When I was younger I raced radio controlled cars on hard packed dirt oval tracks. We did that with whiteout to see the wear pattern and make adjustments from there.

My wife's Caddy's OEM Michelins say max tire pressure 44 psi.

The door placard states something much less.

Tires at MAX PSI often do not get good fuel economy. Try in the 85-90% range. Or so I have heard/been told.

I put 38 psi in the tires this morning finally (been driving the bike & truck lately)...

man, shoulda done that a LONG time ago. Feels like I got brand new power steering, the car doesn't feel as squishy, just feels better. BUT...the ride DID get a bit firmer, but I guess there's always a compromise!

I reset my average mpg meter again. I reset it when I cleaned the MAF sensor about 2 months ago, old mpg was 17.6, this morning was 22.4, pretty good gain. BUT, it USED to be in the 25's, so I'm interested to see if running on tires with air in 'em helps!

For tire pressures, ALWAYS go with the indications ON THE TIRE. The car's advice is only sound as long as the exact same brand and model tire as original is still on the car. Use anything else, follow the tire's inflation instructions.

Tire "maximum pressures" are supposed to be measured cold. A tire with a maximum inflation pressure of 44psi COLD is NOT overinflated if you measure it hot and it registers 50PSI. Pressure increase is well understood and is accounted for in the tire's recomended COLD tire pressure.

Also, if your tire(s) look(s) low, and you measure it, and the gauge readds 25psi (for discussion), and you normally run 30psi, but the air source (gas station) is 10 miles away, proper procedure is to save the pressure reading, noting you want 5psi added.
Drive to the air source, re-check tire pressure, which is now 29PSI, and inflate to 34psi (adding the 5 it was low).
When cold again, it should register very close to your desired 30psi.

And thus you are screwed into having to buy the original tires, or living with fault codes.

Lowrider,

I couldn't disagree more on your perception of tire pressures. Where are you getting your info from?

Again, max tire pressures as stated on the tire are only there so stupid people don't inflate them to 100 psi.

Each vehicle manufacturer determines what is best for each vehicle, regardless of who's tire is on the vehicle.

Again, on my wife's 08 Caddy, for example, the OEM-equipped Michelin Pilots state that the max tire pressure is 44 psi. Cadillac wants them to be set at 35 psi. This situation plays out over every car/light truck that I've ever seen. Put another way, I've NEVER seen a door placard that states to inflate a tire to its maximum limit. For most passenger car/light truck tires that I've seen, that max pressure is usually 38 or 44 psi.

It baffles me how so many people think they can re-engineer their car better than a team of highly-educated engineering teams that have ambulance-chasing lawyers waiting for their opportunity.

Well... some would point to things like this.

http://www.boatingabc.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/414645/1/Love_My_Civic_But.html
http://www.boatingabc.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/419345/Flushing_DexCool.html#Post419345

It's not apples to apples, but some of those engineers have given us some pretty good reasons to question them.

Mike,
Don't confuse the bean-counters with safety engineering.

I have seen many other models with stone holes in condensers.

LOL - I know what you mean. I generally agree that the more complex cars become, the more (unfortunately) we need to stick to what the engineers say. The problem I see is that to the end user, it's often unclear whether the breakdown was in engineering or bean counting, because they unfortunately are no longer independent departments. All they know is, they just dropped $35K on what is supposed to be one of the most state of the art vehicles made, and a month later their entire A/C system has to be replaced at their expense.

Condensers have been "hangin' out" for a great many years and any car can take the hit - but this crop of late model Hondas is suffering an epidemic of them.

Not to wander too far, but anyone with an 01 M/B E320 best not spill any beverage around the center console cupholder. It WILL ruin your Transmission Control Module (which conveniently hides below it out of sight), which WILL ruin your day, to the tune of about $1K....

Yep, there's a GREAT example.