Has anybody used nitrogen in their tires on a turbo? I understand it does a much better job of maintaining tire pressure. If so, can I just use regular nitrogen available at welding supply companies? Does anybody sell "plumbing kits" to transfer the nitrogen from the tank to the tire?

 

I too am considering this. btw, nice color and awesome wheels....

 

I use nitrogen on my track tires. tire temp doesnt heat up as much during a 20 min session.

 

I picked up a N2 Cylinder and N2 and regulator on ebay for my new garage

Tank is 110 cu ft

Coil 50 ft Hose

Airchuck has a built in gauge...

All for 225.00

My air presssure last over amonth now

I mounted the cylinder against the wall with a tank wall mount..

You can find some more portibleat powertank.com

Gee-Bee

P.S. Big O Tire has a nitrogen lifetime program for 24.95 per auto.

 

Education is key. Read then decide for yourself if paying extra to fill up your tires is worth it or distilled snake oil.

https://secure.powertank.com/truth.or.hype

 

That was good information...but I spent at least $24.95 of my time reading it. I've had N2 in my TT tires for over 15 months now and during the entire time the pressures have remained constant measured using a pretty good manual gauge and TPMS. For that alone, I like it.

 

Like I said, decide for yourself. I'm not pretending to know all about it to say one way or another.
I know that Nitrogen is used in certain applications and they do it for a reason. My point simply is that I wonder if it's truly worth it for the average person driving to work every day. If you are a daily tracker, then there may be some advantage, but for the most part it seems N2 isn't increasingly helpful for normal situations.

And I'm sorry it cost you 24.95 to read the article.

 

I am in the trucking business running hundreds of tires that run more in a month than most most Porsches run in a year and we believe putting nitrogen in tires is essentially useless.

 

Good article StradaONE8 and spot on regarding the behavior of ideal gases. At typical automotive tire operating pressures and temperatures (even at track conditions), the gas used to inflate a tire will behave as an ideal gas (i.e., quite predictably). Air, pure oxygen, and pure nitrogen will all have a compressibility factor essentially equal to one (1) at these conditions. Also note that “air” is actually already about 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen (with traces of other gases such as CO2).

I also took a look at a couple of heat capacity correlations for pure oxygen and pure nitrogen. For you non-technical types, the heat capacity for any material (gas, liquid, or solid) is the amount of heat input (BTUs) required to raise the temperature of one lb of that material by one degree F. Oxygen and nitrogen (and of course, air) have nearly identical heat capacities at typical tire conditions. Thus, a given amount of frictional heat generated by a tire on a road surface would result in essentially the same temperature rise of the gas inside the tire. Air and nitrogen also have very similar heat transfer coefficients so the ability of the tire to absorb or release heat should be the same with either.
If the compressed air were not well dried, this would actually mitigate the temperature rise. Water vapor actually has a higher heat capacity than either air or nitrogen so the presence of water vapor would result in less temperature rise for a given heat input compared to dry nitrogen.
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At say 100 degF and 40 psig, there would be about 0.384 lb-mass of dry nitrogen or 0.395 lb of dry air inside a rear tire on a stock TT. So there is not any significant weight difference either that would explain differences in tire performance or handling with different gases.
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As a chemical engineer I just had to prove it to myself and based on the above, I have a hard time believing that using pure nitrogen has any real advantage over good quality compressed air. As John Adams said “Facts are stubborn things”.

 

I used to run nitrogen on the street and a couple of track events. Honestly I think if you have proper rims/valve stems losing air pressure isnt really an issue, and I couldnt see a difference in temps at the track either, it may have been a bit cooler, but not enough to see a dramatic difference.

Plus they have air everywhere, and with the amount of air that I bleed during a track event it would be just an added hassle to fill up with nitrogen when its time to go home.

 

Hard to argue with the test results in the link but it is odd that my Denali is the only car that I have never had to top up with air every 3 months or so. The shop that mounted my wheels put nitrogen in without asking me so I said what the heck. It's been almost a year now and the psi is dead on when they were mounted. Just coincidence I guess.

 

its such a coincidence that this thread has come up now, i just had my tires filled with nitrogen yesterday as i got fed up of the tire pressure monitor coming up every once in a while. Its just been 1 day from when i used nitrogen, so i cant really comment on how effective it is in eliminating ordinary air leakage, however i would be observing it closely in the coming month.

when i turned up with my car at the tyre shop and asked for nitrogen fill-up, the guy working there told me that he would not recommend nitrogen for my porsche, his reason was that it keeps your tires cooler and i would need warm tires for added traction, i still insisted on filling up with it (how much cooler could it be with aggressive driving and a hot climate afterall).

 

i've been told that it's good for hot climates

 

I try. You have a much firmer grasp of the physics involved than I do.

I thought it'd be useful for people to read the science behind it and not just what someone says about it with a financial bias, so they can charge you money for something you hardly need.

Perhaps helium...?
They do fill racing bicycle tires with it...

 

Great info on the nitrogen.


Been thinking long and hard on doing this. My local Porsche has a deal for $79 for all 4 tires for a lifetime of nitrogen.

The jury is still out on this for me and I ll wait til I see more empirical results from the ones that use it.

My tires have been down only once in a year.


Cabman