Air or CO2???

OldSven

Explorer
flyingwil said:
Might check Wheeler's... Here (scroll to bottom of the page)
Thanks for the link. Man those things are spendy! So all I need now is the tank, regulator and hose? I just bought a new 25' Craftsman black coil hose for my compressor, will this work with the tank setup?
 

Willman

Active member
asteffes said:
If the head were to break off, you'll have a torpedo on your hands. :coffee:

Good point!! But you are going to get that with any other tank (steel/alum)!!!!!! Best thing is to build a protective cover for it and tie it down!!!!!
 

OldSven

Explorer
Oh, it will be strapped down good. I'm working on getting a canopy in the next couple of weeks so it will go in there.:box:
 

OldSven

Explorer
After talking with lots of welding supply places, I have found out that the way to go is nitrogen. This is what some auto-makers and tire shops are starting to fill all of their tires with. Nitrogen will not change temp. when you are driving, and will also make your tires last longer. Now for the inside tip, Costco will actually fill your tank for free in their tire center. So let me know if anyone has any input on this new setup.:clapsmile
 

BajaTaco

Swashbuckler
OldSven said:
After talking with lots of welding supply places, I have found out that the way to go is nitrogen. This is what some auto-makers and tire shops are starting to fill all of their tires with. Nitrogen will not change temp. when you are driving, and will also make your tires last longer. Now for the inside tip, Costco will actually fill your tank for free in their tire center. So let me know if anyone has any input on this new setup.:clapsmile

Nitrogen is fine, but it won't be any faster or more convenient than plain old air. Using a tank with nitrogen or air will only reduce your wait time on airing up your tires by the volume of the tank. So unless you have a pretty large tank, I'm not sure it will save enough time to be worth the added expense, space taken, and additional weight. If you are going to use air lockers on your vehicle, then that is a good reason to have a small tank. Nitrogen may be cleaner and run cooler, but I wonder if the hassle is really going to be compensated for by much more mileage on the tires? The other thing is that once you use a tank for nitrogen, then you won't be able to fill it with your on-board compressor. And taking the tank to have it filled with nitrogen every time you use it will be a pain in the butt since you will maybe only get to fill one or two tires depending on the size of the tank. What tank are you planning on using?
 

david despain

Adventurer
OldSven said:
After talking with lots of welding supply places, I have found out that the way to go is nitrogen. This is what some auto-makers and tire shops are starting to fill all of their tires with. Nitrogen will not change temp. when you are driving, and will also make your tires last longer. Now for the inside tip, Costco will actually fill your tank for free in their tire center. So let me know if anyone has any input on this new setup.:clapsmile


arrrrggg!!!!!! : beats head on wall: :eek: first let it be known i am not attacking anyone here and i have only the intention of sharing information. i hate it when places like welding shops and gas supply and others that seem to be in the know diseminate horribly inacurate information like this as gospel. i hear it all the time and it just makes me mad. i have found most of the time its not deliberate deception just a lack of understanding that drives this type of stuff. http://www.irtools.com/products/nitrogen/ except for this, this is mostly BS for the sake of selling a product to people that dont need it. missing from your post is the one that upsets me more than anything else in the world, "they put it in airplane tires becasue its inert"

lets examine pure facts for a second. first and foremost the air you and i breathe is 78% nitrogen already! it will heat up just like any gas will and will change temp as the friction from driving heats up the tire. it will expand like any gas will, thus changing the pressure inside the tire, thats why you are not supposed to check or adjust tire press when the tire is hot. always let it cool down.
as for making them last longer, perhaps. without oxygen inside the tire there would be no posibility of oxidation or ozone damage BUT ONLY FROM THE INSIDE. i have never met anyone that replaced a tire because the inside was "just worn out". it cant help with tread wear or damage. as for the tire holding air longer i just dont see how this is a valid claim. since we already know that normal atmosphere is 78% N2 how can we expect the remaining 22% being replaced with more nitrogen to provide some miracle that will keep pressure in the tire for some unreasonalbe amount of time? the things that costco try to ply you with to spend your money there are just marketing ploys.

now lets look at why i put nitrogen into tires everyday at my job. (aside from the #1 reason which is the Maint. Manual says i will).
#2 i need higher press than the shop air is at. the tires on my planes take from 105 to 180 psi. it would take a day and half to wait for the compressor to keep cycling on and off to get enough air in just for the nose tires, and it wont even get close to the main wheel tire press i need. a compressor that puts out high enough press would cost a whole lot more than N2 costs even over many years. car tires need about 35 psi or even lets say 50 psi, so no need for nitrogen yet.
#3 corrosion. the wheels are 2 piece aluminum sealed with an oring. when a 80,000 lb plane plops down onto the runway you dont want corrosion to cause a crack in the wheel and cause it to let go forcing you to go carreening off the runway. and why does it slow down and prevent corrosion? it is not because its inert! as some will try to tell you. its becasuse its dry. there may be some moisture present in shop air if you dont have a really good filter dryer. so this may be a reason to use nitrogen but how many people have changed wheels for corrosion? maybe a few but not many.
#4 convience. its 95 feet across the hangar so its much easier to wheel the bottle out to the plane than to fool around with an air hose thats over 100 feet long. not to mention if i had to service anything out on the ramp out in front of the hangar. not so much a problem with a car in the garage but i can see where it might be handy.

