Nitrogen filled tires

antipeterleague · 02-27-2008, 10:24 PM

what do you all know about this? heard it's better than regular air.

Stoenr · 02-27-2008, 10:40 PM

The only thing you will gain is less pressure loss over time, and less change of psi from colder to warmer temps.

FixFalcon · 03-02-2008, 08:16 PM

And the chance of getting moisture inside your tire and possibly freezing.

Norm Peterson · 03-03-2008, 03:56 PM

Not enough better than regular compressed air to justify spending any money for. For free and if you don't have to drive too far to get at it, go ahead (it can't hurt anything).

Current tires of decent quality don't lose much air through them anyway - I think it's something called halobutyl liner(s). Any other source of pressure loss, such as through a valve stem that leaks slightly or a minutely porous wheel (don't laugh), will affect the N2 just as severely asit does the regular air.

The difference in cold to hot pressure rise is mostly because N2 is supposedly 'dry' (no moisture content). Not because it happens to be nitrogen, as N2 has no special properties or exceptions to the gas laws. Dried compressed air would be as good in this regard.

Consider that the air in your tires is already about 80% N2. Commercial N2 for tire inflation is maybe 95% N2. Roughly, that means if they deflate your tires to zero and re-inflate them with the 95% stuff to 30 psi, you're only up to about 90% N2. Sounds like an awful lot of work for what's really just a small increase in the N2 concentration.

Norm

dmh@bones · 03-04-2008, 03:42 PM

Norm is dead on with his info. i was just out at Road Atlanta for the Petite La Mans and had all access passes so i was asking all the tire guys from Michelin and a few other tire companies that were there supplying the race tire for the various teams about it and they all said basically the same thing. Unless you "evacuate" all the air that is in the tire to begin with and then reinflate with Nitrogen it will serve no purpose. They said it has to be at least 98-99% nitrogen for it to be beneficial. They said that most places who charge you for it and even the ones who dont do not have the equipment to evacuate the air out before the refill with nitrogen. So you are not gettinga high enough percentage of nitrogen for it to serve its purpose. The places that do have the evacuation equipment typically dont evacuate the tire before they fill it because it takes them time and most customers dont know any better.

The system they used at the track was amazing. The rims had 2 valve stems, one was a purge valve and one was an inflation, so they had one machine that circulated the nitrogen through the tire and the machine had a monitor on it that told them when they hit 99%. then they unhooked it and done, good to go. pretty slick if i do say so myself. i have noticed that in recent month alot of the rims we sell, have places for 2 valve stems.