excessive low tire pressure!

Nothing to worry about. We as Prius owners tend to worry about tire pressure more than your average Joe, and rightly so. With that said, I can assure you the majority of drivers on the road maintain a tire pressure much like yours was, with no damage. Just pump those babies up, it'll give you a few extra MPG, and that's what we're all about! I keep all of mine at 43 PSI by the way.

 

Yep David, them dealer service people just don't understand the Prius tyres. Bang a chunk of air in the tyres Kelvin and it will make for a drive more in tune with Prius.

I've been playing with my tyre pressure at 40/38 and haven't seen a feul economy hit from when I had it at 42/40 but I have a slightly smoother ride. I have a feeling any lower will cost me petrol.

 

Hey no worries Kelvin, the person who did the pre-delivery on your Prius most likely thought he was doing the right thing setting the pressure soft to give you a nice soft ride. It's a good idea to check em each fill up or every couple of weeks which ever is the lesser. I think most PC members check their tyres right after each service too.

 

More like the person doing the pre-delivery didn't bother to check the tires, but whatever. You are too optimistic.

I too run 40F 38R with good effect.

 

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

1. The prep guy used the wrong pressure numbers and set 27/25.

2. The prep guy forgot to check the tires. This is less likely, because your tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) reported the low pressure. If tires were low before prep, he would have seen the yellow warning.

So the first explanation is more likely, but he didn't know about resetting the TPMS to the new pressure. This is good, because if he did, you would not be alerted.

 

Unless you hit some major potholes or roadwork on the trip home I wouldn't assume you dagamed the wheels. When driving to the drag strip I often ran with 16psi in my drag radials for about 20miles. On my street tires I've made the same drive at 25psi and never had a problem. I would not recommend this for long distances or hard cornering though as you could damage the sidewalls.

 

Thanks Rick, that is what I was thinking, pressures too close to 27/25 to be neglect. Lower pressures give more sluggish feel to the car too.

You could have pressures as low as 10psi or even less and not damage the rims unless you went over a curb, and even with 42psi you could damage the wheels doing that. I wouldn't want to drive too far at that pressure though (10psi) as it will cause heating of the tyre.
There would be no damage at 25/27psi.

 

Just another relative newbie here, who discovered the low tire pressures same way as you a short time after coming home from the dealer. I found that when I readjusted the pressure to 38F/36R, the mpg immediately improved from avg 45, to avg 50-51. Now, after reading the thread and seeing that folks are running typically higher, I may just go readjust again.