The Importance of Checking Tire Pressure: A Comprehensive Guide

When it comes to maintaining your vehicle's overall health and performance, checking tire pressure is an often-overlooked yet crucial task. In this article, we will delve into the world of tire pressure monitoring systems, explore the importance of accurate pressure readings, and provide valuable tips on how to get the most out of your tire inflation routine.

Evident Wear and Tear

As I began inspecting my tires, I noticed that one of them appeared to be in better condition than the others. Upon closer inspection, I realized that there was no discernible damage or wear visible on the surface of the tire. The other three tires seemed to have a similar level of wear, with only slight imperfections that didn't appear to pose any significant issues.

Temperature-Sensitive Tire Pressure

One crucial factor to consider when checking tire pressure is temperature. In a fall season where I live, temperatures can fluctuate by as much as 40 degrees Fahrenheit every 10-degree change. This means that even small changes in temperature can result in a corresponding increase or decrease in tire pressure. To ensure accurate readings, it's essential to use an accurate pressure reader and check the tire pressure when the tire is cool, rather than when it's warm from driving.

The Importance of Using an Accurate Pressure Reader

Using an accurate pressure reader is crucial for getting reliable tire pressure readings. If you don't have access to a high-quality pressure gauge, it can be challenging to get an accurate reading, which can lead to incorrect tire inflation and potentially compromise your vehicle's safety and performance.

A Closer Look at the Tires

As I took a closer look at my tires, I noticed that all four of them had similar pressure readings. The driver-side rear tire was at 27 PSI, while the other three tires were also at the same pressure. However, upon further inspection, I realized that two of the tires had slight imperfections and may need to be inflated.

The Need for Air

After noticing that my tires needed air, I began the process of inflating them. It's essential to remember to screw on your caps just a little bit so you don't lose them, as they can easily become detached in the wind or while driving. Additionally, using pure nitrogen for tire inflation can provide several benefits, including maintaining more stable air pressure and reducing the likelihood of leaks.

The Tire Pressure Monitoring System

Most modern vehicles come equipped with a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS), which alerts drivers if there is an issue with one or more tires. The TPMS uses sensors to monitor tire pressure and will illuminate a warning light on the dashboard if it detects any discrepancies. In my case, I had already checked all four tires and inflated them accordingly, but it's essential to understand how the TPMS works and how to reset it after inflating your tires.

A Word of Caution: Not All Vehicles Require Nitrogen

While pure nitrogen can provide several benefits for tire inflation, not all vehicles require it. In fact, many cars come with air-filled tires, which are perfectly fine as long as they're inflated correctly. However, if you do own a vehicle that requires pure nitrogen for tire inflation and can't afford to pay for it, consider getting free nitrogen at a gas station or other location.

The Final Check

After inflating my tires and checking the TPMS, I realized that I didn't even need to take my car for a test drive. The system had already shut off after verifying that all four tires were inflated correctly. This highlights the importance of regularly checking tire pressure and understanding how your vehicle's TPMS works.

