I worked in the Costco tire center here in Cali and we used Nitrogen on all of our tires. I did notice that the nitrogen tires held the same PSI in tires for a longer period of time then regular compressed air. It is kind of a gimic but some people swear by it. Its free if your a member at Costco.
I worked in the costco tire shop for about 5 years, when we went to N2 we learned all about it.. it does make up about 78% of the air we breath, but the nitroden molecules are the larger in regular air, so by running a higher concentration of it your air pressure is supposed to remain the same for longer, ***uming your tire and wheels are in good shape.. Also, no moisture, which means no rust/ corrosion on the the bead of the wheel... A very good thing. but all in all I dont lose sleep if I have to put regular compressed air in my tires..
Actually, that is basically what I said! I said that an "ideal" gas will follow a specific gas law where the pressure is directly related to the amount of gas, the volume, and the temperature, but not to the type of gas. In fact there is no real ideal gas but within the parameters (-40 deg F to 120 deg F at about 30 psi) most of the gases in air follow the ideal gas law well including oxygen and nitrogen. I also said that one ingredient of air does not follow the ideal gas law and that is water. Water expands significantly different than the ideal gas law predicts. You are correct that refrigeration gases were also designed not to follow the ideal gas law also so that under moderate pressure they become a liquid. Get rid of the water in the air and you get rid of the major pressure changes.
C'mon guys... Get real. Nitrogen can only be helpful when you fill your trunk with it to increase ride height.
As was mentioned, this is SNAKE OIL. Consumer Reports did a test with both air and nitrogen and found very little difference between them. WASTE OF MONEY
According to my knowledge and experiance, 57JoeFoMoPar's got the rite take on this. The other stuff's very creative though.
YEEHA! you'd get along great with the chick that wrote a letter to the newspaper here shortly after "an inconvenient truth" came out... she wrote: "We need to place a higher priority on education. I've known for years that trees break down carbon dioxide, but if I had realised they also break down the noxious gas CO2, I would have planted a lot more trees" .... !! yep, sure do need to place a higher priority on education! if we have to deal with carbon dioxide, CO2, oxygen AND O2 all at once, how will we survive!!??
Darn, now the air in my tires really is bad, what next? Pollution and global warming is really getting out of hand. I knew there was something wrong with putting regular air in tires for a long time. I just couldn't put my finger on it or prove it. But, now here's proof. Thanks to dedicated free market corporate research and funding, I am glad we have finally solved the big regular air in tires problem we have all had to put up with for decades now. Just goes to show you that you get what you pay for. Free air isn't free.
if you think nitrogen is not worth paying for, your probably right. but if you can find a place that will put it in for free, do it. most people will get better gas mileage because the air pressure stays more constant. regular air seaps out about 1 pound every month, nitrogen is a bigger molecule so it seaps out 4 to 5 times slower. when our company was testing it, they filled a tire with nitrogen and it stayed the same pressure for 6 months. also, since its dry, it doesn't react to outside air temperatures like regular air, going up or down for every 10 degree change. so this is how you get the better gas mileage and longer life out of your tires, and why we put it in every new tire we sell for free.
Tires filled with nitrogen will hold their original cir***ference better than compressed air and therefore will allow your stagger to remain more constant. This is a good thing for an oval track racer but if you're using it in tires on vehicles not affected substaintially by stagger it is a waste of time, energy and/or money.
Let me see if I have this figured out now.... N2 molecules are lighter in weight than O2 molecules, but they are slightly bigger in size, and will not leak out as fast. Air contains water vapor, and water is not anywhere near an ideal gas at normal temps/pressures. So....fill up your tires with air from your shop air system after the moisture trap, and they'll be filled with 78% nitrogen. And after you fill them up, let the oxygen all leak out, they'll be filled with only nitrogen, right? so, refill them again with more dry air, they'll be filled with 96% nitrogen now. Do this one more time, you're up to 99%. Isn't math fun? btw the atomic radius of nitrogen is about 65 pm, while oxygen is about 60 pm. Big difference, eh? so maybe my plan won't work after all, because the oxygen really won't leak out noticeably faster than the nitrogen.
Why dont we just fill tires with CO2 and solve two problems at once? Damn I'm smart! Dont applaud, just throw money!
Might use a vacuum pump to **** the remaining oxygen out of the tire and get more of a concentration of nitrogen. We actually used helium in mud racing tires and when the tires spin in the mud they grow taller.