05 Tacoma Tire pressure

Undriveable....in what way? Hard ride?

Hi Bob, Toyota lists the optimum operating pressure. This can be adjusted for: heavy loads, better gas mileage, off road, beach etc. The manufacturer is telling you the maximum pressure for this tire under any situation is 51 psi. Maximum before explosion risk. Frank

Very nervous handling. There were so many complaints about poor handling when the Expedtion was first introduced that Ford issuedd instruction emphasizing to deasler to properly inflate the tires.

If you do a lot of driving on gravel roads, higher inflation pressures can be rough on tires as well (particularly "P" series tires). One of the neighbors of my parents was constanly losing tires on his pick-up. My Father finally convinced him to quit over inflating the tires - problem solved.

Ed

You must ride on glassy smooth roads with that much pressure. 37 pounds would have my truck bouncing all over any type of rutted or washboard roads. It's making the tires act as shocks. My truck comes with its own shocks and I don't need the tires to do their job.

: : Well, at least they sent cars out the door with pressure higher than the : usual 26-29 lb nonsense, a range which I have NEVER found to be effective. : But beyond that, it's silly to assume 32 lbs is right for every car. With : Toyos on my Taurus, 34 was the sweet spot. With Nokians on my Tacoma, it's : 37-ish. : :

Not many bad roads around here. But, the pressure I'm using results in miracles on snowy surfaces. Off road, who knows? I rarely do that.

NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES fill a tire to the pressure listed on the side of the tire.

This pressure is the max pressure under the max loading conditions, but the max loading conditions of the tire exceed the load limits of the vehicle by a very wide margin.

Fill the tires to the pressure listed on the placcard. Period.

As a general rule of thumb that will NEVER -- with the possible exception of the very low profile tires that are available these days -- steer you wrong, fill a passenger car or light truck tire to 30 PSI. 30 PSI will be within a pound or two of the actual design pressure, but a pound or two doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Most of us are way more than a pound or two low when we go to the air pump to get more air, so giving a pound or two more than what is needed won't hurt. Indeed, it'll tend to counter the low pressure wear patterns, assuming the tires don't leak due to a hole or bad bead seal.

True.

False. There's absolutely NO way the car maker can predict the type of tire you may install. Take low profile tires out of the mix and the variables are still endless. My own experience has been that the manufacturers' numbers are usually low by a few pounds, resulting in odd behavior in slippery conditions.

I read your other posts, and I generally agree with you, to a point. The tires are rated as Load Range A, B, C, etc. Assuming one stays with the proper load range, the automakers know precisely what the tires are going to do given a pressure recommendation. Very small and light cars will not get the same tires as a larger and heavier car, so the construction of the tires change because the load range changes. The end result is that all passenger car and light truck tires that I can think of will work fine for most people most of the time with 30 psi. You suggested in one of your posts that 30 ~

32 is good, and that you prefer 38. I find that 38 where I live is a bit high, but you think you need that for your particular conditioins, and I'm okay with that view. But, when one doesn't know what the conditions are that are being asked about, then the fall-back position of 30 psi is usually the best. 32 is okay too.

You may be right that the mfg selects pressures that are a bit low, they do this for comfort - soft tires are more comfortable than hard tires. In any case, the proper pressure is in the range of 30-some pounds, not the 55+ pounds that is stamped on the side of the tire.

If you notice that your tires wear more in the center of the tread than on the shoulders, this is because you run too much air. The trade off is that you believe you have a safer tire, and this might be true, and clearly if there is too little air, then the tires will wear more on the shoulders AND provide greater opportunity to hydroplane.

The variable that I haven't factored in is the new low-profile tires. They may take more air than the standard tires, but having said that, my BMW had factory 15" tires, but now has low profile 17" tires and I still put 30 PSI in them, and they are fine with more than 25k miles on them. I just don't have much experience with Low Profile tires to say that they all take 30 psi, and my gut instinct is that they should take a bit more than 30, and I seem to remember they take about 35. It's a good thing the OP didn't ask about these ... ;-)