20Psi On All Four Tires!

5

5-7HEAVEN

Well-Known Member
My daughter picked up my son and me to go out for dinner. Afterwards, she stopped at a gas station to refuel. Son jumps out to check tire pressure with OUR tire gauge. Front tire reads 20psi; the gauge barely moved. "Check another tire", I said. Same reading. "Check the back tire", I said. Same reading. Hmmm, must be a broken tire gauge. So we buy a new gauge there.....

Same readings. ALL FOUR TIRES READ 20PSI!!!

That's 10psi under recommended settings for a 2006 Mini Cooper! That's no longer a chance of poor maintenance. I've NEVER seen a car with all 4 tires exactly 12psi underflated.

Sounds downright malicious!

I asked my daughter if she routinely checks tire pressure. She said yes; I KNOW the possibility of this happening is nonexistent.

Daughter informs me there's a 20-something yo guy in their apartment building that sits next to her car on a daily basis. I guess he's not allowed to smoke in his apartment, which is like 20 feet from her parking stall. So he smokes and SPITS on the ground in her stall. She doesn't complain, for fear of him scratching her car.

The next day, I told her to contact the resident manager ANNND the police, which she did. Manager sloughs it off. At least the cops came out and made a report.

What do you think about this?

Coincidence?:-||
 
A bran new set of tires will settle a little as they break in and stretch out a tad. I got a new set of tires on my work truck. Every one of them were 10 psi under inflated twice in about 300 miles. Then they stayed at 44 psi.
 
Sounds funny to me...what does the kid have a tire gauge so he can let out exactly 12psi in each tire? Kind of doubt it. But maybe so. On the other side of the coin, maybe your daughter didn't want to get a lecture about maintaining proper tire inflation.... :>(

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Goat Herder said:
A bran new set of tires will settle a little as they break in and stretch out a tad. I got a new set of tires on my work truck. Every one of them were 10 psi under inflated twice in about 300 miles. Then they stayed at 44 psi.
Click to expand...
...Umm never had that experience. But this post reminds me to check my tire pressure.
 
Goat Herder said:
A bran new set of tires will settle a little as they break in and stretch out a tad. I got a new set of tires on my work truck. Every one of them were 10 psi under inflated twice in about 300 miles. Then they stayed at 44 psi.
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the tip.
 
It sounds suspicious, but hard to say it's malicious.. the tires weren't completly flat. Odds are (if he's messing with it) he's just terminally stupid, and feels he's achieving some minor victory by it. Still, if you can get some kind of pics or video it would nail it down.

When terminally stupid meets malicious, you get this. Years ago I had a room-mates experience that ended badly. I told them I was going a month before I did, told the property manager when I would be out and it would be just them. I packed my stuff (which was about 3/4's of the furniture and all the electronics in the apartment) and moved. To make a long story short, it was decided amongst them that I owed them money. One knew where I moved to and made it a nightly habit for a couple of weeks to put a pebble in the valve cap on each tire and flatten them. At the time I was working a full time day job outside the city and part time night job delivering food in town. (So, the thinking was... "If he can't go to work and earn money he'll pay us back" I guess... not that I ever owed them a cent in the first place.)

The tires on my current car will lose some pressure if it sits unused for too long, and in the good months it's only used once a week or so. There is a slow leak in a back tire, I just haven't made the time to pull it and check it. The car tells me if it's low, and the hose for my compressor reaches from the garage all the way around the car. I just have to remember to change the pressure down from bike to car range. I've blown a bike tire off the rim once, I don't want to experience it with a car tire. ;)
 
Hey, thanks for telling your story. I appreciate that.

The left front tire is down 7 lbs from the time I posted this. My daughter called me at work telling me this. I told her she needs to figure this out with her husband, not me. "Work as a team and trust your husband" is what I told her. Anyway, they took the tire in for inspection. I don't know what they found, but they can handle it.

My SIL's grandma had invited them to live with her, starting next January. They simply decided to move early, so they're packing up and moving as soon as possible.

Sometimes good options just fall on people's laps. dance1
 
The only other thing I can think of would be to check each tire and rim under water and see if there is an actual issue with the rims/tire beads, or if there are actually pinholes or other problems. (Without taking it to a shop, I'm thinking a Mini Cooper's wheels ought to be testable in a bathtub.) The odds are against even one being bad that way, but if all four did have similar leakage at the beads then I'd be going to the last people to mount tires on the rims first to find out who farked it up.

It's odd what a tire can take and what'll take it out. I plugged a lot of leaks from minor/routine punctures for a while when I was delivering for a living. Usually a bent nail, or old screw, or some other metallic debris. Even little fragments of the plastic that tail-lights are made of can twist through, I pulled a sliver of one of those out once, barely 1/16th wide at the thick end that tapered to a point over the 1/2" length of it. It went in just right between treads and made a slow leak when the tire sat just the right way. I can only imagine the debris carbon-fiber parts and panels on new cars could create.
 
Yeah, I'm not gonna worry about it anymore. For now, they're parking somewhere else, so we'll see what happens.
 
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