Tyre pressures Mini Cooper S

[purple haze]

Does anyone else find the recommended tyre pressures too high? My wife's 2018 Cooper S is on 17 inch 205/45 tyres and even on a light load the recommended pressures are 44 front, 41 rear. I've reduced that to 33 front, 30 rear and the ride quality is vastly improved. My wife is not a fast driver, doesn't do track days, and is more impressed with having a comfortable ride rather than going round corners more quickly. Any views?

[CoolHands]

Sounds fine to me. All Ford models and the like back in the 80s were 26psi. The only reason they’ve gone up is because of thin ratios and mpg as far as I can tell.

[Weejus]

On my GP3 I run the pressures at 35 psi on the fronts and 31 psi on the rears, the ride is much more compliant than when running with the pressures the plaque on the door jamb says, 41 or 39 I recall but the front just bounces along the road at those pressures, I can never really understand why they recommended such a high pressure tbh...!!!

[lj04]

I would like to set my pressures lower. How do you manage that without the low pressure warning coming on?

[cuprabob]

lj04 said:

I would like to set my pressures lower. How do you manage that without the low pressure warning coming on?

Just reset the TPMS when you have adjusted the pressures to what you want. It doesn't measure actual pressure in each tyre but detects a drop in pressure by utilising the ABS wheel speed sensors.

[purple haze]

I'm beginning to get really cross with the tyre pressure monitoring system on the Mini. Today my wife told me it has gone off again without (of course ) specifying which tyre (or tyres) were losing pressure. I performed the tyre reset procedure and all 4 tyres were registered at losing about 3lb. Then I measured the pressure for the tyres using my trusty old-fashioned tyre gauge with which I have always set the pressures. It measured them at precisely the same pressure at which I had originally set them - i.e. none of them had lost pressure. So I have zero confidence in the TPMS on this Mini.

Any one else have a similar problem?

[purple haze]

I'm beginning to get really cross with the tyre pressure monitoring system on the Mini. Today my wife told me it has gone off again without (of course ) specifying which tyre (or tyres) were losing pressure. I performed the tyre reset procedure and all 4 tyres were registered at losing about 3lb. Then I measured the pressure for the tyres using my trusty old-fashioned tyre gauge with which I have always set the pressures. It measured them at precisely the same pressure at which I had originally set them - i.e. none of them had lost pressure. So I have zero confidence in the TPMS on this Mini.

Any one else have a similar problem?

[Armitage.Shanks]

purple haze said:

I'm beginning to get really cross with the tyre pressure monitoring system on the Mini. Today my wife told me it has gone off again without (of course ) specifying which tyre (or tyres) were losing pressure. I performed the tyre reset procedure and all 4 tyres were registered at losing about 3lb. Then I measured the pressure for the tyres using my trusty old-fashioned tyre gauge with which I have always set the pressures. It measured them at precisely the same pressure at which I had originally set them - i.e. none of them had lost pressure. So I have zero confidence in the TPMS on this Mini.

Any one else have a similar problem?

I get 'Check tyre pressures' time to time and and like yours it doesn't specify a particular tyre but usually I will have one that has dropped a few psi. You need to manually call up the display that shows all four tyres which will identify the culprit. That said I've never had the TPMS match what my trusty gauge tells me. TPMS reads lower than manual measurement.

The only time I've had TPMS direct me to a wheel was when I got a puncture with sudden pressure loss. From memory it also came up in the speedo display