Conclusion

Checking tire pressure is an essential part of maintaining your vehicle's overall health and performance. By following these tips and using accurate pressure readers, you can ensure that your tires are properly inflated and reduce the risk of a blowout or other safety issues. Remember to always check your tire pressure regularly, especially in changing weather conditions, and consider using pure nitrogen for optimal results.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys Chris fix here do you have this light on the dashboard or is your car telling you that your tire pressure is low well today I'm going to show you how to get rid of these warning lights properly and also give you a little background information on the tire pressure or monitoring system now let's get started now for this Ford Fiesta we're going to find the tire pressures right in the door jam you can see it gives you the front rear and spare tire the spare tire isn't connected to low pressure monitoring system so we just need to look at the front and rear tires and they should be 32 psi for some makes and models you have a nice setup where you can see the tire pressure for each tire on a display if you don't have a display some makes and models actually just tell you which tire is low but in my case and in many cases it's just going to let you know that one of the tires that you have has low tire pressure so you going have to figure it out for yourself so you want to check your owner's manual and see what the solid light means in most situations the solid light will mean that your tires are under inflated now if your light is flashing it could mean that you're using your spare or there's a malfunction in the tire pressure monitoring system so the the light's going to go off when the tire pressure is 25% low so if you're one or 2 PSI below your level it might not go off but once you go around five or more PSI below the recommended pressure of your tires the light's going to go off definitely a neat safety feature so the first thing you're going to do is you're going just visually inspect the tires to see if there's any obviously low tires so there's the front one you can't really tell there's nothing uh evident there we go to the rear here can't really tell here and we cross over to the back and that rear tire doesn't look bad and that one looks a little bit low so yesterday the temperature was 80° today it's 60° and at night it could get low into the 40s so right now in a fall season where I am could get up to a 40° temperature swing every 10° F you could get a 1 psi increase or decrease so if the temperature is increasing 10° you could get an increase in pressure by 1 psi and if there's a decrease in 10° you can get a pressure that's lowered by 1 psi we want to use an accurate pressure reader so that we can get a good reading on this the car has been sitting for about an hour so the temperature of the tire is around the ambient temperature if you do this when the tire is warm you might have a little bit of an increase in pressure cuz as you drive there's rotational friction and all that stuff the brakes are hot and it could actually increase the temperature right now we let it sit for an hour so now we can get a really good reading and there's our bad tire 27 PSI so this needs to be cranked up to 32 for good measure it's worth it to check the other tires it only takes a few seconds you already have the tire gauge out might as well so good thing we check although it doesn't look it this is 27 PSI as well we're at the driver side rear tire see what this one's at this one we're at 26 PSI so again you can't even tell but it actually needs air remember to screw on your caps just a little bit so you don't lose them that's a good little tip and the last tire is the driver's side front tire 27 PSI so all four tires need to get pumped up good thing we checked all four so luckily I own my own compressor so I have this adapter that'll connect to the tires after you give it a few pumps of air just check your tire pressure and we can see we're at 34.5 it has to be 32 so then you can just let some air out check the tire pressure again 33 and2 we're going to have to let a little more air out check it one more time I'm going to keep it at 32.5 cuz we are dropping in temperature decent amount every day and uh that should be perfect now I don't need to show you how to inflate each tire so I'll go inflate the tires and we'll check to see if that shuts off the check tire pressure light with all four tires inflated let's see if that tire light goes off off here's what we want to know right before we go for our test drive to make sure the lights off it says you have to drive for 2 minutes over 20 mph and that's how the tire pressure monitoring system knows that it has the correct pressure in there so the light won't go off until you're going 20 mph or faster for at least 2 minutes that gives it time to calibrate and check for false pressure readings and all that stuff so let's go for that ride and actually we don't even need to go for the ride the tire pressure monitoring system actually shut off of my vehicle I don't even have to go for for a ride just to double check let's go to systems check and all systems are normal so there you go although this seems like a simple thing a lot of people don't know how to fill up their Tire correctly and also how to get that light to shut off so hopefully this video is helpful if it was give it a thumbs up also consider subscribing the top tip for this video don't waste your money on inflating your tires with pure nitrogen sure if you get pure nitrogen for free do it it does help maintain a more stable air pressure it's less likely to leak out of the tire and does doesn't hold moisture normal air is primarily nitrogen it's 78% nitrogen 21% oxygen and then there's about 1% other gases if you have to pay for the nitrogen it's not really worth the small benefits for a normal car on average it's $3 to $10 a tire and while for some of you that might not seem too bad just think about this every time that you want to inflate your tires you have to get nitrogen air otherwise you defeat the whole purpose of having pure nitrogen