Inflating tires with nitrogen

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I used nitrogen in my Porsche - worked great - very stable - TMPS neve fired. Using air in Ferrari tires - no TPMS so use manual tire gauge and check regularly. Also have really cool valve caps on the Ferrari so don't want to replace them with the green ones for running Nitrogen.

Cheers

 

Unless you are racing, it is a waste of money (IMHO). Air is 70% nitrogen, so allyou are doing is adding another 30% to displace the oxygen and carbon dioxide. Nitrogen 'leaks' out of tires just like regular old air, so you still need to pressure check them.

The TPMS is not that sensative to cause a problem. If it goes off, your tire is significantly low in pressure.

 

Mostly a marketing gimmick to get some of your money.

Unless you're racing and looking for every second it's meaningless.

 

Only when I find a tank of it leftover, on a Project......

What you really want to avoid is the moisture in "normal" compressed air, a dryer in the system will do that.

 

The two biggest automotive rip-offs out there:

1. Inflating car tires with nitrogen
2. "mid-grade" gasoline

Air is not 70% nitrogen - it's 78% nitrogen. Besides that, how do you get the air already in a tire out of it? You can't - unless you know of some way to hold the bead on the rim while you suck the air out you will always have at least a tire full of air in there before you start pumping in nitrogen.

Something is wrong with your TPMS system if it's firing off all the time.

You know you don't have to use the goofy green valve stem caps they give you with a nitrogen fill, there's nothing special about them.

Lots of gullible people out there who fall for plausible-sounding stories about the "benefits" of filling tires with niotrogen. The primary benefit is that it's almost pure profit for the person doing the filling.

 

You are right, air is 78% nitrogen. I do know that a large tank of compressed nitrogen is really cheap. So, charging $40 to fill your tires with it, is nearly all profit.

 

What year is your car?

What are the TPMS symptoms - it seems I must become the FChat "TPMS expert" - with learned knowledge via the school of hard knocks.

There are exactly three things that make the "early" (with CAL button) TPMS lose it's cal.

1) it thinks the CAL button has been pressed
2) Intermittent loss of power
3) Intermittent loss of ground

These things MUST be checked, Ferrari's diagnostic procedures and SDx be damned before any replacement of the ECU is considered.

N.B.: The same ground string connects to the OBD ground pins, and can also be the source of the SDx "failing to communicate" with the ECU - thus leading everyone to think the TPMS ECU is dead when it isn't.

 

BTW, if you're set on N2 tire filling - do it yourself.

Get a tank of N2 and a regulator.

Feed regulator to a gauged tire inflator/bleeder

Set regulator pressure to 80psi

Bleed tire to 10 psi

Inflate to "max allowed pressure"

repeat twice, then pressurize to about 4psi above desired.

Repeat for all four tires - allow to sit for at least 6 hours in stable temps.

Bleed wheels to 1psi over set pressure.

Wait overnite. Bleed wheels exactly to set pressure.

Overkill? Maybe, but tire pressures are "correct" or they aren't

PV still equals nRT even on a Ferrari.

Do or do not, there is no try.

 

I agree. Gimmick. Sooooo many out there....LOL. Dont get me started, sheesh.

 

I work for a comercial airline in maintenance. ALL aircraft tires are serviced with nitrogen. There has to be a good reason for it.

 

At the national FCA meet in Colorado Springs they put nitrogen in our tires for track days. No extra charge.

 

Totally different parameters.

Aircraft tyres are exposed to more extreme conditions than automobile tyres.

The introduction of nitrogen to the tyres on your driver is relatively new. Just smoke and mirrors which adds profit to the provider, with no benefit to the consumer!

 

A waste of time and $$$$ from what I have heard. About as usefull as that blinker fluid we have spoken about in other posts.

 

Its dry.

As Darolls also mentioned aircraft tyres are subjected to much greater extremes of temperature than car tyres and any moisture would be bad (freezing and boiling).

 

Same with our helicopters, our Apaches and BlackHawks have nitrogen in the tires and blades. With the varying altitudes we fly at, the pressure will always be the same with nitrogen.

But like said before, on cars, smoke and mirrors....

 

BTW, Costco does it for free......I refill mine there and never paid a penny!!

 

Wasted money on Street cars agreed, a requirement on race cars but only if properly applied.

Jim gave an excellent suggestion on a method to bleed out the 'air'. On the race cars I have fabricated an A/C system vacuum pump that fits to the tire valve stem. Under vacuum water will turn to vapor and can be removed from the tire, its the water (water vapor/humidity) that expands with additional heat as stated earlier. The only way to remove a puddle of water from inside a tire is to turn it to vapor. Often that requires gluing the tire to the wheel so the vacuum doesnt break the bead seal... they turn dead square under vacuum.

Even when I pull a 23" vacuum for 3 hrs on a tire/wheel combination and fill with dry nitrogen I still get a 2.5# pressure increase from trailer to hot laps. The key is KNOWING it will increase 2.5#'s...... it simply turns a variable into a constant that can be adjusted for.

 

You can say that again - $10 per tire here to top up the pressure.

 

I have a machine that delivers 78% nitrogen with high enough pressure for tires, works great!

 

Bingo!

And as far as consistency in a race program, nitrogen is just easier. Most of us don't haul compressors to the track, but we do keep a least a couple of nitrogen tanks in the bottom of every tool cart to use for running pneumatic tools, cooling rotors, cleaning up after trips through gravel traps, charging shocks (nitrogen very critical here) and an assortment of other things besides inflating tires (including one of our buddies who has gone green and has a pneumatic margarita mixer instead of the weed eater powered versions). So single source pressure becomes a matter of convenience at the track... but at home, on a street car... anything BUT acetylene or fix-a-flat". Read that again before you flame me on fix-a-flat. I said at home, not on the road in an emergency.

Rick

 

Your cold tire pressure is set too low. You drive and they come up, but when the tires cool after the day, they fall back to below the threshold.

Set them at 33-34 cold. problem should go away.