so for a normal everday use compressed nitrogen is really not needed. espcially for the added expense over convential systems. now for fourwheeling i can see where a portable nitrogen tank would be pretty dang cool. truth be told this is the route i plan on using someday if a regulator falls into my lap as i already have a few different size bottle laying around and all the nitrogen i need here at work. but the biggest problem here is the lack of volume. since the CO2 systems all use liquid co2 they have hundreds of times the available "air" to run tools and fill tires than you could get out of the same size nitrogen bottle thats just fill with the gaseous form nitrogen. if it were just to air up 4 tires and you had about 1800 psi of Nirtogen you would probably be ok with a comparable sized bottle to the co2 systems but you would quickly run out of air if you used it to run air tools or try to reseat a bead and then have to also air up at the end of the day. for all PRACTICAL purposes the exisiting co2 systems are the cheapest and easist to use and maintain. or you could use an electric air compressor too.
again not trying to hassle anyone but there is a LOT of misinformation out there on putting nitrogen in tires. sorry for the rant.
ps looks like BT got in a post while i was typing, he has some very good points
 

david despain

Adventurer
upon rereading this entire thread i wish to comment on the original question in the first post and clarify the co2 thing a bit. it asked if you could plumb the compressor into the co2 tank for a backup, and from other posts perhaps some are not aware of how it works. you cant add a fitting to the co2 tank to use it as a storage for a compressor. the co2 tank holds LIQUID co2 in the tank under a fairly high pressure with gaseous co2 on top of the liquid. as you use some to fill up your tires or run tools or what have you the regulator ensures that this high press only comes out at 110-150 psi or whatever u have the reulator set to. this allows a little more room inside the tank and the liquid co2 actually boils off and more gaseous co2 replaces the amount u just used. this happens until there is no more liquid left to boil off then you get it refilled with liquid co2 again. so now you can see how it would be imposible to add compressed air to the tank, you would need a seperate storage tank for the compressor
 

OldSven

Explorer
Thanks for the info. The welding shop said something about how the molecule is larger so it won't change pressure. But anyway, I am going to keep my compressor as a back up or for the girlfriend's car for road trips and what not. As for the Nitrogen i was told to pick up a bottle about 3' tall (can't remember the lbs. per something), this would be able to air up around (from what told) 25-40 tires depending on their size. And with an airtool check what the amount of air it uses would tell me how fast it would drain the bottle. I like all of the input I get here though, saves alot of money down the drain:D
 

david despain

Adventurer
ummmm yeeeaaaahhh. so hopefully from my previous post you can tell why the guys down to the shop are not really giving you the right answer as to why the press changes. i dont know if they are trying to make a quick buck off you or they really dont understand it but now you know they are wrong. i hope i dont get too nerdy here on you but there is a law called the combined Charles Boyles law. i dont rememeber if it was charles or boyles who came up with which part but at any rate it states that for EVERY gas as temp goes up so does pressure, and as volume goes down press goes up. and so it holds true that as pressure goes up so does temp if the volume doesnt change, and so on. this is not a theory it is a LAW. it has nothing to do with the size of the molecules.
lets examine an example of just street driving so the volume of our tires does not change. we air up with pure nitrogen and drive off down the road, after a while friction from the road and the sun and the hot blacktop etc. all heat up the tire so that its a good amount warmer than it was in our shady garage. using the combined charles boyles law since the volume remained constant and the temp went up then the pressure HAD to go up as well. its just simple math, and math is the one constant in the world that can not be argued and is universally understood by all cultures. math makes the world go round. feel free to take off your big chemistry class eye goggles now and put away your lab equipment class. as a side note in my physics and chem class in high school we called this equation the pervert equation and heres why. its really the pervnert equation as pressure is = to the inverse volume x temp. hmm it doesnt make as much sense when i type it and im sure no one else cares.

p v1 t
______
p1 v t1
 

SEREvince

Adventurer
here's a little more info for you,

http://www.powertank.com/charts.specs

I built my own C02 system for about $120. I am know running a 20lb tank and it fills my tire(1) in about 30 seconds. I normally air down to about 12-15psi. I run 285/75/16s at about 35psi on the road. According to the powertank chart I can fill 40 tires of that size! I didn't see the air tool chart, but if I recall a 15lb tank could run a impact for about 8 mins(continously) or remove something like 100 lugnuts. The refills cost about $15 and can be done at any fire extinguisher supply store and many paintball and 4WD supply stores as well. It is also portable so if your buddies rig breaks in the middle of the trail, you can just carry it up and have him up and running in no time. It will also allow to reseat a broken bead, which is well beyond the capabilities of most compressors. The liquid state of the Co2 allows for much more volume than a comparable size air tank and is much safer than you think. The tank is only under about 300psi of pressure, which is just over twice what a air compressor will put out, NOTHING like a SCUBA type tank which can be 3000-5000 psi (steel DIN tanks). A Co2 tank will not shoot through the side of your rig even under the worst case of you whacking the valve clean off. Besides the fact that you can easily protect the valve from damage with a guard.