air in your tires and if you're wondering why I'm telling you this well I'm talking from experience this car came with nitrogen filed tires and for a normal car you can't even tell the difference so it's not worth the extra Hassle and costhey guys Chris fix here do you have this light on the dashboard or is your car telling you that your tire pressure is low well today I'm going to show you how to get rid of these warning lights properly and also give you a little background information on the tire pressure or monitoring system now let's get started now for this Ford Fiesta we're going to find the tire pressures right in the door jam you can see it gives you the front rear and spare tire the spare tire isn't connected to low pressure monitoring system so we just need to look at the front and rear tires and they should be 32 psi for some makes and models you have a nice setup where you can see the tire pressure for each tire on a display if you don't have a display some makes and models actually just tell you which tire is low but in my case and in many cases it's just going to let you know that one of the tires that you have has low tire pressure so you going have to figure it out for yourself so you want to check your owner's manual and see what the solid light means in most situations the solid light will mean that your tires are under inflated now if your light is flashing it could mean that you're using your spare or there's a malfunction in the tire pressure monitoring system so the the light's going to go off when the tire pressure is 25% low so if you're one or 2 PSI below your level it might not go off but once you go around five or more PSI below the recommended pressure of your tires the light's going to go off definitely a neat safety feature so the first thing you're going to do is you're going just visually inspect the tires to see if there's any obviously low tires so there's the front one you can't really tell there's nothing uh evident there we go to the rear here can't really tell here and we cross over to the back and that rear tire doesn't look bad and that one looks a little bit low so yesterday the temperature was 80° today it's 60° and at night it could get low into the 40s so right now in a fall season where I am could get up to a 40° temperature swing every 10° F you could get a 1 psi increase or decrease so if the temperature is increasing 10° you could get an increase in pressure by 1 psi and if there's a decrease in 10° you can get a pressure that's lowered by 1 psi we want to use an accurate pressure reader so that we can get a good reading on this the car has been sitting for about an hour so the temperature of the tire is around the ambient temperature if you do this when the tire is warm you might have a little bit of an increase in pressure cuz as you drive there's rotational friction and all that stuff the brakes are hot and it could actually increase the temperature right now we let it sit for an hour so now we can get a really good reading and there's our bad tire 27 PSI so this needs to be cranked up to 32 for good measure it's worth it to check the other tires it only takes a few seconds you already have the tire gauge out might as well so good thing we check although it doesn't look it this is 27 PSI as well we're at the driver side rear tire see what this one's at this one we're at 26 PSI so again you can't even tell but it actually needs air remember to screw on your caps just a little bit so you don't lose them that's a good little tip and the last tire is the driver's side front tire 27 PSI so all four tires need to get pumped up good thing we checked all four so luckily I own my own compressor so I have this adapter that'll connect to the tires after you give it a few pumps of air just check your tire pressure and we can see we're at 34.5 it has to be 32 so then you can just let some air out check the tire pressure again 33 and2 we're going to have to let a little more air out check it one more time I'm going to keep it at 32.5 cuz we are dropping in temperature decent amount every day and uh that should be perfect now I don't need to show you how to inflate each tire so I'll go inflate the tires and we'll check to see if that shuts off the check tire pressure light with all four tires inflated let's see if that tire light goes off off here's what we want to know right before we go for our test drive to make sure the lights off it says you have to drive for 2 minutes over 20 mph and that's how the tire pressure monitoring system knows that it has the correct pressure in there so the light won't go off until you're going 20 mph or faster for at least 2 minutes that gives it time to calibrate and check for false pressure readings and all that stuff so let's go for that ride and actually we don't even need to go for the ride the tire pressure monitoring system actually shut off of my vehicle I don't even have to go for for a ride just to double check let's go to systems check and all systems are normal so there you go although this seems like a simple thing a lot of people don't know how to fill up their Tire correctly and also how to get that light to shut off so hopefully this video is helpful if it was give it a thumbs up also consider subscribing the top tip for this video don't waste your money on inflating your tires with pure nitrogen sure if you get pure nitrogen for free do it it does help maintain a more stable air pressure it's less likely to leak out of the tire and does doesn't hold moisture normal air is primarily nitrogen it's 78% nitrogen 21% oxygen and then there's about 1% other gases if you have to pay for the nitrogen it's not really worth the small benefits for a normal car on average it's $3 to $10 a tire and while for some of you that might not seem too bad just think about this every time that you want to inflate your tires you have to get nitrogen air otherwise you defeat the whole purpose of having pure nitrogen air in your tires and if you're wondering why I'm telling you this well I'm talking from experience this car came with nitrogen filed tires and for a normal car you can't even tell the difference so it's not worth the extra Hassle and cost\n"