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Re: [T3]Tire pressure , was -Adjusting front stabilizer bar-


On 12 Mar 2003 at 10:55, Matthew_Russell@ziba.com wrote:

>  i usually inflate all my tires to 32psi. 

That wouldn't be bad for rears, especially if you have a good load in the rear, 
but for your fronts, try taking 10-12 psi out of there. It will settle down the 
whole car and make it handle a lot better.  

The way to think about this is that the pressure you need is just what the load 
on that tire needs to make its tire contact patch the optimal size. If you let 
the pressure get too low the patch gets too big and everything gets squishy. If 
the pressure gets too high the patch gets too small and the tire can't really 
grip the road, plus it's so hard that it spends too much time in the air, 
bouncing.  

It's a matter of balance between stiffness, resilience, and grip.  

On our cars, the front tires are very lightly loaded, so the front tire 
pressure ends up needing to be rather low.  

Don't feel bad. We regularly get people here who have been told that the 
"proper" inflation pressure is just 26psi all around, or more if you want 
better gas mileage. I think that happened to be true many years ago for a lot 
of US front engine/rear wheel drive cars so that a lot of people came to 
believe that it was universal. It's not, and it makes a big difference.  

-- 
Jim Adney
jadney@vwtype3.org
Madison, WI 53711-3054
USA

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