VW technicians have done hundreds of thousands of miles testing each of their cars. This Touareg is the third development remember, so the development miles now run into millions. The guys in white coats have changed, tweaked and tuned everything from the way the exhaust sounds to the right tyre pressures.

Your dealer hasn't.

Who do you think might know what they are talking about?:-lll

 

I'd go with the factory recommendation too.

High pressures do help fuel economy, but they don't help ride, traction and tear wear.

Careful driving will ease tyre wear

 

Dealers set tire pressure at delivery

I have been told that the Touaregs are shipped from the factory with regular air in the tires and that evacuating the air and refilling tires with nitrogen is part of the VW dealer prep process. ( Sounds nutty to me unless some inane law in Germany doesn't allow filling tires with nitrogen there ? )

Thus it is the dealers who are setting the tire pressures at 40 pounds or more all around thus ignoring their own manufacturers recommendations.

I bought my 2011 Sport TDI in Scottsdale Arizona. A friend bought his 2011 LUX TDI in Maine or Massachusetts. Both were delivered with 44 lbs of pressure in all four tires.

Just yesterday I readjusted my tire pressures to 35 front and 40 rear ( hedging my bets ) using a reliable tire gauge to verify what the TMS was telling me. Both before and after, the tire gauge and the TMS were in perfect agreement.

Haven't done any signicant driving yet to see if I notice a difference.

 

I have been told that the Touaregs are shipped from the factory with regular air in the tires and that evacuating the air and refilling tires with nitrogen is part of the VW dealer prep process. ( Sounds nutty to me unless some inane law in Germany doesn't allow filling tires with nitrogen there ? )
...

I don't think that they are doing this at my dealers, unless they didn't change the caps on the valve stems. I think that most places that put nitrogen in, change the caps to green, so that you know that they have nitrogen in them.

...

Thus it is the dealers who are setting the tire pressures at 40 pounds or more all around thus ignoring their own manufacturers recommendations.
...

My tires had 52 PSI on all four corners when I took it home! I have since lowered them to 38 fronts and 42 rears, and as stated earlier the VW recommended is 33 front and 38 rear. My TPMS also seems to be very accurate when checked against a tire guage...

 

Nitrogen Valve Stem Caps

Yes, the ones my dealer installed have a "N" on them.

There is also a prominent label that was added on the driver door jamb.

 

My 2011 TDI Sport was delivered with 51 lbs. 51 lbs. is the pressure for the spare when inflated. I assumed someone read the label in the door jam and saw 51 and put 51 in all the tires. I lowered it to 40. With the tire monitors shouldn't all the tires be the same? I thought if 1 tire was 5 lbs off from the others it would send a message to the monitor?

 

Tire Monitor System

Haven't heard the 5 lb differential triggering a warning idea before. Doesn't seem logical since VW specifies 33 front and 38 rear ( already a 5 lb differential ) The 33/38 settings are even emphasized by those numbers appearing between the front and rear wheels on the TMS display screen.
I am going to try 35 front and 40 rear for a while.

 

My 2010 TDI with 20" factory wheels calls for 39 front and 49 rear. Pirelli Scorpion tires.

 

Mine were grossly over-inflated when my car was delivered too. The OE Goodyear tires themselves are imprinted with a warning not to exceed 50 psi, yet the TPMS said all four (cold) had more than that already. I wrote it off to some dropout hired by the service department who wasn't told to inflate tires as specified by the label on the driver's door collumn.

But it's important to RE-set the pressure on cold tires. I purchased an inexpensive digital gauge to replace my generally inaccurate analog gauge, and adjusted to 33 front/38 rear after the car had set in the garage overnight, and fine tuned until the TPMS agreed to within +/- 0.5 psi per corner. Doing it to cold tires is important, because - within 20 miles of driving - the TPMS was at 36/41 and holding.

Pretty dramatic too - with tire pressure displayed on the instrument panel - to drive through a rain shower. Rain soon cools off the road, which soon cools off the tires. All the way back to the original 33/38 actually, and rather quickly at that. I knew about adjusting air pressure for the winter/summer/winter transitions, but never before delved into it any deeper than that.

Nitrogen by the way, is used as one (expensive) way to circumvent the seasonal TPMS alarm complaints. The physical properties of nitrogen significantly reduce the expansion/contraction phenomenon experienced with just plain old "air".

//greg//

 

No offence to any other ideas on here, but the tire pressures which are recomended by the dealers primarily are given to enhance comfort and ride of the vehicle with a particular tire size. If you choose to run higher pressures, (obviously lower than the max on the sidewall), the only side effects you'll have are a bumpier ride and better fuel economy. The tires have been tested by the manufacturer of the tire and the max pressure is given on the sidewall, stay within that and you'll be fine. I ran 2 psi under max sidewall pressures on my hydro edge tires on my bug and ran those tires for nearly 300,000 km (on the same set). It wont increase wear unless your alignment is significantely off. Just make sure not to go over the manufacturer's recomended presssures. I'm personally running my 20' goodyear tires at 45/45 and maybe that's where i'm getting my super fuel economy from. As for tire wear, they still look new after 20,000 km.