The foundations for all of us living a mobile lifestyle do not always rely on concrete or brick. No, that would be too permanent. Our foundations are round and made of rubber – unless of course you are floating…
Weather is warming up in the Northern Hemisphere and so is the itch to move. But before you do, ask yourself; when was the last time you checked the tires on your RV or travel trailer? How about your spare tire? Well let’s go take a look now before you pull out.
Your tire pressure is one of the easiest things to monitor. Keeping your pressure at its recommended level will provide you not only with added safety, it will also have a positive impact on your fuel consumption. Ideally keeping it right at or near the max pressure stamped on the side of the tire is your best option (it’s the number right in front of the stamp “PSI COLD”). For those of us who have better things to do than remember our PSI, there are now very cool digital readers available (found on Amazon). The tools are programmable so you can keep your car, truck, bike, scooter and trailer under the correct pressure. If only we could do that with all of our own pressures!
Actually, depending on the duty the tire is serving, tire inflation pressure can vary depending on load. For car tires, within 5-10 PSI of the max load pressure will give you optimum fuel economy without sacrificing ride.
However, on any kind of ST or LT tire, you need to look at the total weight the tire is bearing.
On pickup truck tires, for example, running near the max PSI on a 10 ply tire will cause what is called “Crowning” when there is not enough weight being born by the tire to flatten the tread surface out.
For an ideal resource on how much you should inflate your tires, here are some handy inflation charts, courtesy of Goodyear tire company.
For RVs:
http://www.goodyear.com/rv/pdf/rv_inflation.pdf (PDF Format)
http://www.goodyear.com/rv/tirecare/