My car has a digital readout of air pressures, and an alarm when pressures are low. Last night, while addressing a low tire, I was diligently re-filling all my tires to 30 psi as recommended by the manufacturer. While filling one of my tires however, the pressure didn’t seem to be increasing - I chalked this up to air escaping while filling the tire, because the gas station’s air nozzle provided a very poor seal. I know it takes a couple seconds for the pressure indication to update, so I waited 5-10 seconds in between readings. Still, while I was trying to get it to change from 28 psi, it suddenly jumped to 57 psi. I immediately started letting air back out, and it took a while to get back down to 30 (a minute or so).
So, question is - am I in dire need of tire replacement, or is it more of a peace-of-mind sort of deal? I read somewhere that the burst pressure for most tires is 200 psi, but I don’t know if that takes into account long-term wear or separation of the metal shoulder from the rubber. Now I’m paranoid about a catastrophic rupture on the freeway. The tires aren’t very old, certainly less than a year, maybe 12k miles on them. I’m just not sure if I need to take time off work and get them replaced immediately or if I can wait 5-6k miles for my next car maintenance.
You’re fine. Get yourself a good dial type pressure gauge so you you can check it as you fill up the tire. This way you don’t have to keep checking the dash.
No problem, they often go higher than that to seat the beads when installing the tire on the rim.
What scares me is if you’re relying on the air station pump readout for accurate pressure reading. Get your own gauge if you haven’t already…
You may have to fill the tires a few pounds more than the recommended pressure to reset the monitor. That’s how my HHR worked. When it reset…I just removed enough air to get me back to my normal pressure.
You should read Hunter Thomson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. This drug addict and his attorney rent a Cadillac convertible. They take the Cadillac to a service station and inflate the tires to 90 psi. The reason they gave the shocked service station attendant was that the higher pressure " greatly improves the handling ".
On another note, if you filled up to 30 PSI when the tires had been driven upon and when the outdoor temperatures weren’t at their lowest, then I’m afraid your tires are still underinflated. They need to be at 30 PSI when cold at the coldest part of the day. (If you’re measuring in a garage, then you need to compensate by 1 PSI for each 10 degrees that the garage is warmer.)
I agree with the comment to get a good dial-type gauge to double-check the TPMS reading, as it might or might not be perfectly accurate. I’ve had good results with Accu-Gage gauges so far.
Personally , I wouldn’t give a second thought to the tire being aired up to 57 lbs. , especially for such a short period of time , but I’m no tire expert .
Yeah as others said I wouldn’t worry about it. If you watch them mount tires, they dang near hit 80# to pop the beads in place. I’ve always been afraid of standing too close to a tire while inflating it though, which is another story.
No problem at all… because you never drove on it.
I put that much pressure in my road bike (bicycle) tires. And that much pressure and more is reached just popping the bead during the tire mounting process.
No, that temporary over inflation has not caused any problems - neither short term or long term.
@Docnik - Sorry, but the construction of those temporary spares is quite different from other tires - specifically because of the higher inflation pressure.
CSA said: “I Was Hoping You’d Make A General Comment About How Much Pressure It Would Take To Actually Damage A Radial Passenger Car Tire…”
The burst pressure of a tire is on the order of 3 to 5 times the maximum inflation pressure. If one were to merely over inflate the tire (meaning, not operate it at that pressure), then I would guess that damage would occur at about 90% of that burst pressure.
In this case, passenger car tires can have a maximum inflation pressure of 35, 44 or 51 psi - so let’s pick the lowest value with a corresponding burst pressure of about 175 psi, so damage would occur at about 160 psi.
Years ago, a big box store installed 4 tires on my wife’s van. The handling seemed a little off so I checked the tire pressures when I got home. The tire pressures ranged from the mid 20 to mid 50 PSI on the four tires. I set the correct pressure and never had any further issues with the tires.
My daughter visited earlier this week to fill her tires on her 2012 Cruze. She used to check the tire pressure with the tire gauge I gave her, but the gauge and TPMS read the same, and she just went with the TPMS. After filling the tires, she found that 3 tires read 35psi and one read 27 psi. She started to fill that one tire again, and I told her to stop. I got my gauge and checked all 4 tires. All were 35 psi. I told her to get the errant sensor checked if she wanted to use the TPMS. She also knows to use the hand gauge as a check on the TPMS and air pump.