Nitrogen Filled Tires

[grover96]

Anyone know anything about using nitrogen to fill your tires? I was at Costco the other day and they had a huge banner proclaiming that they only used nitrogen in their tire department and how this was a better method. It said something about better performance, longer life and better milage. Now I know about nitrogen and beer :D , but nitrogen and rubber...

[WagonRX]

I used nitrogen in my race bike back in the day and the gas is more stable. The differance from hot and cold psi were not as much as with just air. I also has zero moisture as well. I don't think it will make a differance on a street car.

Russell

[Denlasoul]

Nitrogen is lighter than oxygen. So that would effect perfomance and such. Dont know about how long it would last compared to oxygen, but I'd think they are similar.

[Renn 208]

lighter isn't really going to matter much...but as mentioned earlier, N2 is not as succeptable to temp changes as plain air. All race cars use N2 to minimize changes in pressure.

On a street car it's really not necessary as street tires are pretty forgiving. But hey, if costco offers it at no additional charge...why not? The claims about performance and longer life really only relate to keeping correct pressures in the tires. With regular checking, you can do the same thing with the free air at the local gas station.

Also, typically for a race tire setup, tire techs carefully overinflate then move to optimal pressures in a cycle to minimize changes in the tires under race conditions.

edit: A bit of a revision, as there has been much debate elsewhere on N2 in tires....It all boils down to two things:

1. Moisture Content (N2 is dryer than straight air, and less water leads to less pressure fluctuation)

2. Convenience...it's typically easier to get a bottle of N2 than to go through the process of drying and compressing air.

That's about it, dry air should perform exactly the same as N2 in the tires.