Filling your car tyres with air is quick, easy, and essential for safe driving. In this guide, we walk you through how to read your vehicle’s pressure chart, set up the air machine, and inflate your tyres correctly. You’ll also learn how tyre pressure affects safety and when it may be time to replace your tyres altogether.
If you’ve ever visited a fuel station in the UK, you’ll have seen the air pumps sat to one side, usually just off to one side behind the fuel pumps.
A self-service for vehicle owners who want to check on their tyre pressure and add more air to their tyres, these machines are cheap and easy to use – once someone has told you what to do.
Lucky for you, that’s exactly what we’re doing in this article.
Step 1: Know The Optimum Pressure for Your Vehicle
In order to know how much air to put into your tyres, you need to know what the optimum pressure is for your vehicle.
This will vary depending on how much weight you are carrying in the vehicle – with more air required when carrying heavy loads or towing a trailer or other vehicle. The range of recommended tyre pressures can be found on a small chart, fixed to the inside wall of the car on the driver’s side.
To find this chart, open the driver’s door of your vehicle and check the sidewall. You will find a chart with icons to depict the number of passengers and bags, with tyre pressure depicted in both PSI and Bar.
Step 2: Set up the Machine
Once you have interpreted the chart inside your vehicle, it’s time to prepare the machine to deliver air to your tyres.
Most machines at UK fuel stations work by tapping a payment card or inserting coins. You then need to set the pressure to that listed on the chart inside your vehicle, using PSI or Bar.
Once you’ve confirmed the optimum pressure, it’s time to fill your tyres with air.
Step 3: Adjusting Your Tyre Pressure
On each tyre, you will find a small nozzle with a cap on it. Unscrew these caps in preparation.
As you move around your vehicle with the pump, fix the gas pipe to each nozzle and let the machine read the tyre’s current rating, before adding more air until it reaches the pre-programmed optimum pressure.
NOTE: If your tyres are over inflated to a pressure beyond that which you enter into the terminal, the gas pipe is also able to remove air until it reaches the correct pressure.
Most machines are fitted with a loud beeping sound that lets you know when your tyres have been adjusted to the correct pressure. This means that, even if you are around the far side of the vehicle and cannot see the screen on the machine, you still know when your tyres are ready to go.
And there you have it! It really is as simple as that.
