Driving in third world country roads, over inflate tires?

I respectfully disagree with some of the previous posts.

I would not go under Toyota's recommended inflation pressure. I believe those numbers should be considered a minimum, the maximum should be the maximum load pressure printed on the sidewall. The suspension is designed to absorb road shock and it will, if you inflate your tires to the maximum pressure on the sidewall (44psi or 51psi for our cars) it will not damage the suspension in any way, the car is a lot tougher than that. A lot of us on this forum have used fairly high inflation pressures for years in our Priuses and I know of no suspension failures or early wear due to that.

Here are a couple of fairly good references on tire pressure.

Go down the page to the section on Inflation Pressure in this one: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire"]Tire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


This one is written for police officers driving full size cars but in an emergency you could put the same kind of forces on your car as they do: Driving Under Pressure: Editorial & Features at Officer.com

We have had a lot of tire pressure discussions on this site over the years. Mostly we talked about fuel mileage but safety enters into the discussion as well, search some of the threads out and read them.

There is no evidence to indicate higher inflation pressures will wear out your suspension or your tires more quickly. Tires will not wear out in the center of the tread if the pressure is over what the vehicle manufactures recommends, I have proven that several times with tires on both of my Priuses and a couple of other cars as well. Higher pressures will increase resistance to hydroplaning and improve wet stopping distances as well as possibly saving you from a bent rim. The ride will be firmer and some object to that, I kind of like it. But I think providing a soft ride is the reason the recommended pressures from Toyota are as low as they are.

That should give you both sides of the story, I will stick with my original recommendation of around 40 psi or so but the decision is, of course, yours.