Tire Air Gauge Accuracy

It's what the pros are calling the best combination of two tire safety products for any type of vehicles tires or trailer tires either in use or in production today. AccidentZone is your source for answers relating tire gauge accuracy and your vehicles tire pressure. Learn how to properly inflate your tires using the right tools as recommended by all of the major tire manufactures in the world.

Lets get to it ok. There are two types of air pressure gauges in the marketplace today and they are analog and digital. Now you all seen the stick or pen air gauges right? And most of you have seen the round face analog tire pressure gauges. Both of these gauges were the benchmark standard for more than 70 years in the automotive service industry. And we know that most if not all of you have been to a gas station to put air in your tires right. Well those pump stations use the same type of analog gauge that once was the industry standard. All 3 of those tire gauges are next to worthless when it comes to properly measuring air pressure inside your tires.

Do you know what  the best time is in a day to check the pressure in your vehicles tires and why? It does not matter if the tire is on a long-haul trailer, a motorcycle, truck, suv, sports car or any other type of vehicle or trailer the ONLY time to check your tire pressure is when the tires are cool before they get warmed up. Why? Well, the answer is a little long but, all tire manufactures in the world do a great deal of testing on each tire they design and build, fact is they punish their tires to failure with excessive loads and heat cycles to find the breaking point in each of their tire products. This testing tells their engineers among other things what the optimal tire pressure should be for that tire and it's application. Automobile manufactures around the world then pick the tires they want on each vehicle they produce based on the manufactures tire spec's. It's at this point that the automotive engineers use their formulas based on vehicle type to tell us the consumer what tire pressures they want in the front tires and the rear tires, very seldom are the pressures the same. All automobile manufactures then post this important information on a sticker either on the drivers side door post or inside the glove box.

Now that answers half of the question has to how much pressure a particular vehicle or trailer tire pressure should be but it doesn't answer the question as to what time of day a person should check there tire pressure. It is "assumed" that all consumers out there know the answer to that question, but the truth is that it is guesstamated that only 1/4 of all drivers out there know the correct answer. The only time to check your tire pressure is in the morning before the tires are heated up but do you know why that is?

Well, here is the correct answer to that question; the tire pressure your vehicle manufacture recommends is the "cold" air pressure. That's right, the psi number you see on your door post or glove box is what the manufacture recommends the tire be set to when it is cold or before the tire is warmed up. When you drive your vehicle or pull a trailer the air inside the tires gets hot and when air gets hot it expands thus increasing the tires air pressure. PSI stands for "per square inch". So when you see those psi settings on your vehicle they are the recommended cold air pressure settings. As you drive the tires will heat up the air inside the tire and it expands to its optimal operating psi setting, which translates into better gas mileage and less roll resistance and less chance of damaging your tires. All vehicles and trailers ride on air not rubber, it's the air inside the tire that keeps it inflated so it will roll. Too little air in the tire will cause the vehicle or trailer to ride hard on the sidewall of the tire where the rim of the wheel can rub aggressively on the sidewall causing damage to the tire and shorting it life and it also increases the resistance for the tire to roll which means more horsepower and fuel are needed to keep the vehicle or trailer rolling down the road.

Ok we've answered the questions about what time of day to check or inflate your tires and what tire gauges to stay away from, now let us show you some of the most accurate and reasonably priced tire air gauges on the market today. As you know digital is replace analog everywhere you look from electronic to TV reception, well tire gauges are no exception. We will not bore you will all of the testing data that's been gathered by Car and Driver and independent testing labs around the world for the past 3 years but suffice to say digital tire gauges were the most accurate gauges tested. By some accounts the mechanical analog tire gauges were off by as much as 15 psi. That's a huge plus or minus ranges for a tire gauge. Most digital tire gauges have plus or minus of .05 psi over a range of  5 - 150 psi.
 

May we also suggest you order a set of tire pressure monitoring caps as seen below

The Original Safety Cap designed for most cars, trucks, suv's, motorcycles and light duty trailers. 10 PSI Setting 26 - 45

Heavy Duty Safety Caps Designed for heavy duty equipment, trucks and trailers 7  PSI Settings 60 - 120

If you've been watching the news in the last few years there is a lot of interest in tire management, this has come about due to the Firestone tire problems and the suv rollovers. As it turns out all of those tires were under-inflated, they were not set to their proper cold  psi settings recommended by vehicle manufacture. When NHTSA  performed a study on tire inflating in 100 service stations around the country interviewing over 17,000 driver more than 55% of those people had no idea where to look for the proper tire inflation in their vehicle. 49% of those people surveyed went to the tire to find the correct tire pressure when asked. That tire pressure stamped on the sidewall of every tire is the MAXIMUM TIRE PRESSURE and would be the incorrect tire pressure for your vehicle. 97% of those drivers interviewed did not know how or when to properly measure tire pressure on their vehicle. This study and others points out just how little attention the American driving public pays to their tires, yet the air inside those tires is the only thing keeping that vehicle moving down the road. Under inflated tires reduces the amount of miles you get on a gallon of gas not to mention that it reduces the life of the tire itself and the fact that it is extremely dangerous to drive on under-inflated tires.

The purpose of our safety caps is designed to operate within a preset psi setting; for example the middle cap you see is a 32 psi safety cap. Should the tire pressure drop 4 psi the cap will show a yellow bar showing you that your tire is under inflated by roughly 4 psi. Should the tire pressure drop another 4 psi the cap will display red showing you that your tire pressure is now roughly 8 psi low from the recommended 32 psi. The purpose of the color coding is to give the driver a quick visual if any of your tires are low on air. If valve stem caps show green your tires are properly inflated. If, however you see yellow or red in any of those safety caps your tires need air ASAP, it's just that simple.

This concludes our discussion about tire gauge accuracy. The best tire gauges are digital. You should always check your tires air pressure in the morning when they are cool or before driving heats them up. You should install some type of tire monitoring system on your vehicle to help you keep your tires properly inflated. If you want to learn more about tire maintenance and service?