trogen filled tires

[Threepoint]

When a tire place fills a tire with nitrogen, if they don't remove all the air first, there is still oxygen in the tire.
[snip]

Bruce

True, but the air in the tire prior to fill is not compressed, so it will end up being a small fraction of the total volume after the tire is brought to operating pressure with pure nitrogen. I wonder if that might account for the 7 percent that the Edmunds article refers to when it says the mix must be 93 percent nitrogen to get its benefit.

A year or so ago, my mother-in-law asked a gas station attendant to check her tire pressure. He did, and said they were a bit low, but that he wasn't allowed add air from his compressor because the green valve caps showed they were filled with nitrogen. That was a new one on me.

 

[SPIKER]

If you want you can use propane which has larger atom so less leaks thru the pores of the rubber, it also keeps it exciting for guys changing your tires while smoking a cig!

I dont fall for the Nitrogen either, 78% is good for me!~ You can probably use one of the CO2 canisters to fill at a loser costs if ya want to do a bit of fab to make up a hose/filler assy.

Mark

 

[SPYDERLK]

Good to prevent corrosion in water filled tires.

 

[tractortom55]

I have a theory. If the tire has air loss over time and the nitrogen is larger than the other 21% then after you top off tires several times then at some point (because the nitrogen don't leak out) you should have mostly nitrogen in them and won't have to top off as often.

 

[kc5dlo]

Nitrogen has larger molecules than oxygen and should leak out of tire slower. The benefit of nitrogen is if you do not check tire pressure as recommended.

My thought is if I load in 78 percent nitrogen, the other 22 percent is the part that leaks out faster so as time goes, my tires must be getting rid of bad stuff with out any help or cost.

 

[nybirdman]

On another note about tires;I happened to park next to "The air charge station" at a local mini-mart.ONE Dollar to run it.............I must be old I remember when it was "free".

 

[GreenYellow]

Airplanes, especially jets, are required to use nitrogen in tires because of the DRYNESS of it. Because of the wild temperature swings during flight (-50 F at altitude) condensation inside the tire would be a problem. At altitude, the condensation would freeze at the bottom of the tire. If it didn't thaw upon decent, there would be a block of ice inside the tire at touchdown, causing a severely imbalanced tire.

Not much correlation to cars -- but there's some useless trivia for the day.

 

[SPYDERLK]

Airplanes, especially jets, are required to use nitrogen in tires because of the DRYNESS of it. Because of the wild temperature swings during flight (-50 F at altitude) condensation inside the tire would be a problem. At altitude, the condensation would freeze at the bottom of the tire. If it didn't thaw upon decent, there would be a block of ice inside the tire at touchdown, causing a severely imbalanced tire.

Not much correlation to cars -- but there's some useless trivia for the day.

Good point on condensation. Hardly a "block" tho. Unless, by some occurrence there was a buildup. Dry N2 prevents the chance.

 

[GreenYellow]

Good point on condensation. Hardly a "block" tho. Unless, by some occurrence there was a buildup. Dry N2 prevents the chance.

Ha! Well of course, not a literal cube. But the volume of ice/condensation could be substantial.

Take a 747 tire for instance. It's about 46" tall, 16" wide, and nearly 200psi. Let's say it were inflated with a compressor in...say... Florida. The amount of moisture in that amount of (warm humid) air would produce a VERY significant amount of condensation at a cold temperature. it would likely be enough to create a "puddle" at the lowest point of the tire. (in this case, the sidewall, while in flight)

While maybe not a "block", it would be enough to form a large solid formation of ice -- whatever form/shape you want to call it.

 

[KennyG]

A year or so ago, my mother-in-law asked a gas station attendant to check her tire pressure. He did, and said they were a bit low, but that he wasn't allowed add air from his compressor because the green valve caps showed they were filled with nitrogen. That was a new one on me.

That's a new one. When I had tires replaced on one of my cars a year or two ago they put green caps on it. I didn't pay anything extra and just thought they wanted my car to look silly.

 

[tcartwri]

So... to answer the question seriously.... Nitrogen is used to prevent condensation from being put into your tires. It can be a pretty significant amount of water if you are getting your air from a compressor without a dryer. You just have to drain your compressor tank at the end of the day to see how much water you could be putting in your tires. But then all major tire shops 'should' have a dryer in their system, so it's really just your own little huffer and the gas station coin operated jobbies that you have to worry about.

