Most Ford Fiestas need 2.1 to 2.3 bar (30 to 33 psi) in the front tyres and 1.8 bar (26 psi) in the rear for everyday driving. That rear figure surprises people. A lot of quick-reference charts put the back tyres at 30 psi or more, which is noticeably higher than Ford asks for on most Fiestas.

The exact number for your car comes down to four things: the generation, the tyre size, the engine and gearbox, and how much you're carrying. The table below will get you close in a few seconds. The rest of this guide gets you the exact figure, shows you how to set it properly, and covers what to do when the warning light refuses to go out.

Ford Fiesta Tyre Pressure at a Glance

These are petrol, manual-gearbox figures for a lightly loaded car. Diesels and automatics often want more air at the front, and a full car needs a lot more at the back. Both are covered further down.

One thing before you reach for the air line: the sticker on your door pillar is the final word. It lists the pressures for the exact tyres your Fiesta was built with.

What Tyre Pressure Should a Ford Fiesta Have?

A Ford Fiesta should run about 2.1 to 2.3 bar (30 to 33 psi) at the front and 1.8 bar (26 psi) at the rear with one or two people on board. The Fiesta ST is the exception at 2.5 bar (36 psi) front. Set the pressures with the tyres cold.

Every figure here comes from Ford's handbook tables, the same source as the door sticker. When two Fiestas need different pressures, it's because of the tyre, the engine or the load.

Why the front and back pressures are different

The engine and gearbox sit over the front axle, so the front tyres carry more of the car's weight. They also steer and handle most of the braking. That's why Ford asks for more air up front on nearly every Fiesta.

The gap is bigger than you might guess. A Mk8 1.0 EcoBoost on 16-inch wheels wants 2.3 bar (33 psi) front and 1.8 bar (26 psi) rear, a full 7 psi apart. Fill all four to the same number and you end up with a front end that's slightly soft and a rear that's harder than it should be. That's enough to change how the car balances in corners, nudging it towards understeer.

There are two exceptions worth knowing. The Mk7 on 195/60 R15 tyres runs 2.1 bar (31 psi) on all four corners, and the Fiesta ST has its own figures entirely.

Normal load vs full load

Ford gives two sets of numbers. Normal load is everyday driving with a light load. Full load is the car with most seats taken and luggage in the boot.

Almost all of the change happens at the back, because that's where the extra weight goes. On a Mk7 with 195/50 R15 tyres, the rear jumps from 1.8 bar (26 psi) to 3.2 bar (46 psi) at full load. It looks like a misprint the first time you see it. It isn't. Just remember to let the rears back down once the car's been unloaded.

PSI, bar and kPa

Most UK forecourt machines and gauges show both psi and bar, and Ford's handbooks print bar first with psi in brackets. Use whichever your gauge reads in. The only real mistake is mixing the two up.

If you've seen 2.1 bar listed as 30 psi in one place and 31 psi in another, that's just rounding. It works out at 30.5 psi, so either is fine.

Ford Fiesta Tyre Pressure Chart by Year

Look up your Fiesta's year below for its usual normal-load pressures. Bought a 2008 or 2017 car? Those years straddle two generations, so use the reg plate check further down to be sure which one you've got.

All figures are for petrol models with a manual gearbox. Diesel and automatic versions usually run a higher front pressure, and you'll find those details, along with full-load figures, in the generation tables below.

Mk6 Fiesta (2002 to 2008)

The Mk6 mostly rolled on 14-inch steels or 15-inch alloys. Petrol pressures are below. If yours is a 1.4 or 1.6 TDCi diesel, bump the front up to 2.3 bar (33 psi) to carry the heavier engine.

Mk7 Fiesta (2008 to 2017)

There are more Mk7s on UK roads than any other Fiesta, and this table covers both the original car and the 2013 facelift. The 1.6 TDCi diesel needs 2.3 bar (33 psi) at the front on 14, 15 and 16-inch tyres.

Mk8 Fiesta (2017 to 2023)

With the Mk8, Ford moved to bigger wheels as standard and got a lot more specific about pressures. The gearbox now makes a difference, and so does the type of tyre. These figures are for the 1.0 EcoBoost and 1.1 petrol with a manual gearbox, on summer tyres.

A few things shift those numbers on a Mk8. If you drive an automatic or the 1.5 diesel, the front goes up to 2.6 bar (38 psi) on 195/60 R15 and 195/55 R16 87V tyres. Fit winter or all-season tyres to 15 or 16-inch wheels on a manual car and the front often drops to 2.1 bar (30 psi). And the speed rating matters too: a 195/55 R16 87H tyre wants 2.4 bar (35 psi) front and 2.1 bar (30 psi) rear, not the 87V figures above.

That last one surprises most people. Two tyres of exactly the same size can carry different Ford pressures, which is the best argument there is for checking your own door sticker.

