Ok, this is probably a dumb question, but outside of extreme circumstances (i.e. tire is visibly low almost flat looking), do people who are not car enthusiasts top up their tires with air on a regular basis?
I've been driving cars for 20 years and I don't think I've ever put air in my tires. I mean I'd get my oil changed every 6-7 months and they'd always check the tire pressure so maybe they were topping them up if a bit low, so maybe that was why. I also never had a working tire pressure sensor in a car before to alert me there was any problem.
Until my new car. Was driving it today and tire pressure light went off so my first thought was shit I got a flat from some debris on the road somewhere. I mean I just bought the car at the end of February, how can it already have maintenance issues? Wtf! Then I pulled over and looked it up and I could actually see the PSI on all 4 of my tires and they were identical at 37 PSI. I figured it's not like you'd get a leak in 4 tires at once, so I looked it up and apparently tires lose about 1 PSI a month and then when it gets colder about 1 PSI per 10F drop and on average you're supposed to top off your tires about every six months.
My tires are 42 PSI cold recommended, and was driving hot for about an hour when I checked them and they were 37 PSI. It's also dropped 20F from in the 90s for the last 3-4 months to 60-70s in the last couple of days here, so that probably affected it a bit.
Waiting for the tires to cool down now to get a cold reading. But it seems like cold -> hot is usually about 3 PSI? So maybe they're down to about 34 PSI, I'll see.
Anyhow I guess I'll go put air in the tires this week and get them back to 42 PSI. It's just weird because 20+ years of driving and I never realized this was a regular maintenance thing. I always thought it was something you did when you had tire problems.