[CapriRacer]

Originally Posted by RidingOnRailz

(1) Which is why I've advocated for not listing any pressure on a tire sidewall. Drivers(at least non-commercial private ones here in the States) are mostly too ignorant to know where to source the correct pressure for their specific vehicle. And they take it so politically when you show them the correct way to set it. .....

I think the government regulation needs to be updated to indicate the max load and its corresponding pressure. Not a max pressure. Right now it's confusing as to what is supposed to be written on the sidewall.

Originally Posted by RidingOnRailz

.....
So "Max Load XXXXlbs @ 44/51psi" on such a speed rated tire means the max load - at those higher pressures? As in, you can carry that max load at 35psi as long as you are maintaining speeds lower than the tires' full rating, buuut, inflate to the 44 rating if at speed? I can see where such reasoning, on part of the tire maker, could confuse drivers as to what the true "max" pressure is....

See, it is confusing for those folks in the US - and those are the regulations I am talking about. Let the rest of the world figure out what they want to do about higher speeds.

.....(2) Toward the end of this paragraph it looks as though you are saying it is ok, on occasion, to run tire pressures higher than the value on the tire sidewall, at least on the commercial side. Is that your assertion? ......

Yes

......That might be why I read so many schoolbus forums where I hear about bus tires maintained at 110+? :o .....

It's also possible that the tires call for that pressure. Some Truck/Bus tires can have even higher pressures!

..... Once in a while someone chimes in that they run 95psi cold, and both the bus ride and tire wear patterns are far more satisfactory. Someone - who thinks things through - a rare commodity in this new century!

Well, I'm still afraid to let folks I help, with tire pressures, know that their tires won't just explode at 36psi, or at 45, 52, or LT 81! That will only embolden them to use those sidewall values instead of the pressures carefully arrived at by the vehicle mfgs themselves. ....

I always struggle to understand why some folks just can not understand that the placard has some good science behind it.

...... They'll use the Ford "Exploder" case as rebuttal, not realizing that that was just one blatant outlier among mostly successful tire pressure recommendations. If more folks had observed the pressure offset specified on earlier Corvairs, we might not have heard - as much - from Ralph Nader.

I have a whole webpage devoted to the Ford/Firestone controversy. http://barrystiretech.com/fordfirestone.html

On that page, I have a photo of the infamous Explorer placard - and I do the math to prove the pressure is adequate.

But what I usually do is point out that if that pressure was too low, the vehicle would have been recalled - and it wasn't! Only the tire!