Tire Pressure

[thstone]

Everything is a tradeoff.

Depends on the make/model of your tire and what you're trying to acheive. There is no single "right answer" for tire pressures and many people have different preferences in terms of ride quality, balance (understeer vs oversteer), tire wear, and several other key handling characteristics that can be somewhat altered by varying the tire pressure.

A gross example is the difference between the Nitto NT-01 and Toyo R888, both R-compound racing tires. The Nitto's typically run best at 36-38 psi hot (all four corners) but the Toyo's, with a stiffer sidewall, run best around 30psi (all around). Running either tire at 5 psi more than these values results in a greasy, loose feeling, and loss of ultimate grip. Running at 5psi less than these values usually results in rolling the tire too far over in hard corners. Within this range, there is a lot of room for variation and preference.

Read the posts and then try making some minor changes to tire pressures to see if you feel any difference or improvement in the direction that you want to go. If so, then move a little more. Eventually, you'll reach a point of diminishing returns or where a negative tradeoff starts to become apparrent.

[stephen wilson]

Unless you are trying to make some change to the handling, there's little reason to not use the factory recommended pressures. 30 is not too low at all, and 6 more pounds won't help that much if you nail a big pothole. Also, your 17's are not particularly low profile tires.

PS I have been playing with pressures, and am underwhelmed with the results. The factory pressures gave me good tire wear, so I went back to that.

[Alfieg23]

Thanks everyone.