Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Nitrogen/Air Mix in Tires?

Seriously? A guy was saying the nitrogen helps keep the tires from getting flat spots after sitting. I have heard people carry a nitro tank in the rough country to pump up a tire in a pinch, but to do this on a regular basis?

What N2 does is not vary by temperature as much due to being an inert gas. It doesn't do any other magic besides that really. I use N2 in my fast cars just because I have a bottle. I carry a nice ViAir compressor for the FJ 4x4 type stuff. What the off road guys use a lot is CO2 because it has more volume for the tank size.

Lots of reading to do on the FJ Cruiser Forum on airing up after rock crawling if you are really interested. The Jeep Forums and Pirate too have a lot of threads.

The air I breathe is around 76% nitrogen--I always thought this was a tire store gimmick.

Foolish, pure marketing foo foo to get into your wallet. What kkahmann said.

We used to use propane to air up tire on construction jobs

I never noticed any "out of round" going on since nylon belted tires were gone.

They already have nitrogen in them.

^^^THIS^^^

Flat spots happened on Bias Ply tires during cold weather. Once the tire heated up, the "thump..thump" would go away. It's a structural issue with the use of nylon cord apposed to steel belts as in radial tires. Radial tires don't do that and even if they did, nitrogen isn't going to make any difference. I believe that they use nitrogen because it doesn't expand or create "build up", as known in the NASCAR world. This is why it's illegal in NASCAR. They want them to have to play the tire pressure game. As the air heats up it expands and increases tire pressure mainly due to humidity. For your average passenger vehicle or pick up truck, 2 to 5 lb. difference in operating pressure ain't gonna make a hill of beans unless you're planning on driving 200 MPH into a left hand turn. It's a total gimmick.

For the average driver, N2 has no advantage and its highly unlikely that you'll ever notice a difference. It can cost quite a bit to switch because the tire will have to be purged a couple times to remove the O2. It's necessary to get the N2 up to about 95% to be effective.
If a tire sets a long time, it will lose less pressure with N2. The molecules are larger than air so they're slower to seep through microscopic holes.

If you really want N2, I've read a number of times that Costco tire shops will switch it for free if you're a member. I've never checked to see, though.

Money making gimmick for car dealers and tire shops.

You got me curious. How much bigger is N2 than a molecule of air? This oughta be good!

N2 has a smaller molecular weight than O2 so I assume, with a higher concentration of N2, the overall weight of the tire would be less and the rotating inertia would be less. Maybe they claim better gas mileage. As far as the molecular size, the difference between the two molecules is so small that the leak in the tire would almost have to be nearly an exact size to make any difference imo.

An O atom has 8 protons while N has 7. The pull of the + charge with the extra proton will pull the electron cloud in closer. That's what the scientists say, anyway. I've never put a a mic on them to verify it.

When I bought my last set of tires for my Ram 2500, I did so at Costco. They filled them with nitrogen which they do as a standard, no charge practice. The only practical advantage is that in really cold weather, you don't loose as much air pressure. Pretty important when carrying a truck camper and towing a Jeep in below zero weather. There is also the fact that nitrogen doesn't oxidize nearly as readily as oxygen. For whatever that might be worth.
I no longer hunt places with really cold temperatures so I don't concern myself with this. E

Nitrogen is dry compared to compressed air. Moist air expands and contracts more than dry air.

I guess I have a lot more important things to fine tune in my life before I worry about replacing the 80% nitrogen air in my tires with 100% nitrogen air.

I do the Nitrogen thing on my bike but not on my truck

When I bought my tires at Cost Co they filled them with nitrogen. If I heard right, I can not just top them off myself, I have to take them back (45 minutes away) to cost Co to get them topped with nitrogen.

Does that sound right? I don't know what it would hurt to mix regular air from my pump and the nitrogen in the tire.

If you want to maintain them like Costco did them with the N2, you have to add more N2, either from Costco another tire shop that has it. Mixing N2 with air doesn't hurt anything. It just doesn't leave you with an N2 filled tire any more. To get back to the N, you'd have to purge the tire and start over.