having your tires properly inflated can make a big difference in how your vehicle handles,
how it rides, and can even prolong the life of your tires. so let's take a look at how much air
your tires should have in them, how to check them for proper inflation, and how to add air to them
if you have to. at least once a month and before you go on a trip do a walk around of your vehicle
and inspect all your tires. look for any visible damage and check to see if any of your tires look
low. and the best time to do that is at the beginning of the day before you go anywhere.
that way before you drive off you'll know if you need to get a tire aired up, possibly fixed, or
maybe even replaced. when i walked around my car i thought my left rear tire looked a little bit low.
not much but i want to check it. first i looked at what the tire pressure monitoring system
said. it reads at 28 psi for my left rear tire. the recommended tire pressure for this vehicle is
30 pounds per square inch on all four tires. and how do you know how much tire pressure
your tires should have. your tire will show a maximum pressure that it should have in this case
it's 51 psi. but that's not what you go by. you always want to go by what the manufacturer of your
vehicle says you should have. and the recommended pressure for the tires for your vehicle should be
on the inside of the driver's side door. right here on the edge of the door on this placard.
and sometimes you'll find this sticker on the end of the door instead. it tells you what the size of
your tires should be the size of your spare. and it shows what the cold tire pressure should be
for your front and rear tires for this vehicle. the recommended front and rear pressure is 30
psi. but they could be different depending on the vehicle. the manufacturer might recommend a higher
pressure for the front tires than for the rear or vice versa. they don't necessarily have to be the
same. most of the time they are. so i need to have 30 psi on all four of the tires on this vehicle.
and this is cold tire pressure. and that means when the tire hasn't been driven for at least
three hours or if you've only driven about a mile at low speeds. because as you drive
the temperature of the tire goes up and that can cause the air pressure inside the tire to go up.
right now my left rear tire only has 28. so i'm going to add two more pounds of pressure to that
tire to get it up to where it should be. and my other tires are okay. if your vehicle has a tire
pressure monitoring system, a tpms, it's a great tool to have to keep an eye on your vehicle's tire
pressure. these systems are fairly accurate. but before i put air in or take air out of my tires
i also check it with a regular gauge. and if you don't have a tire pressure monitoring system
you definitely need to get a tire pressure gauge. i have two tire pressure gauges here. neither one
of them cost very much. this very simple one cost about a dollar. this one cost about ten dollars.
and both came from amazon. i'm going to use both of these to check the tire pressure in my
left rear tire. my tpms said i had 28 pounds of air pressure in that tire. let's see what these
say. first thing you need to do is unscrew the cap on your tire valve and put that cap in your
pocket or somewhere safe where you won't lose it. i'm going to use the manual gauge first. you're
going to put this end of the gauge over the end of this tire valve. and you're going to push it
straight on until you don't hear any air hissing out. it forces the indicator out of the bottom of
the gauge and gives you a reading. so let's see what that tells us. there's the 25 psi mark so
two marks up would make it 27. and it looks like it's just a little bit above 27 so that pretty
much agrees with the tpms. now we'll use the digital gauge. different kinds of these might work
differently but for this one all i do is push the switch. there's the readout. it's showing zero.
so i'm going to put it on the tire valve and push it down all the way and get a reading. my left
rear tire has 28. so either one of those gauges would be fairly accurate and fairly inexpensive.
and both basically agree with the car's tpms pressure reading. that lets me know that the
monitoring system is doing a good job at measuring my tire pressures and it gives me an easy way of
doing frequent checks on my tires in addition to visual checks. a properly working tpms system
will also give you an alert on your dash when any one of your tires has an exceptionally low
pressure reading. and if that happens you need to get that tire aired up as soon as possible
and then check it for damage to see if there's a specific reason why it lost that air. my left rear
tire needs 2 psi of air pressure added to it to get it back up to the recommended 30 psi. i have
a small portable tire inflator air compressor that i'm going to use to do that. it only cost
me 30 dollars and i leave it in my trunk so it's always there if i ever need it. and i recommend
you get something like that for yourself if you can. having it in my trunk means no matter where
i'm at if i have a low tire i can take care of that myself. that's some peace of mind. but you
can also have a mechanic do it or you can use one of the air machines that you find outside of a gas
station. this is what i've been using for a while now. it's a dc 12 volt in-car air compressor.
this also has a gauge on it that gives you a reading as it goes along
so i'm going to stop filling my tire when this gets to the 30 psi mark. just like
the tire gauges you push it on all the way until you don't hear any air coming out.
and then lock it down. and it's a little noisy so i'm not going to make you listen to that.
and i got it up to 30. so i'm going to remove this and put the cap back on the tire valve.
and double check that with my tpms system. and i'm showing left rear 30 psi. and when you're checking
the air pressure in your tires don't forget to check the air pressure in your spare. that's
often overlooked but that spare is very important if you have a flat tire. and all tires gradually
lose air over time so make that part of your routine periodically check the air pressure in
your spare tire. and that recommended air pressure is going to be a lot higher than the air pressure
in your normal tires. on this vehicle it's 60 psi. i'm going to check and see how much air is in my
spare tire. and it just shows about 51 pounds so i'm going to add some more air to it. and 60.2 so
i'll just leave it at that. a 10 degree change in air temperature in either direction can cause a
one to two psi change in the air pressure in your tires. so as the weather gets colder you may need
to add more air. and as the air temperature gets hotter you may have to decrease the amount of air
pressure in the tire. i hope this gave you a better idea of how to keep your tires properly
inflated. because if you do you're going to have a safer and better driving experience.
thanks for watching and have a great day. and it looks like that left rear tire is down again.
so time to get it fixed or maybe time just to get a new tire. dang it!