Not sure which Fiesta you have? Check the reg plate

The two numbers on a UK plate show when the car was first registered. Plates issued from March use the year itself (13 means 2013). Plates issued from September add 50 to it (63 means late 2013).

Cars from a changeover period, especially 58 and 17 plates, could be either generation. The free DVLA vehicle check on GOV.UK shows when your car was first registered. Or just look at the back of the car: the Mk8's rear lights run horizontally and wrap round onto the sides, while the Mk7's sit upright.

Tyre Pressure by Fiesta Model and Engine

On a Fiesta, the trim level doesn't decide the tyre pressure. The tyre size, engine and gearbox do. Trim only matters because it decides which wheels the car came with.

Put a Zetec and a Titanium on the same tyres with the same engine and they need exactly the same pressures. So use the trim to work out the tyre size, then check the tables above.

Zetec, Titanium, Style and Trend

These are the trims you see everywhere, and most of them sit on 15 or 16-inch wheels. A Mk7 Zetec or Titanium on 195/50 R15 tyres needs 2.1 bar (31 psi) front and 1.8 bar (26 psi) rear. The facelifted Mk7 Zetec usually wears 195/55 R15 tyres at 2.1 bar (30 psi) front and the same 1.8 bar (26 psi) rear.

Move up to a Mk8 Zetec, Titanium or Trend on 195/55 R16 tyres and the front goes to 2.3 bar (33 psi) with a manual gearbox. The rear stays at 1.8 bar (26 psi). Mk8 cars on 205/45 R17 tyres use the same pair of figures.

ST-Line

ST-Line is about the look rather than extra performance. It arrived towards the end of the Mk7's run and became one of the Mk8's best sellers, usually on 17-inch alloys with 205/45 R17 tyres.

For a manual Mk8 ST-Line on 205/45 R17 88Y tyres, set 2.3 bar (33 psi) front and 1.8 bar (26 psi) rear. Some 205/45 R17 summer tyres carry an 88V rating and need 2.5 bar (36 psi) up front instead, so it's worth reading the sidewall before you set them. If your ST-Line has been moved onto 18-inch wheels, use the 205/40 R18 figures.

Fiesta ST

The ST gets its own numbers because of its wider, lower-profile tyres and firmer suspension. The Mk8 ST (2018 to 2023, 1.5 EcoBoost) runs:

The Mk7 ST (2013 to 2017, 1.6 EcoBoost) runs on 205/40 R17 tyres. It was built in much smaller numbers and fewer handbook tables are around, so take your figures straight from the sticker on the car.

1.0 EcoBoost, diesel, automatic and hybrid

The 1.0 EcoBoost doesn't need a pressure of its own. It shares figures with any other petrol Fiesta on the same tyre. Three things do move the numbers.

The gearbox is the first. On the Mk8, automatics need 2.6 bar (38 psi) at the front on 15 and 16-inch tyres, compared with 2.3 bar (33 psi) for a manual. Diesels are the second: the 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 TDCi engines weigh more, so they usually need a higher front pressure than the petrol equivalent. The third is the 48-volt mild hybrid (mHEV), which Ford's 2020 to 2023 tables don't list separately. Use the 1.0 EcoBoost figures for your gearbox and tyre size.

Tyre Pressure by Tyre Size

Know your tyre size and you're most of the way there. It's moulded into the sidewall of every tyre on the car.

195/55 R15 and 195/50 R15

These are the two sizes Fiesta owners search for most, and both mainly belong to the Mk7. The 195/55 R15, common on the 2013 to 2017 facelift, runs 2.1 bar (30 psi) front and 1.8 bar (26 psi) rear. The 195/50 R15, fitted to plenty of Mk6s and earlier Mk7s, runs 2.1 bar (31 psi) front and 1.8 bar (26 psi) rear, rising to 2.4 bar (35 psi) front and 3.2 bar (46 psi) rear at full load.

16, 17 and 18-inch wheels

Bigger wheels mean lower-profile tyres, with less rubber and air between the rim and the road. Ford compensates with a slightly higher front pressure on most of these sizes.

Figures for manual petrol models. The Fiesta ST has its own table above.

How to read the size on your tyre

Take 205/45 R17 88Y XL as an example. The 205 is the width in millimetres. The 45 is the sidewall height, as a percentage of that width. R means radial, and 17 is the wheel diameter in inches.

The last part is the bit people skip. 88 is the load index, which tells you how much weight the tyre can carry. Y is the speed rating, and XL means extra load, a reinforced tyre.

On the Mk8 especially, the load index and speed rating can change Ford's recommended pressure. If your tyres have been replaced with a different rating from the originals, the sticker might not match exactly. A decent tyre fitter will set the pressure for the tyre that's actually on the car.

