Tips for Checking Car Tire Pressure

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Jeff Wong with Expert Village and today we're going to learn the basics of maintaining your vehicle. In this segment we're going to be looking at how to check your tires. First we're going to learn how to check your tire pressure. So to check your tire pressure you need a tire gauge. There are the pen style gauges that are available and the dial style gauges. The first thing that you need to do in checking the air is to remove the cap from your tire and with the pen gauge you push in the gauge all the way flush to the bottom. Push in the pen gauge, hold for a second and then release and you can take your reading here and the gauge reads about 20 or 30 PSI or pounds per square inch. Now with the dial gauge you take it and you hold it there and then you read the pressure reading of the tire. So the dial gauge gives us a reading of 30 PSI. Now dial gauges are typically a little more expensive but they are also a little more accurate. As you can see here on the side of the tire there's a reading that says 51 PSI maximum. This is the maximum pressure that the tire can handle. Now typically I fill the tire to roughly 5 PSI below this maximum. But you have to be aware that when you fill the tire you have to take note of what temperature the air is outside or whether or not you've been driving for a while. So in the morning or if the temperature is roughly below 75 degrees you can fill the tire to about 5 PSI below this maximum value. If it is hot out or if you've been driving out for a while, the air inside the tire will expand and cause the pressure reading to read higher than it actually would be when it was cool."