I got this whole "tire pressure" question from reading a few articles. This particular one was from Grassroots Motorsports where a guy lost one tire only, and when he got to the dealer, they told him to replace all 4 tires. They went into detail about tire diameter and tread depth and stuff and about how you can over-use and potentially hurt your AWD system (they mentioned a quick note about how it's important to keep tire pressures constant or something).

I guess I'm just wondering if adjusting tire pressure b/w front and rear tires will cause damage like running a tire with different tread depth than the other tires on the Impreza.

 

In theory, that is an interesting idea. But in practice, i doubt that a couple of PSI difference between front and back tires is going to damage your Impreza AWD system. If anything, the different tire pressures are intended to counteract the difference in front and back weighting of the car, helping to equalize the contact patches (diameters, too) of all tires. Of course, if the tires are radically underinflated or overinflated, that may be another issue.

Pretty sure this post will get moved to another forum.

Do you find yourself needing to have something to worry about?

 

meh, you might say that

I've just been playing around with tire pressures on another car and I find that it's such an awesome "free" mod. Then I remembered the article and I kinda put two and two together.

Just wanted to make sure, is all. Don't want diffs blowing up.

 

^^^

If anything, that's the only concern you should have. I would say that the characteristic of the car will be affected. My front left tire was underflated couple of days ago on my 05 STi. I noticed the car would slightly pull to left when accelerating in highways speeds. I also noticed the steering wheel must be tilted to left. But applied proper PSI on that tire fixed it and brought it back to its original state.

It's too extreme to say that the AWD system will be damaged just for the slight differences in PSI on each tires.

 

"I've just been playing around with tire pressures on another car and I find that it's such an awesome "free" mod."


I couldn't agree with you more, dugrant. Finding that threshold, or "sweet spot" where your car and tires start to work at their peak has some amazing results. I started with the default 35 PSI (cold) on my Kumho MXs and found that something that would give me about 40-41PSI warm made a huge difference. It was if I had installed a stiffer suspension. Getting even tire wear, too. Good luck on your experimentation.

 

just gotta be careful of over inflating the rear.
that's asking for some nice spins......

 

38f/36r

long trips - 40f/38r

thats what i uyse and no problems with 50,000 miles just make sure u keep on it, i check mine once a week, and twice a week in the summer since its hotter