Just bought a 2001 RV-4. Checked air pressure when I got home and both tires were 22 psig. My Colt tailwheel used to do well @ 26 psig. However, read in POH on line that tire pressure should be 42-44 psig cold. What gives? What's "official"?
20foxtrot
hmm. Your first post. Welcome.
A search of tire pressure will yield you many many results here.
First. Nothing is official.
Next, tire pressure for your -4 is a function of a few things.
1. Your weight
2. Your desire to have more or less wheel shake
3. You desire to replace the air. (adding more to reduce the # of times you refill)
4. Tire wear.
Not sure about the -4, but I'm guessing it's like most other tires out there...you'll want to keep it at least in the low 30's. I set mine around 35 or so. I don't recall what the max pressure is, however, so make that a consideration.
I start off at 30 psi on my RV-6 and when it drops below about 20 it gets sort of hard to pull out of the hangar. At that point it goes back to 30. 30 to 20 takes about a year. The ease of pulling is the main difference I notice at the different pressures but another difference is that at 30 I have to use more braking to keep the taxi speed reasonable.
Okay. Sounds like 20 to 30 psig is a reasonable range to maintain as I was doing with the Colt TW. I'll take into consideration other "factors" pointed out by Kahuna and adjust accordingly.
Thanks!
We use 24-27 PSI in our -4. No shimmy, reasonable taxi speed with fixed pitch O-320, good wear, easy enough to push and pull into and out of the hangar.
I start of at 30 psi on my RV-6 and when it drops below about 20 it gets sort of hard to pull out of the hangar. At that point it goes back to 30. 30 to 20 takes about a year. The ease of pulling is the main difference I notice at the different pressures but another difference is that at 30 I have to use more braking to keep the taxi speed reasonable.
I've had great luck with running my RV-4 tires at 32 PSI. It seems to be a nice compromise by allowing easy rolling in and out of the hangar and still soft enough to make most landings look and feel great...haha!
I would experiment with different pressures and see which works best for you for landing and gound handling. It really comes down to personal preference mostly. The higher pressure you use, the better your tire wear is going to be.
I would just caution you not to get the pressure too low. A number of us have had tires go flat on landing (me included) and I attribute it to the tire pressure being too low and the tire rotating on the rim and pinching the tube.
I tried most pressures both high (50# too much skidding) and low(25# too hard to move on soft ground, more wear ) and have settled in at 40#....seems to be a good pressure... for me at least...
Hi Gene (20F),
After a couple of RV hours and most of my landings off road I used 30 PSI in my 500X5's for all around good performance.
However comma, the larger 380X150X5 has become my favorite after almost 300 hours on my Rocket thanks to Steve Sampson's blog.http://gikonfinsh.blogspot.com/
The 380's are far superior on soft turf or gravel, fit under the stock Van's PR pants and improve handling on asphalt as well. They are the perfect tire for the HR2, I run 40 PSI in them. My dos centavos.
