Air down or not?

[Doc in AZ]

i would keep an eye on the tread wear as a good indication of proper tire inflating. an over inflated tire will wear more quickly in the center, under inflated will wear more at the edges. you can always do the chalk test to insure you are getting a good contact pattern.

[Arrie]

The reasson to air down your tyres is not just for grip. If the tyres are at normal pressure and you hit a small sharp stone at speed, it will ripp the inside of the ply on the inside of the tyre and over time will cause the tyre to blow out when you drive at speed on the free way. Any time you get on a dirt road I would say deflate to 1.5 bar, eaven if you have road tyres on the Jeep. As sson as I get on a dirt road I deflate to 1 bar, but I have 33" BF A/T tyres on my Commander.

[El Cid]

And the measurement device for finding the "bar" on your "tyre" ... do you keep it in the boot?

[Sal-XK]

Well, after spotting a couple of XK's over obstacles one guy had a bunch of trouble making it and I was confused at to what the problem was. Then it hit me he said earlier he didn't air down what a difference it makes uh. During the first day we headed down some long rocky service roads. About an hour into it I got fed up and air downed to 25PSI and instantly my ride smoothed right out and the family was happy again and the wife just wanted to know why I didn't do it an hour ago.

[lekmedm]

1.5 barrs = 21.7 lbs/in^2
1 barr = 14.5 lbs/in^2

Arrie is our friend in South Africa, so I guess they use barr as their unit of pressure over there. Actually, I wonder why they don't use kilopascals, but it's just a factor of 10.

[Ahmed]

I air down to lower than 15 psi when driving on soft dry sand ,, I also put it on around 10 psi when going to extreme soft sand and tough areas, and even with such pressure we sometimes get stuck

[lekmedm]

Don't you risk breaking the bead at such low pressures...?