How to Properly Check and Fill Tires on Your Car

In this video, we're gonna be talking about checking and filling your tire pressure. It may be more important than you think. Too many people don't check their tire pressure, but it's very important, especially if you're a rideshare driver or you use your car for work. Here's why it's important. Whether tires are under-inflated or whether they're overinflated, it could compromise the handling of the vehicle, which could cause a safety issue. If you're driving down the road, especially highway speeds, it could pull you off the road, could cause an accident. Low tire pressure can even affect your fuel economy. It's going to cause the engine and transmission have to work harder and cause more of a drag on the vehicle. And, in the end, it's gonna cost you even more money because your tires are gonna wear out faster.

It's always a good idea every day before you even drive your car just run around and look at the tires, see if they actually look flat. But keep in mind if you have run flat tires, you're not gonna be able to tell. And don't assume because it looks like it's inflated that it actually is. Obviously, if your tire looks like this, don't drive your vehicle. You may see on the side of the tire where it actually says the max pressure. This one says 51 psi. You don't want to fill the tires up to that. That's just what the max pressure is for the tire, not what's recommended for the vehicle.

This is where you find the tire pressure. Open the door. On some vehicles, it'll be right here. Some vehicles, it will be on the actual door. And for this vehicle, it is 33 psi for the front, 33 psi for the rear, and it also gives you a spare tire pressure, 60 psi. So that's what you want to inflate your tires to.

It's always a good idea to have a tire gauge in your glovebox that way you can check your tires on a regular basis. You want to make sure that the tires have cooled down when you go to check them. You don't want to have just gotten off the highway. If the tires are heated up, that's gonna cause the pressure to go up, and it's not going to be an accurate reading. So what we can do is take the cap off, find the valve stem, take tire gauge, press it on, seal it, and then check the tire pressure itself. This tire is set to 36 psi, which, in the winter months, that's okay for this vehicle, about 3 psi more than what is specified on the door. In the wintertime, the tires don't get as hot. They're not going to expand as much, and they're not going to increase in pressure. In the summertime, you want it closer to 33 psi. If you had to lower the pressure on the backside of the tire gauge, there's a little button. What you can do is put it right up to the valve stem, push right in the center of the valve stem. It doesn't take much to drop it. Like, right there, it dropped about two pounds, and it was only two or three seconds.

To inflate the tires it's gonna be similar to checking them. You want to take the tire inflator, push it tight on the valve stem so you don't hear any leaking, and then inflate the tire. And then you can recheck it with the gauge and just check the pressure. It's a little bit too high so we can lower it again. And that's right where we want to be. Make sure you put your cap back on. It's gonna keep the dust and dirt out of the valve stem.

Modern vehicles have tire pressure monitors. Some of them use a sensor in the actual tire, and some of them actually use the ABS system to tell that the tire is going low. Now, certain vehicles, it'll actually tell you the tire pressure on the dash and tell you the location of the tires. More not so complicated systems will just tell you one of the tires is low, and you have to figure it out for yourself. So if you go around, fill all your tires, and they're at the proper pressure, and the light's still on, it may need to be reset, or it could mean that you have bad tire pressure monitors. Most of the time, the monitors only last about eight years. There's batteries in them, and they die.

So, keep your vehicle safe, save some money, and check your tire pressures. If this video helped you out, please consider subscribing.

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