I recently posted this in another thread. It is from the C5 forum and pertains to the C5. It is from another forum member Bill. name is Evil Twin.

I have tried this in the past for a few thousand miles of regular street driving. Most my driving is on the freeway during trips.

What I found was a slight increase in outer and inner tread ban wear, less than a mm more wear but definitely more wear.

Running at 30 cold I see more wear in the center band of the tire. Not a lot but more wear for sure,

I have come to the conclusion that somewhere in between would prove ideal for my driving style.

I would like to hear what people think concerning running 30-31 hot psi in tires for everyday driving as described in the below quoted comments.

"Ive posted this at least 200 times. That sticker on the Door is a DOT compliance sticker.. it's designed to keep people from inflating their tires to 63 psi as it says on the sidewall of the tire.. Tires are not made for specific cars, they are made for specific sizes, therefore, the weight bareing load is different based on the car and its weight. While many people read that as a cold tire pressure, summer or winter .. it is not accurate. 30 cold means nothing because the tire is not in work mode.. Therefore it's not at operating temperature. What you have to do is keep the tire in the sweet spot... 30 psi is the right tire pressure for a 3200 lb vehicle. However,inflating a tire to 30 when they are col dmeans nothing.. Its when they are actually rolling..... take for example, a cool morning test in you garage might yield a 30 psi tire pressdure.. but take that tire out on the road and by noon on a hot day 90+ and on a black top road, the surface temperure of that road can see 160 degree F. NOw that 30 psi tire is at 38 psi.. which will make the tire over pressured for a 3200 lb car. making the footprint ( contact patch ) become center high , reducing the contact patch, wearing the center out of thew tire and reducing the traction and performance and fuel economy..

IN the summer.. there is a big swing in ambient temperature, as much as 40 degrees in 24 hours..

So after giving you all of this information. it is fairly easy to see where your tire pressure should be. For me, in the summer I set my tires to 26/28 psi. this will insure that my tires do not get over pressured by mid day. You don't have to adjust the pressure daily or weekly or even monthly.. but between June and August, you want light pressure cold (26/28 psi ) this will put them in the sweet spot, and give you the best performance and insure against premature center wear. On a really hot day 90+ and you are out and about.. check with the DIC and see if your tires are where they should be.. if they are north of 34 or 35 psi, drop a few pound to get you to 30/31 psi. That should be your set point. check once a month, because 02 escapes through the side wall ( more in the summer ) . Winter time, tire pressure become lower because the air is more dense , so you may have to add tire pressure in the winter because with O2 loss and cold temps you don't want to be running around on 26 psi, you may even get a low tire warning in the winter, and need to pump up the pressure.. This is what I call tire tuning for best performance and tire longevity..

This is how all Indy, and Nascar events are monitored by pit crews. They monitor track condition and track temperature to insure proper tire pressure so they can get that extra two laps out of a tire, and those extra miles of fuel consumption. Races are won or lost on improper tire pressure. Proper tire pressure tuning is good for your cars performance and also for its fuel economy.. and of course your wallet.. understand tire pressure and it will greatly benefit your Corvette experience. BTW just 1 or 2 psi can make a big difference. That extra mile to the gallon of fuel, and those extra thousand miles to a set of tires.
POST #189 on this subject.
Happy summer
Bill aka ET

So Keep it in the sweet spot." ( 30/31 psi Hot )

 

 

I use 30 rear 32 front cold tire pressure. This works great tires wear fine.

 

 

The only time I consider tire pressure as critical, is at the strip. For the rest of my 150K+ miles, I've set 30-31 psi cold. The TPS has read between 28 and 34 depending on weather, speed, and endurance. I guess I'd rather deal with an average than try to adjust for an ideal to fit the conditions of any particular drive.

I did discover on a trip to Houston several years ago, that the road surface can play a fair difference in fuel economy. While driving the wife's Caddy with the cruise set just short of 80 and the DIC reading Instant Fuel Economy, as we crossed into Reeves County on I-10, the mpg dropped by 2. I thought something had failed, but right after leaving that County, the mpg returned to the normal earlier experienced. On the way back to Phoenix as we neared Reeves again, I looked at the pavement and listened to the tire noise as we crossed the County line and saw a visual difference and heard the noise change and the DIC reading again dropped by 2 mpg. Right after the Western Reeves County line, it all returned to the normal for the rest of the trip. I failed to check if there was a tire pressure difference, however the mpg change was nearly instantaneous.

 

With run flats on the front I found 32psi cold in the front helped significantly with inside edge tire ware. This issue went away completely when I went to non-runflats.

 

I do not doubt this.

RF tires are a compromise and really shouldn't be on a sports car.

Reminds me of the solid rubber bicycle tire for road bikes when it came out, junk.

Yes no flats but ride and handling was horrid.

 

I find 30psi cold front and 28psi cold rear works for my tires just fine. I have 275/30/19 front and 305/30/19 rears. My last set of PS2's on the rear went about 40k miles and the wear was quite uniform overall. Front wear has also been very good, but I haven't run a new set through a full wear out cycle on the front yet. I do run a fairly mild alignment which works great for highway driving without wearing the tires unevenly.

I've seen the fronts hit 36-37psi when hot a few times, but they're never at the same temperature all the time when driving so at times they are higher then perfect and other times they are lower then perfect. You really can't compare to how it's done when racing because those tires are worked hard and hot their whole life.

Overall, picking a pressure because that's what it "just must be" is dumb. Your experiments with different pressures to find what to use so you get even tire wear is the correct way to do it. Even wear means even contact, pressure and temperature across the tread which also means the whole tread width is working evenly to grip the road.