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:
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