It may sound obvious but tyres are an extremely important part of your car and, as such, they need regular check-ups to ensure they are road legal, safe and fully pumped with air. If you’d like more information on what to check on your tyres and how to go about it, you can read our handy top three tyre checks guide.
When it comes to tyre pressure, not everyone is comfortable with pumping them up, whether this be at home or at your local petrol station. Here’s our handy step-by-step guide on getting them pumped!
1. Before you start, check what the correct pressure for your vehicle is. This can be found in your car’s manual, inside the fuel filling cap or online if you are out and stuck without your manual.
2. Once you know the correct pressure (bear in mind this may differ between front and rear wheel tyres), pull your car up as close as possible to the pump (easy if you are using one at home!) and turn off your engine.
3. Enter the correct pressure into the machine by using the plus or minus buttons next to the display until the correct number is reached.
4. It’s a good idea to remove all the valve caps from all of the tyres before you start to avoid having to fiddle with them as your time counts down on the machine if you are at a forecourt.
5. At the petrol station enter the correct amount of change into the machine. You will probably need between five and ten minutes to do all four tyres so take lots of change just in case!
6. Once ready to go, connect the hose to the valve on your tyre. Don’t panic if you hear air leaving the tyres as you connect, keep tweaking the position of the pump nozzle and eventually you will hear the air going into the tyre.
7. Once the optimum pressure has been reached the machine will beep at you to let you know. Keep an eye on the display just in case you are using one that is less sophisticated. Once the pressure number on screen reaches where it should be, stop and disconnect the nozzle.
8. Repeat this process with all four tyres and ensure you put the valve caps back on before returning the pump hose back to its holster and you’re good to go!
