Nitrogen filled Tires. I get it with grandma that doesn't want to check her tire pressure but once every 2 years...bigger atom then convential air, so it won't leak slowly. Less expansion/contraction so you're not adjusting pressure as often when the air temp drops or increases.

But I wonder is it actually worth the expense to get those green valve stem covers? Is there noticeable road handling or gas mileage efficiency in using this in the tires?

 

well imho, personally i just use air. if your rims are decent just have them cleaned and sealed and throw a new stem in there and that solves the bead leak problem. when you install a tire before its inflated with nitro, the tire still has air in it. you cant put a vacume on it to remove 100% of the air, so the air that is in there can find its way out over time in theory. if you inflate a tire with nitro to 32 psi and the same tire to 32 psi then the tire has the same pressure in it so handeling would be exactly the same. so for some reason you get a low tire with a nail or something not everyone has nitro to refill the tire with if your not near your installer. so they would inflate it with air totially defeting the purpous of nitro. this is what they do at my shop anyway. air is just easier to come by and its usuially alot cheeper to get. how much are they charging for an nitro inflation and is it a lifetime thing?

 

We bought a new Xterra a couple of months ago and the dealership put N2 in the tires... about a month later the TPS light came on and I had to refill the tires. So, to me it's a bunch of BS and not worth the $.

 

Air is like 78% nitrogen anyway

The remaining 22% is mostly oxygen, which is a bigger molecule than nitrogen.

The issue is that water vapor in the air expands and contracts based on temperature, while nitrogen comes out of a tank and is dry.

Just don't fill up the tires on a humid day, and air should be fine, unless you're a race car driver, where they adjust air pressure by like a quarter pound.

 

I just looked up the periodic table, yer right, O is bigger than N, so that tells me someone was BSin...I should have looked that up so I could call them on it.

I recall the dealership my wife got her SUV at offered to air it up with N for like $70. It was them that told me because it was all N it wouldn't leak as much. I turned it down for the simple reason that I couldn't justify $70 for air. I still try to find free air at the stations...

It makes sense, the point about keeping the moisture out of the tire...I guess that's really the only good reason to do it, and my conventional wisdom tells me that isn't a good enough reason.

Thanks for your input!

 

always wanted to do that, but after reading this I will not do it

 

Uhhh, no, to everyone on here. Oxygen may have a higher atomic number, but the atomic radius is about 5 pictometers smaller than that of it's inert diatomic buddy.

Ding, ding, ding...ladies and gentlemen, we have our real answer. The N2 you see in most shops is supplied at various grades of moisture content, which of course is almost always going to be drier than what your standard shop compressor will provide.

 

how much does it cost?? i assume not 50 cents like at a gas station lol

 

Here's the thing...unless they are filling the tires in a complete vaccuum, there will still be a small amount of plain old air in the tire, sealed-in when the tire is mounted on the rim. So, your tire is not going to be filled purely with nitrogen.

It's really just a marketing fad, really. There's nothing wrong with it, per-se, as long as they aren't charging extra for it. The average driver really isn't going to see any amazing improvement in anything from using nitrogen.

 

Good call Metal maxima... I slipped on that one - I was in a physics mindset, where the size of the nucleus is dependent on the cube root of the atomic number, but it's the overall size including the electrons that counts.

As you move right on the periodic table, the atoms gain more charge, but still have the same valence electron level, so the extra charge pulls the electrons in closer.

 

I'm no tire salesman or shop employee but I've been reading about my local dealers and they all have a ton of benefits to getting this service. One big one that sticks in my head is when you need to have the tires aired up for any reason they will do it free of charge and if you can't get to them then just air them up at a gas station, bring it in and they will suck it out and replace with n2. I don't know where the 70 came from because the going rate in Lexington, KY is 8-10 a tire. I work with VIOC and some of our franchisees do this service and they drain it as low as possible then they fill it up with n2 then they drain it again and get it to over 97% which is higher than the necessary level for n2 to be as beneficial as possible. I might sound like a salesman but I promise I just have been reading a crap-ton about this and am thinking about getting it just to make my tires last longer and my gas mileage go a tiny bit higher.

 

You went on and on about benifits, but didn't list a single "Good" reason to do it...