The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #63196 Message #1024404
Posted By: JohnInKansas
24-Sep-03 - 01:44 PM
Thread Name: BS: 'kpa' to 'psi' conversion help needed
Subject: RE: BS: 'kpa' to 'psi' conversion help needed
The conversion is pretty simple, and seems to have been implemented. As a side note, all US auto and truck tires are marked on the sidewall with the "rated" inflation pressure in both kpa and psi, so you can check a neighbors auto (if all you have is your Chinese vehicle) to get a "good enough" conversion by simple division.
It's become quite common for pressure gauges to have both scales, as well. Even my 20 year old Coleman camp pump (12 volt dc "Inflate-All") has both scales on the gauge.
Rather low inflation pressures are quite common on light weight (and lower speed) vehicles, especially stuff with fairly "fat" tires. Garden tractors, mowers, and wheel barrows often spec 8 to 10 psi, which can be quite difficult to maintain. Many low pressure tires include a tube, since the pressure is not sufficient to "seal" the rim with a tubeless tire installation. A problem to watch for is that the lower pressures often don't seat the tire/rim joint well enough to keep moisture out of the tire; and rim corrosion, when moisture gets in, chews up the tubes. (Old bicycles - 40 to 90 psi - sometimes have the same problem. It's really the tube - not just the pressure - that's the cause of it.)
Several US auto manufacturers in the '50s and early '60s were specifying 22 to 26 psi inflation - to get a "softer" ride, but the tires wore out pretty quickly at those pressures. The same tire, inflated to the "sidewall pressure" of 28 to 32 psi would run about twice as far for the same tread wear on many vehicles, and the higher inflation pressures were very commonly used (who actually reads the manual?).