Air vs. Nitrogen filled tires

[master_1011]

Originally Posted by cneary812

so closed minded are we?

costco is the bomb but they don't carry the tires I would use on my truck anyway, if they did, I would look at them just like I would any other tire shop.


another note on nitrogen vs air. Air has alot of moisture in it and that moisture is affected by tire temperatures. Nitrogen is moisture free so the nitrogen environment is dry thus helping keep the tire insides dry and clean.

I'm not close minded. I shop at Costco.

But they don't carry any tires that I would deem worthy to use on my vehicles.

Also, as a back-up to nitrogen, we are authorized to use dry, oil free air in our aircraft tires :

Not that there is any shortage of nitrogen....

[daptech]

Goodyear’s Research & Opinion on Nitrogen Inflation
"Over the years, nitrogen inflation has been proposed for various types of tires,
including large earthmover tires down through small passenger tires. At the
present time, Goodyear endorses nitrogen inflation for certain sizes of earthmover
tires used in particular applications, and has issued detailed instructions for these
tires. Anyone concerned with applying or maintaining earthmover tires should
be aware of the Goodyear Service Department Bulletins and Off-the-Road
Tire Training Manuals that contain details of nitrogen inflation recommendations
for these large off-the-road tires. The issue of nitrogen inflation for
over-the-road truck tires is not quite so clear. Various performance improvements
have been claimed, including better treadwear, casing durability, and reduced
susceptibility to tire fires. Although little actual controlled test
data exists, a summary of Goodyear’s experience with nitrogen inflation for
truck tires is the basis for the following comments. Treadwear appears to be
affected negligibly by the tire inflation medium. Specifically, there is little, if
any, tread life change to be expected by using nitrogen inflation compared to
normal air. So far as casing durability and retreadability are concerned, the
primary criteria is to avoid moisture in whatever inflation medium is used. To
this end, we strongly encourage proper selection of compressor equipment,
air-line routing, the use of air dryers, and other good shop practices to avoid
the introduction of moisture into high pressure air used for both initial tire
inflation and make-up air. Again, we know of no significantly improved casing
durability or retread durability performance to be expected from nitrogen inflation in
over-the-road truck tires.
Reduced rim or wheel corrosion has also been cited as an advantage of nitrogen
inflation. However, corrosion is primarily the result of excessive moisture introduced
by air that has not been properly dried, rather than a direct result of air versus
nitrogen inflation.
An additional concern is that past studies have shown that a very small
percentage of non-nitrogen make-up inflation significantly contaminates the
contained nitrogen atmosphere within a tire. In other words, if any benefits are
to accrue from nitrogen inflation, it is essential that virtually all make-up inflation
throughout the life of the tire/wheel assembly be diligently controlled to assure
a near 100 percent nitrogen environment. A final issue is that of insuring against
tire fires and/or self-ignition of tires resulting from excessive heat. For truck
tires, this concern has been greatly reduced in recent years, primarily
because of the changes from bias to radial tires and from tube-type to tubeless
tires. The tubeless radial tire is simply much less susceptible to a tire fire than
a bias tube-type design. This is partly because of the simplicity of the tubeless
design (i.e. no separate tube and flap to create heat from rubbing or internal
friction when the assembly deflates or runs severely under inflated or overloaded),
and partly because steel radial truck tires require higher temperatures for a fire to
start than their fabric-reinforced bias-ply counterparts.
In summary, nitrogen inflation appears to have significant advantages
for certain sizes and applications of large off-road tires, especially those operating
in extremely high load or speed environments. However, nitrogen
inflation appears to have quite small, perhaps insignificant, advantages for
over-the-road truck tires."
-
more
there is a website that actually performed tests between air
& nitrogen & took various readings...........but I can't
post the link.
......http........powertank...........
-
tests on air, nitrogen & co2
-
Conclusion of Low Pressure Gas Test:
Through a 128ºF temperature swing from -11ºF to 117ºF all gas samples showed virtually an identical pressure increase of 17 PSI from 40 PSI to 57 PSI. For an automotive tire this temperature delta represents an extreme real-life case but it shows that the Ideal Gas Law formula does apply to these gases and when it comes to thermal pressure stability none has any apparent advantage over the other.

Conclusion of High Pressure Gas Test:
At the higher tire pressure commonly seen in RV tires we took the gases through a temperature range of 154ºF (-20ºF up to 134ºF). Our start pressure was 80 PSI @ -20ºF and over the 154ºF temperature increase we saw the gas pressures all increase virtually the same amount to within 2 PSI of each other. In the end, the N2 and "air" test samples topped at 108 PSI while the CO2 sample topped out at 110 PSI. Note that the pressure changes that we saw in our bottles are the same as what you'd experience in your big RV tires despite the difference in volume. What does this mean? No matter which of these gases is in your RV tires, your handling, performance and tire wear will be the same.

[cneary812]

Thats it... I am going to fill my tires up with helium and start a new trend.

[TxsTitan]

Originally Posted by Yahooligan

The big thing is the moisture. The last thing a pilot wants is moisture condensing and then collecting at the bottom of the tire, then freezing, only to cause a severe imbalance upon landing that could tear the tire apart.

Dry nitrogen helps prevent wheel corrosion on the inside and prevents introducing moisture. I don't buy the notion that it reduces the risk of fire. Afterall, what is the airplane surrounded by that allows it to fly? Oxygen isn't flammable, so a blowout that results in sparks or excess heat is going to be fanned by all the air passing by as the plane lands anyway. Whatever oxygen was in the tires is not going to be sufficient to support a fire of any size and, again, is dwarfed by all the oxygen in the atmosphere.

Oxygen is not flammable but you can't have a fire without it. I think just like oilwell fires are extinguished with dynamite (removing oxygen in the immediate vicinity), nitrogen in a blowout does the same. It intterupts rather than promotes fire. In any event, I'm a proponent for air. It's more readily available and cheap. Then again, look at what we're doing with water. It's cheap and very available but we still pay for it.

[Yahooligan]

The thing folks seem to be missing is tires are not filled with pure oxygen, they are filled with air from the atmosphere, which is largely nirtrogen to begin with.

Second, the tires are surrounded by air, so the argument of fires being more likely to catch fire or burn when filled with air doesn't make much sense. If the fire were to happen INSIDE the tire then I can see the concern, but there's not enough air inside the tire to support a long-burning fire and it wouldn't be explosive. Once the blowout happens, all the nitrogen that was in the tire is gone and the tire is exposed to all the air around it. If someone can actually provide a scientific study showing nitrogen prevents or helps prevent tire fires I'd love to see it, but until then all we can do is speculate.