subject: Car Repair In Greeley [print this page] I know I have been promising to provide some data about the hard products which are being sold, mostly on the internet, which purport to provide 20 percent or greater increases in fuel economy. Well, I am still waiting for one of those products to be returned to me from the manufacturer so I can finish testing it. Based on their level of customer service, I am not holding out a great deal of hope that the product will perform as claimed, but we will see. I also have received some feedback from a supplier I know about a similar product which he has on his car and it is working as claimed, his mileage is up about 30 percent on the highway. I promise to provide complete details about both products in next months letter. If you can't wait, call me and we can talk. But I will know a whole lot more by the middle of September.
For this month I want to talk about a potentially serious issue which came to my attention today at our weekly lunch meeting. Max Marshall is our alignment and suspension specialist and he has been tracking a disturbing trend on the vehicles he works on. What he has been finding is that many of the vehicles are coming in with excessive air pressure in the tires.
As I have mentioned in recent articles and I am sure many of you have read in other publications, air pressure levels in vehicle tires are one of the most common contributors to both loss of mileage and the increased ownership costs resulting from premature tire wear. The common symptom of this problem is underinflated tires.
What Max has been tracking is a reversal of this situation as he has been finding tires which are overinflated. Tires which have too much air in them will indeed contribute to increased fuel economy as they have much lower rolling resistance. But the trade off is increased wear in the center of the tire, loss of ride quality and loss of traction. Now I know that winter is still 2 or 3 months away, but traction is important all year long.
The engineer who designed your vehicle determined what size and type of tire would work best with the suspension design and weight of the vehicle. I am sure the intended normal use was also taken into consideration. Then that engineer also determined what amount of air pressure needed to be in that tire as well. That number is posted somewhere inside every vehicle and is most commonly found on the drivers door jamb.
For maximum safety and comfort I (and Max) recommend that you keep your tires air pressure set at no more than 5 percent above the amount which the manufacturer specifies
and never more than the maximum specification which is printed on the tire itself. Doing this will provide you with good fuel mileage and the quality traction and handling characteristics which your vehicle was designed with.
My suspicion is that many people are simply filling their tires based on what the tire says and not what the manufacturer recommended. Or maybe, in the quest for better fuel mileage, some drivers are just assuming that more air will get them better results.
Your safety is our primary concern and unlike that joke with the same words, we really are here to help!
If you cannot locate the tag which gives you the recommended air pressure setting for your car or truck, just give us a call. We can access that information for you in our repair data base.
