MAX pressure is totally wrong.... Unless the tire is made to run at the HIGH pressure and the suspension is tuned for that tires characteristic (like bounce, rebound, etc). you will not have better gas mileage... and the car will bounce all over the road causing safety and control issues. You will prematurely wear out suspension components, the tire itself while causing more noise in the passenger cabin. Every tire has a different MAX pressure. When inflated to MAX the tire is at it's MAX load capacity and any more air can rupture it. Even the same brand tire in the same size can have different MAX ratings.
If it were me I would put 30 - 32 Psi in the tire and let it be. Every car is different. You have to remember that many many different cars use the same tire size. So the pressure on the side of the tire is ONLY for max pressure the tire is designed to hold safely. Also something to think about is the tire is part of the suspension system. Having the correct tire pressure is critical for handling, ride quality, tire wear, stopping distance and the list goes on. A tire with too much air in it will cause the tire to wear uneven, put more stress on the suspension due to tire rebound off the road and longer stopping distance. Having more pressure in the tire does in fact reduce the rolling resistance of the tire so it would improve fuel mileage but the trade off is not worth the extra mileage you would get. There are a lot of wives tails out there on tire pressure. The best bet is to go by the manufactures recommendation on tire inflation. If you are putting a tire on the car that it was not designed for (IE radial tires on a car designed for bias tires) then you have to use some common sense. Like was said before, find a comparable car and get the pressure from it. A good all around pressure for a mid sized car is around 30 Psi.
V8 Mavericks are somewhat nose heavy. The main reason for tire pressure adjustments (assuming the obvious like enough air to hold up the tire) is to have roughly the same size contact patch. Remember, the modern radials sidewall flexibility that allow the tread to stay in contact are not seriously changed at average pressures (like 26 to 34psi)... the size of the contact patch is. So w/ a nose heavy car, 31 - 29, 31 - 30, 32 -30 is not a bad idea.
With radials, I run 30 front, 26 rear in my Maverick. Running 30 or more in the rear wears the centers out of them.
That actually sounds about right... especially if you have a sway bar in the rear... and maybe HD leafs.
I firmly believe that a little too much of and not enough of only might have had something to do with your rear tires
