Do you adjust your target tire air pressure according to altitude?
For my vehicles the door stickers and manuals state 32 PSI and there's no mention of adjusting that according to altitude, and TPMS lights at < 32 PSI. However, every time I go to [tire shop chain] for new tires, rotations, and pressure checks, they inflate the tires to 38 PSI and say it's adjusted for altitude (and that they are experts!). Seemed like some years ago they used to inflate the tires to 32 PSI.
I tried searching for adjusting tire pressure according to altitude and didn't find anything definitive to support this. If anything, recommendations seem to be letting pressure OUT at higher altitudes. There's also gauge (relative) pressure and absolute pressure, and that tire pressure gauges measure the former. A tire inflated at sea level still has the same amount of air at altitude, but there's less outside pressure so the tire can expand (just like weather balloons which eventually burst).
I found the following Tire Rack article. It states atmospheric pressure at 5,000 feet is 12.2 PSI, and tire pressure would read 2-3 PSI higher than at sea level. It doesn't explicitly recommend adjusting tire PSI according to altitude. So, a sea level 32 PSI tire would be a bit more than 34.5 PSI around 5,000 feet. Saw a few posts that said don't worry about 2-3 PSI differences, but 6 PSI is substantial, and after driving a while I even measured 40 PSI.
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=167
I also looked thru Four Wheeler's Bible, which discusses airing down but also doesn't mention adjusting tire pressure according to altitude.
For my vehicles the door stickers and manuals state 32 PSI and there's no mention of adjusting that according to altitude, and TPMS lights at < 32 PSI. However, every time I go to [tire shop chain] for new tires, rotations, and pressure checks, they inflate the tires to 38 PSI and say it's adjusted for altitude (and that they are experts!). Seemed like some years ago they used to inflate the tires to 32 PSI.
I tried searching for adjusting tire pressure according to altitude and didn't find anything definitive to support this. If anything, recommendations seem to be letting pressure OUT at higher altitudes. There's also gauge (relative) pressure and absolute pressure, and that tire pressure gauges measure the former. A tire inflated at sea level still has the same amount of air at altitude, but there's less outside pressure so the tire can expand (just like weather balloons which eventually burst).
I found the following Tire Rack article. It states atmospheric pressure at 5,000 feet is 12.2 PSI, and tire pressure would read 2-3 PSI higher than at sea level. It doesn't explicitly recommend adjusting tire PSI according to altitude. So, a sea level 32 PSI tire would be a bit more than 34.5 PSI around 5,000 feet. Saw a few posts that said don't worry about 2-3 PSI differences, but 6 PSI is substantial, and after driving a while I even measured 40 PSI.
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=167
I also looked thru Four Wheeler's Bible, which discusses airing down but also doesn't mention adjusting tire pressure according to altitude.
