tire pressure and blowouts
Last week before leaving on a trip I checked and adjusted all 8 tires. The truck calls for 75 rear, 70 front. It was a warmish day and I'm fiddleing with the DIC ( chev drivers information center) whe...
Forum Discussion
1ofmany wrote:Dutch_12078 wrote:This is also my understanding...however, the notion of what "cold pressure" is has been a source of interest. If you live in an area where the temperature varies wildly from day to day (like 30 degrees, or more), check your tire air pressure the day before the temperature is expected to drop those 30, or more, degrees, and then check again the next day after the temperature has dropped. I have seen a 10 psi drop under those circumstances...so, what is the correct "cold temp" reading?
Tires rarely blow out due to over pressure. All vehicle tires are designed to operate well above the maximum cold pressure shown on the sidewall. The far more common tire failure cause is under inflation.
Yes "cold temp" is confusing to some. What it really means is not warmed up from running for previous 2 hours or exposure to direct sunlight in previous 2 hours.
Basically the tire load & inflation tables that are used by all companies specify that tire inflation should be set when the tire is "cold" before starting a trip. Don't try and guess the future temperature.
Tire temperature will change by about 2% for each change in temperature of 10F. Note the temperature is difficult to learn with external TPMS which will read low temperature due to external cooling so the real "tire Temp" is maybe 10 to 20F higher than what your TPMS indicates.
