as I feel they're inaccurate enough to not reply upon.

Check tire pressure in tenths? Is this a race car or a an everyday car? Do you get the gauge calibrated monthly too? How do you have any idea what to change the tire pressure to if they are wearing wrong?

[Lee Schierer]

The single biggest cause of low tire pressure are the clip on wheel weights on aluminum wheels. Most of those clip on weights use steel clips. When the tire tech pounds them onto the rim, the steel cuts through the anodize that protects the aluminum from corrosion. Add a bit of road salt from either winter roads or dirt roads and some water and you have a galvanic cell that starts eating away the aluminum. This corrosion eventually gets bad enough that the bead will start leaking air. On my Explorer, I would lose 2-3 pounds per week before I got rid of it. Now I only allow the tire techs to use the stick on weights when I have my tires balanced. This keeps the rims free from corrosion in the tire bead area.

[Mac McQuinn]

Check tire pressure in tenths? Is this a race car or a an everyday car? Do you get the gauge calibrated monthly too? How do you have any idea what to change the tire pressure to if they are wearing wrong?

Brian,
The gauge reads in tenths. That said, my motorcycle is modified with different set-up from stock. The tenths do come in handy in looking for desired contact patch. Since a bike is leaning over in the corners, this is pretty important.

If my car's tires are wearing wrong, say heavier in the middle than the edges, I decrease pressure a bit, the tenths allow me to sneak up on things until I get a consistent wear pattern. You'll also feel the difference in ride if you're careful and get a perfect tire contact. That said, this all assumes your alignment is spot on. You can also check correct pressure by using the chalk test. Quicker to google than explain. I find consistent psi readings more important than total accuracy. I've found different brand tires like different psi settings, the wear pattern is my dictating factor.
Mac

[John Terefenko]

My Chevy Silverado has a panel readout that I can check all the important things with a push of a button and scroll through them. Oil usage and oil consumption to tire pressure. I go through them at least once a week or if i am bored sitting in traffic.

[Kev Williams]

i check mine with chalk when i get them to find the best pressure. our volt gets about 40 psi and my truck 38. both higher than the pressure on the door jamb, but also different tires than the cars came with. make a nice wide line of chalk across the tire and back/pull up on a level street. see if the chalk is evenly wore or more in the center or edges. adjust to get it even. more if there is chalk left in the center, and less if there is chalk left on the outsides.

This hits on an issue with tires that simply bugs me, which is the fact that the factory recommended 'door jamb' pressures do NOT refer to which tire types the pressure recommendations refer to. Most tires I've dealt with fall into two basic air pressure ranges, 35psi max and 44psi max. There may be others to be sure, but these 2 seem to be the most common. As an example, my '96 Lincoln MKVIII's door jamb pressure stated 30psi. The original tires that came on the car were 35psi Goodyear tires. I bought the car used, and had to soon change out the original tires. I got the exact same size tires, only they were 44psi max tires, Firestones I think (years ago). The shop put 30 pounds of air in per the door jamb, and the car felt like I was driving on marbles. Oh, what a smooth ride, but it drove horrible. So I did a little math, 30psi was 85.7% of the original tire's 35psi max, and 85.7% of 44psi is 37.7 psi, so I aired them up to 38, and voila, the car drove and handled like a dream. Pretty much exactly like 30psi in the original tires...

The chalk method Adam mentions above works. For one thing, it's 'absolute', it compensates for the actual weight on the tire, the tire itself, and for air gauges that don't work right (does yours? I have 5 that all give different readings! )

My rule of thumb is simple, 3 or 4 psi below the sidewall max, and a snick more up front because of engine weight...

[Bill Jobe]

I started running my tires on the high side after the Explorer problem identified poorly figured pressure by the manufacturers. As a result, I have a Sable with the 3.0 DOHC V6 that gets 30 mpg on the highway. I make a habit of checking milage every time I drive to my mom's. That's a 300 mile round trip and when I go back home the same day I figure that should give a pretty accurate mpg.
That ain't bad for a car its size.
I'm at a loss as to why car makers can't seem to make midsized SUVs that do that good. My Sable is now 13 years old. So much for progress.

[Brian Elfert]

For my motor home I have weighed each axle and consult a chart that says what PSI to use based on weight. The vehicle rides better with less air in the tires. I originally ran all tires at max PSI, but it didn't ride all that well. I used to get better MPG back when I ran higher pressure, but I think the new diesel fuel introduced in 2007 has more to do with MPG loss than lower tire pressures.

[Jim Becker]

My Grand Cherokee Summit has a TPMS system, so "in general" I don't need to manually check things...I just look at the display and can see what the tire pressure on all four corners is at that moment. And the system is reasonably accurate, too. I do adjust tire pressure seasonally and use an electronic pressure tester to zero things in to where I like them...which is 38 psi cold.

[Tony Zona]

The pressure monitoring system in my wife's car is on the helpful side. It shows individual tire pressures, but there is no indication which pressure goes with which tire.

I consider its reading as telling me to check all tires manually. Then again if I had gotten the air stuff out I would have checked them all anyhow.

[Matt Meiser]

My 2017 Fusion reads actual PSI First car I've had with that.

When checking pressure I'm partial to these gauges: http://www.ghmeiser.com/ (No idea if I'm related.)