Camry Tire Preasure

It will say on the sticker on the drivers door. Digital does not mean or guarntee accuracy, A friend has a certified gauge i check my gauges against, regurarly half of mine i discard as they are off by 2-3 lb when checked against the calibrated one.

Open your glove box - it should be written in there and in the owners manual. Depends on year, tire size and engine. I always add 3-4 pounds to the normal pressure for longer tire wear and better gas mileage.

Accu-Gage® S... Series - straight chuck - $10

The round dial face increases accuracy because you can read gradations between the lines. Bleed valve on the side lets you adjust precisely. Main thing is to check regularly, keeping pressures equal between sides, even if absolute reading is off, though this has the accurate bourdon mechanism and brass components. To my way of thinking, getting and keeping the tire pressure right is one of the simplest and most effective performance enhancements available. I've been monkeying around with tire pressure for a couple of years, and still experimenting with trade offs between ride quality, handling/ fuel economy. My tires are 195/70R-14, 90S. Many Camrys with 60 series tires will be different. I usually have 1 - 2 people in the car with no luggage. Recommended pressure is 26 all around for 1 - 4 passengers, --- 29 all around for 1 - 4 passengers with luggage, and "for all rated loads." The lower pressure gives a nice soft ride, but I eventually tired (no pun intended) of the somewhat "squishy" handling. With 29 all around the ride quality was just too "bumpy" for me, so for some time I experimented with gradations between 26 and 29. Tried calculating the load requirements based on vehicle weight, and settled on 29 front and 26 rear. This was still "to factory specs" and provided a very nice compromise between ride and handling. With regular tire rotations, the tires wore very evenly. My idea, was that Toyota recommends equal pressure at all four wheels to emphasize "understeer." From a racing site: "Most street cars are not set up for neutral handling. A front drive car will typically have significant understeer. While this is not conducive to fast cornering, if someone is driving too fast around a corner, the front wheels will slide and not turn the car as much as expected. The natural reaction of the driver to this is to lift off the gas which is the right thing to do to regain some traction. In a car that oversteers, lifting off the throttle reduces traction on the rear tires and actually causes even more oversteer, and will often induce a spin. Therefore, an understeering tendency becomes a positive "safety feature" for a street car and the average driver." Increasing front pressure relative to rear, can reduce understeering. For me, who learned to drive rear wheel drive, and know how to correct for over steering, I found the understeering unsettling and like the higher front pressure better. Then I read two conflicting opinions on the Internet about increasing pressures over the factory recommendations. The more common view is that 3 - 5 lbs. over aids mileage and handling. The other view, is that one should go only 1 - 2 lbs. over the factory recommendation to avoid reducing the size of the tire's "contact patch" and adversely affecting control in emergency conditions, and reduced braking effectiveness. I had tried running 3 lbs over the 29/26 (32/29) and happened to have an emergency develop at around 65 - 70 mph on an unfamiliar freeway, where a kind of "whipsaw" pattern developed with tires screeching turning hard left, and then tires chirping hard right after a violently sudden initial directional change requirement. Then read the part about reduced tire contact patch at more than 1 - 2 lbs over, and reduced pressure to 31/28, which seemed quite good. The same racing site that described oversteer, also discovered that firmer rear roll bars in a front wheel drive car actually offer a large improvement in resisting inertial forces during cornering, and the rear tires still felt sufficiently firm to provide this effect. But they also sort of pushed at my back over bumps to the extent, I recently tried lowering the rear to 27. (31/27) This allows more body roll during cornering, but is also smoother, and the car still seems to roll freely (for fuel economy). The factory max. for front, and min. for rear, at 29/26 probably offered the best compromise overall. With 31 front and 27 rear, the total pressure of the four tires is equivalent to all four at 29, yet the ride and handling are better than 29/29. Obviously I enjoy all this experimentation. You could easily just set the tires to factory specs or a couple of pounds over and forget about it, and be fine. Main thing is to check them regularly so you're not running under inflated and overheating the tires which can be dangerous.

Which is precisely what I do, too.

That increased pressure means a little rougher ride, though. But, if you're interested enough to be reading this thread, you'll probably consider it a good tradeoff...

truFan

Heh. A "rougher" ride in a Camry is *still* smoother than the ride in a whole lot of other vehicles!!