Tire Pressure

[brobox]

Originally Posted by Victory Blue

Are we reading the same post? ‘Use a wild ass guess to set your pressures”, “a TPMS is for those who don’t check their gauges”. Total nonsense.

Thought the same thing when I read it. I hope others don't take that as a way to use a TPMS.

[bamaboy473]

Taking a literal translation sure made some blood boil, so let's understand some ground rules for SWAG adjustments:

First, your baseline Pressure will be what's on the sidewall for max load pressure. Some people use that, and others use less because they don't have full weight on the rig.

Secondly, TPMS alerts are both good and bad. Set too high and they might fail to notice an impending problem. Set too low and they chirp more than you'd like. Use my SWAG method to dial in the alert parameters, but maybe lean toward the first word of the acronym instead of the last one

Third, many posts have referenced temperature numbers that are way, way, higher than anything I've ever seen on my TPMS screen. Since I have a working knowledge of MY rig's tire temps compared to ambient air temperature, I set the Temperature alarms at lower than many people; the theory being that an unusual increase in tire temperature is cause for concern, which begins active monitoring the pressure of that tire.

[twinboat]

Originally Posted by bamaboy473

Taking a literal translation sure made some blood boil, so let's understand some ground rules for SWAG adjustments:

First, your baseline Pressure will be what's on the sidewall for max load pressure. Some people use that, and others use less because they don't have full weight on the rig.

Secondly, TPMS alerts are both good and bad. Set too high and they might fail to notice an impending problem. Set too low and they chirp more than you'd like. Use my SWAG method to dial in the alert parameters, but maybe lean toward the first word of the acronym instead of the last one

Third, many posts have referenced temperature numbers that are way, way, higher than anything I've ever seen on my TPMS screen. Since I have a working knowledge of MY rig's tire temps compared to ambient air temperature, I set the Temperature alarms at lower than many people; the theory being that an unusual increase in tire temperature is cause for concern, which begins active monitoring the pressure of that tire.

Baseline psi would be the sticker inside the MH, not the max psi on the tire.

They calculate that sticker for safe pressures with a full loaded MH.

Sometimes the sticker and sidewall numbers match, but not always.

[bamaboy473]

I'll be the first to say that air pressure in tires is much more closely watched in motor homes than in our own cars/trucks, and why is that? We can go months without checking air pressure in our family tires, and it can drop quite a bit before we notice any change in ride, but any discussion within a motor home group and seems that there are lots of guys running around in white lab coats with clip-boards and very expensive gauges, talking about +/- 5psi.

Since the advent of TPMS, our tires have never been as watched, or as safe. My trailer tires have a rating of 50psi on them (max weight) and I run 35 most of the time. I don't carry max weight and the trailer doesn't jump around as much if unloaded.

My motor home tires rated at 120psi get 112 in the fronts and 108 in the rears, and the coach rides better than at full pressure. Given that temperature will rise if pressures are too low, the TPMS is saying that all is fine with those temps. That's my SWAG method; your results may differ.

[Gary.Jones]

Well Rick, you certainly have a unique way to thinking and dealing with tires. I am a firm believer that everyone of us can be just as careless or just as safety conscious as we want to me, and take whatever chances that we want to take with our own destruction as we want to take. Your particular approach seems to be to be completely unaware of most of what most people consider to be standard operating procedure. And, feel free to do whatever you want to do with your own coach, passengers, and safety.

However, It is one thing to do whatever you feel you need to do, and passing that bad advice along to other owners who may not be willing to take the chances in a unique approach that you advocate. That is why some of us are taking you to task. Take all the risks you want to take, but don't pass that bad advice on to others.

Now, all the tire pressures you talk about seem much higher than they need to be, but I dont know the tires that you are running on your rig or what their safety ratings are, so I have no idea. They seem like pressures that are going to give you an unnecessarily hard rider. Again, feel free to do whatever you want. However, you can have your tires set at a point which is within all the safety recommendations of the tire manufacturers and have a better ride.l

And I think the reason that all of us have our hair on fire about proper tire pressures is that virtually all of us have a lot of respect for what problems a front steer tire blow out can do to a driver at 65-70 mph. So no one should be airing up their tires in a willy nilly fashion. There is a clear best practice approach and that is what is usually advocated on here. If you want to do something else, feel free.

Gary

[bamaboy473]

Originally Posted by Gary.Jones

Well Rick, you certainly have a unique way to thinking and dealing with tires. I am a firm believer that everyone of us can be just as careless or just as safety conscious as we want to me, and take whatever chances that we want to take with our own destruction as we want to take. Your particular approach seems to be to be completely unaware of most of what most people consider to be standard operating procedure. And, feel free to do whatever you want to do with your own coach, passengers, and safety.

However, It is one thing to do whatever you feel you need to do, and passing that bad advice along to other owners who may not be willing to take the chances in a unique approach that you advocate. That is why some of us are taking you to task. Take all the risks you want to take, but don't pass that bad advice on to others.

Now, all the tire pressures you talk about seem much higher than they need to be, but I dont know the tires that you are running on your rig or what their safety ratings are, so I have no idea. They seem like pressures that are going to give you an unnecessarily hard rider. Again, feel free to do whatever you want. However, you can have your tires set at a point which is within all the safety recommendations of the tire manufacturers and have a better ride.l

And I think the reason that all of us have our hair on fire about proper tire pressures is that virtually all of us have a lot of respect for what problems a front steer tire blow out can do to a driver at 65-70 mph. So no one should be airing up their tires in a willy nilly fashion. There is a clear best practice approach and that is what is usually advocated on here. If you want to do something else, feel free.

Gary

Gary, your well-worded response leaves me scratching my head out of confusion over a lack of specifics that you feel are out of my mind wrong.

If your 45' Cornerstone is running steers at 112 and rears at 108, and you think those pressures are too high, what do you run?

IMO, each coach is slightly different from others of the same kind, and it is likely that certain tire manufacturers' rubber compounds create different road temperature, so my way of dealing with my rig's tires is based on observation. What is wrong with that, when baselines are the pressures pressed into the tires?

Another poster corrected me by stating that the decal inside our coaches lists recommended pressures that might differ from sidewall pressings...and he makes my point rather than correcting it. Manufacturers use their own version of SWAG in order to create their own versions...and note that they use the word, "recommended", because...all of our coaches are slightly different.

Can somebody list specifics for how I treat my tires badly? I'm a junkie for learning new ideas.