Saw an interesting segment of Goss' Garage on Motorweek this Saturday.... They were talking about tire pressure sensors and how they can go bad. It seems when you fill your tires with plain air, there is a good chance that the air contains a large percentage of moisture and as such can ruin the sensors over time. Pat Goss recommends using nitrogen to fill your tires since it is almost 100% dry and it will not degrade the sensors. He goes on to mention that the nitrogen expands and contracts less in hot & cold conditions so your tires stay at the optimum pressure longer without flutuations. Anyone have experience with this? I know my Ferrari dealer here in NJ offers this service but are regular garages carrying nitrogen as well? I would hate to have to drive 50 miles every time I needed some nitrogen.
I have it in all my cars, and it seems to work well, though the change in temp does cause an issue when it gets really cold. You can no longer just fill up with air, and that cn be a hassle if the tire pressure light goes on. They are right about the sensors, air in tires destroyed two sensors on my range rover.
All true. Your problem with air is that it's most likely laden with water which I suspect is the real culprit with the tire sensors. There are nitrogen extraction machines on the market which some shops use to fill your tires but you're not going to find that at service station. What I wonder about was how they get all the common air and hence the moisture out of the tire when they're mounting a tire or do they just inflate to the proper pressure with the pure nitrogen and say that's good enough? Bob S.
I would imagine that the air / moisture left in the tire when first mounted is relatively insignificant after the tire is inflated to full pressure with the nitrogen charge. The only other thing I can think of is that when they set the bead this air / moisture would be purged from the void.
Large percentage? Note that plain ol' air is already 78.1% nitrogen. Whats it going to cost per fill? $10-15 per tire? How much is a sensor? How often do they fail anyway? I've not seen one yet and I know how often I check my tire pressures. And thats another problem. Optimum tire performance is based around tread temperature and thus is measured hot. Since this is impractical for most, cold tire pressures are recommended as a guesstement of what the pressure (and tread temp) will be under normal operating conditions. So you just changed to Nitrogen - what exactly will the "optimum' cold pressure be? Oh - and you missed the one about tires "leaking less" through the rubber. Of course the problem there is most leaking occurs via every mechanism (valve, valve stem, porous rims etc). So whats really is the incremental gain here? Very little if anything. Probably important if you are a Nascar team. Not going to happen. -mick
This all sounds like marketing mumbo-jumbo from the folks trying to sell nitrogen. The soap and water that is typically used to mount the tire is probably the source of most moisture inside. Race teams use nitrogen because it is important to take every advantage no matter how small. For a street-driven car it's probably a meaningless expense. Air is mostly nitrogen (78%) that's enough for me.
By far the worse thing you can do is drive on under-inflated tires. No gain with nitrogen will offset that. -mick
75 cents to a dollar per tire here. Trucks with very large tires (think superswampers) often require nitrogen.
I think the original poster was worried about his tire pressure sensors being affected. I don't think he was worried about doing any hot laps. So maybe it IS more a case of sloppy soap & water during original installation.
We use it for Challenge. It runs our tools as well. We get more consistent hot tire numbers with it. For every day driving....not soo much. Are you going to get more life out of a tire with it? Negligible.
If you get your tires at Costco its free...havent noticed any difference except for the green caps on the valve stems!
i thought this was not accurate so I checked. You are correct and and I learned something Nitrogen 78.084% O2 20.9476% Argon 0.934% CO2 0.0314% Plus a few other trace elements. I have dealers recommend Nitrogen in my tires. I am to lazy to do it. I think they said the dryer nitrogen makes the tire and tube (if you have a tube) last longer. I think they said the nitrogen is lighter so the cars do 0-60 better. I have trouble believing in the real world it makes a difference. I have my own air compressor at my car storage building and it has a moisture separator on it. The Nitrogen is still better but I cope . Lee
Aside from the fact that air is 78% nitrogen already, there is no way you will be able to get 100% nitrogen into your tires, because there will always be regular air that gets in when the tires are mounted to the wheel. Maybe overall you'll go from 78% (stagnant) to 90% (when filled the rest of the way with pure nitrogen), but whether or not it really makes a difference is yet to be proven to me. Perhaps someone has a link to some actual research that suggests nitrogen is beneficial?
It's all "smoke and mirrors" to suggest that tires or sensors are going to fail without their expensive gas inside.
Here's the secret nobody wants you to know... Nitrogen is cheaper than air. This is why you see shops "up-selling" it. You can not run an air compressor cheaper than buying N2. It's that simple.
This will need explanation. The shop already has the compressor to power their air tools. It's use for filling tires is a negligible cost, virtually free.
Are you saying that the cost of running an air compressor is less than the cost of having a tank of n2 delivered?
I agree with your statement. Nitrogen takes a special process to pull out of the atmosphere. Then it is put into a long OHSA certied cylinder called Seaford grade under high pressure. It also requires an expensive pressure regulator. So the nitrogen is more expensive and air is " virtually free " as you point out. Lee
I didn't read all the responses, but I will say that I have this done at my local Costco for free. That is, tires filled with nitrogen.
