How Do I Check or Add Air to my Tires on My Car or Truck

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly: that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we're just going to go through putting air in your tires and checking the pressure and some of the information on your vehicle and on your tires to help you get them at the right pressure.

Tire inflation, putting air in your tires itself is actually a pretty easy task. I'm going to show you that, but I also want to show you some of the other information about your tires that you're going to want to know. On most cars on either the driver's or the passenger's door that I'm opening up here, . this one happens to be on the door. Sometimes it's actually posted on the doorpost, but this sticker tells you a lot about your tires. It tells you some information about your car which is front gross axle weight rating, so 2,000 pounds on your gross axle weight on the front. Your rear gross axle rating is 2,950. They give that in kilograms. It gives you your tire size on the front and tire size in the rear and your wheel size in the front and rear. Then here it says at 207 KPA or 30 PSI, which 30 PSI is the one that we normally use, and that's a cold pressure. In the rear for this vehicle it's recommended 35 PSI, cold pressure. This is the manufacturers recommendations as far as inflating your tires.

Now, on the tire itself there's also a bunch of information. More than just who makes the tire or what model tire it is, but you're going to look for, especially for the inflation pressure, you'll look for a little tag like this which is max load. It tells you basically how much weight this sub-tire can support. Then it tells you what pressure, so the maximum pressure on these tires is 44 PSI. Now you'll notice that that pressure is different than what the manufacturer recommends. This 44 PSI is what they would want you to use if you were running it at the max load.

Now, that being said, you can follow the manufacturer's recommendations, but actually what you can do is, if you inflate you tire to 44 PSI, it will give you slightly better gas mileage. Now that will be at a cost of it will wear the center of the tire just a little more and also the tire will provide a harsher ride. I generally do this if I drive on a long trip on a highway that I know is going to be pretty smooth, I'll inflate the pressure in my tires to the maximum recommendation on the tire, but then when I'm driving around town and know that I'm going to be on less smooth roads, I'll inflate them at the regular pressure.

That all being said, checking the pressure in your tire and inflating, you're going to see a little valve like this on the rim. Unscrew the cap and I have a few different gauges. You should always have one of these gauges in your car. This is a little bit of a radial gauge. You press it onto the valve. You can see that the arrow goes up to 190 KPA or 25 PSI. This needs some air in this tire because it should be at either 35 or 44. Then, this is kind of a stick style gauge where again, you press it onto the valve and then it tells you what the pressure is right there. It agrees with the other gauge at 26. The last style, well not the last style, but another style that's common is when you go to a gas station and you put some change into the machine and it turns a little compressor on and they'll have this type of a valve and gauge at the end. You press it onto your tire gauge and it pops up here. You can see it gives you a pressure reading and this actually says about 30 PSI. I believe this is a little off, but then you put some pressure into the tire, let off and then you can see that the pressure has risen about four pounds. Okay and now I'm about 36 PSI. Again, like you saw on the door tag, that's cold so my tires are cold. I haven't been driving around. As you drive around, your tires will increase in pressure. It's usually only about a pound or two. If you have warm tires, you might want to . you can put a little more pressure in than you want because as they cool down, the pressure will go down to the recommendation.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.