UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

I know that this topic has been "done to death" on the forum and I've read through quite a few of the posts. But I thought that I would just tell my story.

The car has had a very slight vibration coming up through the steering wheel for a while now and had started recently to pull ever so slightly to the left (IE. nearside) when up to speed. So even though the tyre did not seem too bad, I thought it time to get them looked at and probably replaced (car has done around 12.5k miles) on the stock Continental rubber.

Went to Kwik fit in Dumfries, as I've used them before and found them pretty reasonable etc.
The first thing that the tyre fitter commented on, was the very high pressures in the front tyres. And this he said "in his opinion" is why while the centre part of the tyre only had around 2mm, while the outside (both sides) was still showing a good 4mm+
And subsequently recommended dropping them to something like 36psi front/back. Looking at the old tyres off the car, I can't really disagree with him here!

So new Pilot Sport 5's fitted to the front and a full 4xwheel alignment check done. Subsequently showing the toe was out by a fair bit on both sides. So I got them to adjust this as well.

Now no vibration through the steering wheel and the car tracks straight and true.

In the end I decided on 38psi front and 36psi at the back.

So a happy ending for me.

Can't really understand why VW recommend such high pressures myself. I know it has a reasonably heavy engine in the front but even so! It's not like the tyres are "that" low a profile.

Always gone for 36 (front) and 33 (back) and that's kept things in good stead going on 5 years! I very rarely have any passengers in the back of the car. Pretty sure that was a recommendation from 'monkeyhanger' on this forum.

You're right though, the recommended pressure's are way too high.

MikeDO wrote: Fri Mar 07, 2025 5:06 pm Can't really understand why VW recommend such high pressures myself. I know it has a reasonably heavy engine in the front but even so! It's not like the tyres are "that" low a profile.

It’ll be primarily for environmental reasons; high tyre pressures = lower rolling resistance, enabling VW to quote better CO2 emissions and fuel consumption figures.

S_94 wrote: Fri Mar 07, 2025 6:02 pm Always gone for 36 (front) and 33 (back) and that's kept things in good stead going on 5 years! I very rarely have any passengers in the back of the car. Pretty sure that was a recommendation from 'monkeyhanger' on this forum.

You're right though, the recommended pressure's are way too high.

I used to run my GTI+ with the tyre pressures around 3-4 psi lower than VW’s recommended pressures.

Forgot to mention that my car has the 18inch wheel and tyre combo.