 

[JRobyn]

The "dry gas" theorists are ignoring the fact that the act of compressing humid atmospheric air in the air compressor being used for tire filling, condenses out a great deal of the water vapor. That's why your compressor tank develops a pool of water inside. The partial pressure of the water vapor may be the same at its new pressure and temperature in the compressor tank (maybe 150psig/100degF), but then when that is expanded back out into a tire (maybe 40psig/80degF) it would have a very low "humidity" even without an air line dryer.

- Jay

 

[PandDLong]

A few years ago, i was going through tires rapidly and they were wearing "oddly". I am a high mileage driver and it was a performance/luxury car so tires weren't cheap. My tire guy said it might be a peculiarity of my car and driving situation where the variance in pressure between cold and warm during driving was creating the issue, he recommended nitrogen as a trial. It solved my tire problem and was well worth the cost. The good news is that he now uses it as a standard with no extra cost - he said it is worth it as he gets way less customers returning with the infamous " slow leak" that he would need to fix at no cost to the customer.

He said the premise is the larger molecule size helps with some leak situations and it was true often enough to make it pay for his tire shop.

My gain was that the tire pressure is practically constant in all driving conditions and I got improved tire life.

In the rare case where If I have nitrogen tire that does lose pressure and needs topping up and nitrogen isn't handy, I will put regular air in it. Typically, it will need to go in for repair at some point as it must have developed a leak that just gets worse over time.

 

[RSKY]

I have worked for three differ tires companies, General Tire, Continental Tire, and Goodyear Tire. Working in tire assembly I often worked with TIRE ENGINEERS. I have asked them at all three companies about putting nitrogen in tires. Most just laughed. And these were the guys that designed tires and developed them for market.

The most one told me was that in a high performance environment nitrogen filled tires MIGHT give a tire a tenth of a percent, (or some other very small amount) better heat resistance. Under inflation is a bigger problem. Definitely the biggest culprit in tire failure.

Check your tire pressures regularly. If you are driving a long distance at high speeds boost your inflation a couple pounds being sure not to exceed maximum pressure.

Nitro fill is a gimmick to make money, nothing else!

RSKY

 

[buickanddeere]

As said several times before . The only advantage of bottled air is that it's perfectly dry. If the air from your home shop compressor is dry. There is no difference between 100% N2 and atmospheric air.

 

[buickanddeere]

Nitrogen has larger molecules than oxygen and should leak out of tire slower. The benefit of nitrogen is if you do not check tire pressure as recommended.

Check the periodic table and tell us how much larger a N2 molecule is over a O2 molecule .

 

[RSKY]

As for tires loosing pressure that is usually thru the valve stem. Put a drop of oil inside the stem and hit it with high pressure air. That will blow the trash out of the stem. If still loosing air get the stem replaced.

If you have tires constantly loosing air and it isn't thru the stem then you have an assembly problem. The inner liner of the tire has a pinhole in it somewhere. Or one small exposed end of a strand of a thread will bleed air out of the tire. They are actually called bleeder cords because they 'bleed' air out the rubber and hold it. Every tire has them inside.

Enough talk about tire construction and back to nitrofill, it is a gimmick.

RSKY

 

[bcp]

From:
Tires - Nitrogen air loss study

The test started on September 20, 2006 and the final measurements were taken on September 20, 2007. The results show nitrogen does reduce pressure loss over time, but the reduction is only a 1.3 psi difference from air-filled tires. The average loss of air-filled tires was just 3.5 psi from the initial 30 pressure setting. Nitrogen-filled tires lost an average of 2.2 psi from the initial 30 psi setting.

 

[mjarrels]

All Navy aircraft tires and struts are nitrogen serviced, all Navy aircraft squadrons had N2 carts.

mark

 

[Billrog]

I was told nitrogen has less fluctuation been hot and cold temps. so they were using it to lesson the tps systems from complaining when there's large temp. changes. Personally I use air have never had moisture in any tires and my tps is always telling me to service soon because I'm not about to run around with 85# of air in may back pick-up tires with no load.