Where to Find the Tyre Pressure on Your Fiesta

The exact pressures for your car are printed on a sticker on the door pillar, the bit of bodywork you see when a front door is open. It lists every tyre size Ford approved for your Fiesta, with both normal and full-load figures.

On the Mk8, it's usually on the driver's side. On Mk6 and Mk7 Fiestas it's often on the passenger side (the nearside on a UK car), low down near the bottom hinge, which is why so many owners never find it. If it isn't on one side, try the other. Cars that have had bodywork or a respray sometimes lose it altogether.

No sticker? The owner's handbook has the same table, and Ford UK keeps digital owner manuals for most models, searchable by model and year. Online charts like this one make a good second check. The sticker and the handbook, though, were written for your exact car.

How to Check Tyre Pressure on a Ford Fiesta

A full check takes about five minutes with a gauge or a forecourt air machine. If you remember only one thing, make it this: check the tyres cold.

What you need

A tyre pressure gauge is the main thing. Digital ones cost very little and are much easier to read than the old pencil type. For air, most UK petrol stations have a machine, and many let you dial in a target pressure and fill to it automatically. If you'd rather check at home, a 12-volt compressor that plugs into the car does the same job.

Forecourt gauges get knocked about, and they aren't always accurate. If a reading looks off, check it against your own gauge.

Checking and adjusting, step by step

1. Park on level ground with the tyres cold.

2. Unscrew the valve cap and put it somewhere you won't lose it.

3. Press the gauge or air line firmly onto the valve until the hiss stops.

4. Read the pressure and compare it with the figure for that axle.

5. Add air to bring it up, or press the pin in the middle of the valve to let a little out.

6. Check again, then put the cap back on.

7. Do the same on the other three tyres.

8. On a Fiesta from late 2014 onwards, reset the tyre pressure monitor (covered in the next section).

Why cold tyres matter

Tyres warm up as you drive, and warm air takes up more room, so the reading creeps up. A tyre that looks spot on when it's hot can be under-inflated once it cools down.

"Cold" means the car's been parked for a couple of hours, or driven no more than a mile or two at low speed. If you have to top up at a petrol station after a longer drive, don't let any air out. Bring the tyres up to the target and check them again later once they've cooled.

How often to check

Once a month is a sensible habit, plus before any long motorway run or a trip with a full car. Tyres lose a little air over time even when nothing's wrong, and a few psi is impossible to spot by eye.

If one tyre keeps going down faster than the rest, you've probably got a slow puncture or a leaky valve. Get it looked at rather than topping it up every week.

What about the spare?

Plenty of Fiestas came with a tyre repair kit rather than a spare wheel. If your Mk6 or Mk7 does have a space-saver, Ford sets it at 3.0 bar (44 psi), far higher than the road tyres. It's also limited to 50 mph, so treat it as a get-you-home wheel and swap it for a proper tyre as soon as you can.

Ford Fiesta Tyre Pressure Warning Light: What It Means and How to Reset It

The tyre pressure warning light is an amber symbol shaped like a tyre cross-section, with an exclamation mark in the middle. On a Fiesta, it means the car thinks at least one tyre has lost pressure. Check all four with a gauge before you drive any distance.

Every new car sold in the UK from November 2014 had to have a tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), so any Fiesta registered after that has one. Some earlier Mk7s do too.

How the Fiesta's system works

Most Fiestas don't have sensors inside the wheels. Instead, Ford uses what it calls a Deflation Detection System, which works off the ABS wheel-speed sensors. A tyre that's lost air has a slightly smaller rolling diameter, so it spins a touch faster than the others. The system notices the difference and puts the light on.

That has two practical consequences. First, it can't tell you which tyre is low, so you have to check all four. Second, it learns whatever pressures are in the tyres when you reset it. Reset it with a soft tyre and it'll treat that as normal. Set the correct pressures first, every time, then reset.

Because the system compares the tyres with each other, it can also be slow to notice when all four drop together, which is exactly what happens in a cold snap. It's a good reason not to rely on the light alone.

Why the light comes on

The usual cause is a genuine loss of pressure, often a slow puncture or a leaking valve. A sharp overnight frost can do it too, by pulling all four tyres down at once. It'll also come on if you've adjusted the pressures or changed a tyre and haven't reset the system, or if new tyres or different wheels have changed the rolling diameter.

If the display shows a message about a tyre monitoring fault rather than low pressure, the problem lies with the system, not the tyres.

How to reset the TPMS on a Ford Fiesta

On most Mk7 facelift and Mk8 Fiestas, you reset it through the instrument display using the steering wheel buttons:

1. Inflate all four tyres to the correct cold pressures.

2. Switch the ignition on, with the car stationary.

3. Open the menu in the instrument display and go to Settings.

4. Scroll to Tyre Monitoring and press OK.

5. Press and hold OK until a Tyre Pressure Reset message appears.

6. Drive as normal. The system needs a bit of driving to learn the new baseline.

The menu wording varies a little between model years. If yours looks different, the handbook has the exact steps.

