Tue 28 Nov 2006
Mr. W had no plans for lunch, so after hearing all the commotion about my tires being overinflated, he offered to come find my car and deflate my tires to the proper PSI for me. (What a great guy!) Meanwhile I hitched a ride with my gym trainee to go work out at the gym for lunch, laughing about how people would see him letting air out of my tires and go, “Dude, did you guys break up?”. That’s when I checked out her tires and saw that her maximum PSI was 44, which made me wonder what makes my tires so different to have a maximum of 51.
We just took a break in our trial, and I was able to touch base with Mr. W. He said he did indeed let out the air in all 4 tires to between 34 and 35 PSI, BUT that the tire said the maximum PSI is 40 and not 51.
=O !!!
Not only am I going blind and can’t read numbers anymore, but I almost killed myself! Mr. W quickly said that it was dark in the parking structure so maybe he saw the numbers wrong, or maybe it was a recommended PSI and not a maximum PSI.
Can I leave right now and go look again?!
Oh, and he also said his tire pressure gauge read that I had 40 PSI in each tire, not almost 50. Did I spring a leak in all 4 tires? I did drive thru broken glass the other day! Waaaaah!!!
If you used the gas-station meter to determine your PSI — the difference was probably just that the gauge is less accurate than one you buy at the store.
gas station tire pressure gauges are notoriously bad. it wouldn’t surprise me at all that you read it right, but it just gave you a bad reading.
Okay, but being off by 10 PSI is HUGE. It’s almost FATAL.
Nah, 10 PSI is not fatal if you are going to inflate to normal pressure. Usually max pressure for a tire is +10 to +20 of the actual air you put in.
Of course…. if you ARE putting in the max then it COULD be fatal lol. That could mean you put in 60 when you THOUGHT you put in 51. Luckily it was off in the other direction!
I’m just confused. I’m not filling my own tires anymore.