New car dealers and tire pressures

[tigerbangs54]

When I took delivery of my 2010 Kizashi SE AWD, I was initially put off by what I considered a busy ride. The ride was unlike what I had experienced on the FWD cars that I had driven, and I chalked it up to having AWD. After about 2 weeks of enduring a rather hard ride, it occurred to me to check the tire pressures, and I discovered that the dealer had put 45 psi of air in the tires. Hmmmm...The door sticker calls for 38 psi front and rear. I lowered the pressure to 38 psi, and found that the ride smoothed out to a rather remarkable degree, with no apparent effect on cornering.

I have had this issue with a couple of new cars in the past: apparently the people who do the pre-delivery inspections either ignore the manufacturer's specs, or they assume that the maximum pressure stamped into the sidewall of the tires is the correct pressure. I once had new tires put on an old car of mine that the tire dealer inflated to 44 lbs: the maximum pressure stamped on the sidewall of the tire. When I asked the dealer about it, he swore to me that what he had done was correct, in complete contradiction to the car manufacturer's recommendations on the door sticker. I made him lower the pressure to the the manufacturer's specs, and got over 50K from those tires.

The moral of this story is to buy yourself a good tire pressure gauge and use it every few weeks: you can't depend on anyone else to set the tires to the correct pressures, and it will affect your fuel mileage, ride and tire life.

[havinfun]

I have seen 45+ pounds of tire pressure on several brand new cars. I learned from one dealer that the tires are pumped up high to help with trailering the car to the dealership from the port (foreign) or from the assembly plant (domestic). I don't know the theory behind the need for this high pressure, but apparently it somehow helps. The dealership is supposed to lower the pressure to proper driving specs as part of the dealer prep work on the car before it is sold, but sometimes they miss this (important) step.

[JKiza2010]

I had the same thing happen to me with my 2010 Kizashi. The test drive of the demo car was amazing, AWD SLS. On delivery of my own from a different dealership, it seems the ride was extremely different, FWD 6MT. Before I left the dealership the TPMS was alerting faults. The dealership told me they confirmed the pressure was correct, and reset it again. After, driving off the lot, the fault was back within minutes. This time for many reasons, I couldn't take the car back to that dealership at the time.

Long story short, a check of the tire pressure by Goodyear showed the tire pressure was over 60+ PSI in each tire. I checked the tires myself before going to Goodyear, and thought my gauge was broken because it was reporting 50 PSI in each tire, and 50 was the gauge max. Once the tire pressure was back to normal, 38 PSI, the TPMS error cleared.

I put a few hundred miles on the car before I realized something was off. It felt like a whole different car at that point.

JKiza

[NJKizashi]

In this Cold East Weather..I put mine to 40 PSI..Every 10 degrees down in Temp, your tires go down 1 PSI.

[bingatiger]

should we have the tire pressure as 38 in front and back ?? I usually have 38 front and 40 rear as the front tyres get heated and pressure increases in front compared to rear tyres

[Firefly]

40 all around works well for me. When the pressure gets low the ride actually feels harsher.
And I agree about the cold affecting the pressure. On a couple of occasions I have gotten the low pressure warning on suddenly cold mornings.

[murcod]

My Mum's new Kia (bought about 4 mths ago) was riding rougher than I thought it should. I was amazed to find ~50PSI in all the tyres!? It was above the maximum pressure specified on the tyre- luckily I picked it up before she did a long trip.