When the light points to something more serious

If the light comes back within a day or two of a reset, a tyre is almost certainly losing air. Have a look for a screw or nail in the tread, a bulge in the sidewall, or a damaged valve.

If it stays on even though all four tyres are at the right pressure and you've done the reset, the fault is probably in the system itself. Get that looked at, not least because of the MOT.

MOT and UK law

The MOT checks the tyre pressure warning system on cars first used on or after 1 January 2012. A Fiesta will fail if the light shows a fault in the system. A light that's on only because a tyre is low isn't a fail on its own, though you'd obviously want to sort the tyre first.

Under-inflated tyres also wear their outer edges faster, which brings them closer to the 1.6 mm legal tread limit.

What Happens If Your Fiesta's Tyre Pressure Is Wrong?

The wrong pressure makes a Fiesta less safe and more expensive to run. Tyres wear unevenly, grip suffers and the car takes longer to stop. Day to day you'll rarely feel any of it, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed for months.

Under-inflated tyres

This is by far the more common problem, simply because tyres leak a little on their own. A soft tyre wears faster on its outer edges, as the shoulders take more of the load. It also builds up more heat in the sidewall, and at motorway speeds that heat breaks the rubber down and raises the risk of a failure.

You'll get vaguer steering and longer stopping distances too, especially in the wet. And because a soft tyre has more rolling resistance, the engine works harder and uses more fuel.

Over-inflated tyres

This one usually comes from using the full-load figure every day, or from topping up warm tyres and then adding a bit extra "to be safe". An over-inflated tyre wears down the middle of the tread. It also puts less rubber on the road, so grip drops, and the ride gets harder and more jittery over potholes.

Different pressures side to side

If one front tyre is lower than the other, the car tends to pull towards the soft side. People often book a wheel alignment for this, when a two-minute pressure check would have sorted it. Check the pressures first. If the pull's still there, look at the tracking.

Tyre Pressure After Changing Wheels or Tyres

As soon as you fit wheels or tyres that weren't a factory option, the sticker on your door pillar stops telling the whole story. It's the part most pressure charts leave out.

Fitting larger alloys or low-profile tyres

If your new wheel and tyre size is one Ford offered on your Fiesta, use Ford's figure for that size. Say you've put a Mk7 Zetec on 17-inch wheels with 205/40 R17 tyres: Ford's 205/40 R17 pressures still apply. The same goes for any of the other popular Fiesta upgrades that change the wheel and tyre package.

If the size isn't on Ford's list at all, there's no official number to follow. The right pressure then depends on the new tyre's load index, the weight of the car and the size it's replacing. Your fitter should work it out and write it down for you.

Why load index matters

Every tyre has a load index, the number straight after the size (the 88 in 205/45 R17 88Y). It sets the maximum weight that tyre can carry at the right pressure.

Any replacement should have a load index at least as high as the original. Lower-profile tyres often carry less weight at the same pressure, which is why so many need an XL (extra load) rating and different pressures to do the same job.

Once the new wheels are on, reset the TPMS, because the rolling diameter has changed.

Cold Weather, Long Trips and Full Loads

Tyre pressure falls as the temperature drops, by roughly 1.5 to 2 psi for every 10°C. A Fiesta set perfectly on a mild September afternoon can be noticeably low on a frosty December morning, without any leak at all.

That's often why the warning light comes on with the first cold snap of the winter. Just top the tyres back up to the normal cold figure. There's no need to add extra to allow for the weather.

Before a long motorway run, check all four tyres cold. If the car will be full of people and luggage, switch to the full-load figures, which mostly means a big increase at the rear. Drop back to normal pressures once you've unloaded, or you'll get a harsh ride and tyres that wear in the middle.

The same goes for towing. Check the maximum towing weight in your handbook, and run the full-load pressures while the trailer's hooked up.

Is nitrogen worth paying for?

Not on a Fiesta. Nitrogen seeps through rubber a little more slowly than ordinary air, but on an everyday car the difference is small. Normal air does the job, and topping up a nitrogen-filled tyre with air won't do any harm.

Keep Your Fiesta on the Right Pressure

For most Fiestas the rear pressure is lower than people expect, and the right figure shifts with tyre size, gearbox and load. Check monthly with the tyres cold, treat the door pillar sticker as the final word, and reset the warning system every time you make a change.

Planning new wheels or a styling refresh for your Fiesta? Browse our Ford range and styling kits. If you're not sure what pressures to run once the work's done, get in touch with the KSB AutoStyling team and we'll point you in the right direction.

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