Oh well there's my $.02 and then some.


I do check my tank by weight before any trip. (the tank gauge is useless on a Co2 tank BTW it measures pressure which is constant! NOT liquid volume.).

But if I do happen to run out you know I love you guys with the bling onboard air compressor/tank set ups right?

Cheers

Vince
 

OldSven

Explorer
So what is the final verdict:confused: I am going to keep the compressor but as far as Co2 or Nitrogen which is the way to go? The Co2 seems to be around $15 to refill (but might be safer). Or there is Nitrogen which would be free to refill. I would go with a powertank except for the $300 price tag that comes with them.
 

david despain

Adventurer
ok i think i see where u are going with this. are u thinking that u could get the folks at costco to fill up your nitrogen bottle for you before you head out wheeling? if thats the case then no way, uhnuh, nope, this aint gonna work. heres why. i cant see them putting more than say about 100 psi in a tank for you. i just dont see how they could be capable of more than that and since some people report they wont even mount bigger tires for libility reasons they sure as heck arent gonna fill you up to 2000psi. with a bottle of approx the size u are talking about even at 100 psi i bet you wouldnt have enough to air up 4 off road size tires. you are gonna have to carry at least 1000 psi to be of any real use and i would really think more than that (2 grand maybe)if u ever wanted to run air tools. then not only would it be kinda dangerous it may even be illeageal with out the proper hazmat training and markings etc. this is one of the things that makes co2 so attractive; once its liquid there is only a few hundred psi of "air pressure" for lack of a better term on top of it in the tank. it for some reason u did rupture the tank it would just boil off very quickly and i bet loudly with out making a rocket out of the bottle.

it looks to me like that green bottle that someone posted earlier is an oxygen bottle and those are normally serviced to 1800 psi. that would probably be ok for a few tires but the bottle is kinda dangerous and nowhere that has that kinda pressure will fill it for free. at an airport the fee for nitrogen service ranges from 15-50$ sometimes more.

here is my opionion and its worth what u paid for it, co2. its easily sourced for fills, realitively cheap to assemble a tank set-up, safe as can be, portable to take to another vehicle to run tools or seat beads or fill tires, lots of high cfm flow at a great pressure. its main draw back is it can run out on you leaving you with out a way to air up. since you already have an elec back up compressor you have that base covered and so the tank cant leave you stranded.
there are cheaper sources than power tank for complete turn key packages, i dont have any links handy but im sure some one does. the big trade off between a good high end elec compressor and a co2 system for about the same money is you have to pay to fill the tank, but with elec you have to upgrade the electrical system and plumb in a storage tank and unless you spend a LOT of $$$ you still wont have the continuous high cfm flow of the co2.
there it is in a nut shell. hope it helps
 

OldSven

Explorer
Ok, so I'm sold on the Co2. Now for the tank, will that aluminum tank that I found earlier from the beverage palce be ok? I will just have to get the tank and a regulator. Thanks for the help.
 

madizell

Explorer
Something to keep in mind about running CO2. Maybe it will be important where you live and drive, maybe not.

Last winter here in Alaska one of the guys who was sold on CO2 went out to the glacier on a run, dropped a tire in a crevice and popped a bead. So, he drug out the CO2 to reseat the bead and found that his full tank of gas made just about no pressure. Certainly it made insufficient pressure to force his 38+ inch tire back on the rim. Tempertures were around -10f.

Mention was made above about the CO2 boiling off the top of the liquid. This happens, just like water, at different points depending on the combination of pressure and temperature. (Partial pressure is the term that sticks in my mind, but science class was in a different century). When it gets cold outside, the temperature of the tank drops to the boiling point of the CO2, less and less gas boils off, and then none. I don't remember the boiling point of CO2, but I think at low pressures it is somewhere between freezing (32 degrees) and room temperature. So, as long as the tank stays relatively warm, the system works fine. When it gets to freezing outside, the tank either won't produce much flow or pressure, or will stop entirely. Someone with a more scientific background could perhaps report on the operating temperature range of a liquid CO2 tank. I know that the guys here in Alaska tried for two hours to get the bead seated on the rim and failed using CO2. He had to borrow someone else's spare to drive out. No one thought of putting the tank inside the vehicle to warm it up first.

I know. In the desert it won't matter. But sometimes it gets cold there, too.
 
Last edited:

Forum statistics

Threads
185,533
Messages
2,875,610
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top