Can Your Tires Handle the PRESSURE?

Guess What's Inside

Checking your tire pressure is an easy thing to do, and since it's important, why not check your tire pressures today? For everyday driving it's important to drive your car with the tire pressures "just right", not too low, and not too high. Doing so will give you better gas mileage (saves money), and make your tires last longer (which saves money). If you are doing any performance driving like auto-cross or driving on a track, getting your tire pressures dialed in is critical to maximizing performance.

It's BIG!

If you have a car that isn't too old, odds are that it has Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) built in that will warn you when your tire pressures are too low. This is good news, but it comes with a couple of other tidbits of info you should know. Being warned of too low tire pressure is good, but the TPMS will not typically warn you if your tires are inflated too much. That's a good reason to check your tire pressures yourself and not to just trust the little warning light on your dashboard. For a TON of info on TPMS, check out this page on: My Car Does What?

Since we started auto-crossing with NMS, we've used a couple of different tire gauges to check our tires, ranging from the little cheap ones found at any auto parts store, to the cool digital read out Sears Craftsman models. I liked the Sears ones until one of mine just died (yes, even with a new battery), and then a second one didn't work for some crazy reason after I shut the FIAT hatch door on it. Maybe I should take them back to Sears and check on that lifetime warranty!

It's Got a Cool Case!

So the big news today is the arrival of this little bad boy, which is one of the models of tire gauges from the fine folks at Longacre! Not only is this thing accurate and heavy duty, the dial face is (Trump voice) "HUGE". Not only is it HUGE, it comes in a cool BOX! Not only is it HUGE and comes in a BOX, the dial numbers all GLOW IN THE DARK! Of course this won't make me drive any faster, but any day that you get a new HUGE GLOW IN THE DARK TOOL, that makes it a very good day!

The Longacre gauge is easy to use, and one cool feature is that after you put it on your tire, it holds the reading until you press one of the little buttons which you can see below my thumb in the photo above. The bottom button releases air from the tire, which is great, and the gauge is marked in half pounds too! You can read more about tire inflation from our friends at Tire Rack: Tire Rack