So called experts and the issue of tires and tire pressure drive me nuts. For example:
(1) I've had cars that ran the exact same tire sizes a van or pickup ran. Without even having a load in them, there will be nearly a half ton difference in the weight of the two rigs. Regardless, so called experts, ALL, claim 34 PSI is right.
(2) Only a few short years ago, it was claimed 28 PSI was the ideal air pressure for radial tires. It STILL says as much on the door of my 03 Ranger.
No sane, knowledgeable person would run that pressure on that Ranger, or most other rigs, unless they were driving an old, glass body VW dune buggy. In the sand. [To be fair, that Ranger has, what, a 150 pound load limit?
(3) The one-size-fits-all air pressure garbage ignores that one car commutes, daily, with a 140 pound driver and no passengers, another carries two overweight adults that meet the load limit of a Ford Ranger, and yet another carries five workers to the job site every day.
(4) How about the tire expert at the store selling air bags? The one who said I couldn't run them on my Twinky Mobile (an old Hostess Step Van with all the decals yet in place), because they couldn't support the weight I planned on hauling. He just couldn't comprehend the fact the air bags complement existing suspension and the two work together, just like on Greyhound buses and Kenworths that run them.
(5) Then there is that experts at tire stores don't know terms like, "lug centric" or "wheel centric," and why you have to kick the hell out of the tires on my Grumman step van to get the wheels off the hubs.
(6) And there is the "2 ply 4 ply rating," versus actual 4 ply or 6 ply tires, the latter which replaced those 4 ply wannabe's on my little cargo van. Aside the immediate change to a harder ride, the frequent winds no longer toss the little rig all over the road.
(7) Finally, at the declared perfect air pressure of 34 PSI, the outer treads of my SUV tires wore notably quicker (okay, 25,000 in) than the outsides, indicating a bump to 36 was in order. The correctness of that to be seen with this next set of tires. Maybe those little tire gauges are a good idea to have around after all.
In the end, tire stores could grab a whole lot more loyal customers if they educated their employees, and their customers to tire information relative to their rigs.
An addendum to the genius of "experts":
About 40 years ago, I put air lift shocks on my 69 C10 step side, to aid with the occasional loads. I knew nothing about that kind of shocks. I just knew I needed a bit of help with some loads.
The first thing I noticed was, crappier handling. I was real un-sold on the air-shock idea real quick. I had put a lot of effort into getting that old truck to handle very well/responsively.
Problems with those shocks were even notable on long, sweeping curves.
I scratched my head a bit. After all, people with master's degrees in relative fields designed those puppies.
After some thought on the matter, it dawned on me, the shocks came with a single fill point and T'd off. So, when airing the shocks, you aired both at the same time.
THAT MEANT air could move back and forth between the two shocks, as I drove down the road. THAT MEANT, for example, going around a left turn corner, all the weight of the truck was thrown onto the left shock, and that weight pushed the air out of the left shock into the right shock. THAT MEANT the left went lower than it should and the air pushed the right higher than it should.
THAT MEANT the engineers might have focused on convenance and, in the process, sorely compromised function.
I got another air line component and installed it, so I had to fill each shock separately. THAT made a night and day difference in how the truck handled from then on out. Said another way, I was, after the modification, happy with my air shocks.
It scares me to think how many air bags have been installed with convenience in mind at the expense of good function, resulting in people hating air bags, even as big rigs live by them.
