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I agree with jmiked that 36/36 is too hard/high.
I can assure you that vaughn is striving for a Darwin award (or at least less rice comfort and lower tire tread life) with his crazy high settings!
If there's no label inside your car's fuel filler door there's something amiss...
The station wagons came with much higher recommendations for the rear than did the sedans. They're expected to carry a higher (literally and figuratively) load back there, and they have a different rear suspension. Volvo thus recommended a maximum of 41 in the rear, as I vaguely recall.
In '95, there was no difference in the recommended pressures between my Turbo (sedan) and the T5-R (sedan). Further, mine came with the T5-R = Sport suspension, though I eventually succombed to its blows and went with softer springs and progressive dampers. http://davespeed.tripod.com/sprtsusp.htm
In coming to grips with the too-hard suspension, I tried all sorts of tire pressures. I spoke with a Michelin engineer, who advised me that the tires (sidewalls) could not protect themselves with less than 28 psi.
BTW, for a FWD sedan to perform at its best, first of all it's not fully loaded. With that caveat, you definitely want less pressure in the rears than in the fronts, which are carrying most of the weight.
This F-R difference typically ranges from 2 psi to 6 psi.
My car's sticker says 36/36 "for economy". This appears on the predominant top row. IMHO, this is the recommended "autocrossing with the whole family and dog aboard" setting. It also proves optimal for an auto manufacturer who's trying to squeeze by with the absolute higest possible EPA fuel mileage rating (ie, the last 0.1 mpg; tire mileage and ride comfort be damned)! It is not well-related to the real world.
By looking a few lines further down the anti-rectilinear chart non-columns of my car's label, it says that for 2 people in front and 1 in the rear, that 32 psi front and 29 psi rear is recommended. (So, obviously, for just the driver aboard, that's more than enough.)
And after having screwed around with different (winter) wheels/tires (not this year, though; it's a long story...) and suspensions and other tires of varying characteristics, I keep coming back to Volvo's recommended 32(-33)/29(-30) psi settings. With those pressures I got over 30K mi out of each of my 2 (1 orig, then 2nd) set of Michelin 205/50-16 MXMs.
If I didn't have daily 30 degree temperature (not to mention big elevation) swings here, and thus large normal swings in tire pressures, I'd stick closer to the 32/29 and not add most of the (+1) "margin" I mentioned in the previous paragraph: 32/29 is my goal; I just prefer the pressure to be a little high than a little low, 'cuz the Bilsteins get "thuddy" if the tires fall below 32/29 (ie, if the tires aren't bouncing sharply enough to smack the dampers into their low-damping realm):
http://davespeed.tripod.com/tirepress.htm
- Dave; '95 854T, 147K mi; 205/50-16 Goodyear Eagle GS-D3s
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