Airing Down Is Free Traction. Deflators Make It Fast.
The cheapest upgrade on the truck
Before you buy tires, before you buy a locker, before you touch the suspension — air down. Dropping from a highway pressure in the low-to-mid thirties to trail pressure increases your tire's contact patch by roughly 30 to 50 percent. That is a large traction gain for zero dollars.
It also transforms ride quality. A truck at trail pressure absorbs washboard and rock edges that a truck at highway pressure transmits straight into the chassis and your spine.
Nothing else you can do to a 2nd gen 4Runner delivers that much improvement for free, which is why experienced wheelers do it every single time and newcomers usually do not.
What pressure to actually run
General guidance from people who test this: 12 to 25 psi is a reasonable working range without beadlock wheels, with most trail use landing around 15 to 20. Soft sand goes lower, sometimes into the 8 to 12 range, because flotation is the whole game there.
The right method is to start higher and work down. Air to 20, drive the section, and if you want more compliance take a few more pounds out. You learn your truck's number quickly.
Go too low without beadlocks and you risk unseating a bead, which turns a good day into a recovery. Respect that limit and airing down is entirely safe.
And plan the return trip before you leave the pavement — see our onboard air guide. Airing down without a way back up is how people end up driving forty miles at 15 psi and ruining a set of tires.
Why deflators instead of a valve stem
You can let air out by pressing the valve core with a key. It works, it is free, and it is slow, imprecise, and irritating on cold mornings — and you have to keep stopping to check a gauge.
Rapid deflators thread onto the stem, drop pressure quickly, and let you watch the gauge as it happens so you hit the number you meant to hit. Four tires in a couple of minutes rather than fifteen.
Ours live in a small kit with a built-in gauge that fits in the glovebox. It is the least expensive thing in our catalog and, per dollar, quite possibly the most useful.
