I don't recommend liquid nitrogen. I'll make your tires shatter.

 

I usually take a deep breath and blow into the valve

 

Hilarious thread.

Nitrogen is a waste of money compared to dry air. Main benefit from nitrogen is it is dry and therefore less corrosive than wet air. Additional benefits from heat dispersion and O2 degradation of the inside of the tire (remember the outside always touches air unless you drive in an N2 bubble) is limited for normal road going vehicles, although some fleet truckers swear by N2.

I actually work for an industrial gas company and do not use N2 in my tires, nor do we use N2 in our fleets as all studies we did showed minimal if any benefits and certainly none that outweighed the costs.

 

Well then, why is it so heavily used in many forms of racing and the airline industry? There are advantages to N2 over o2...or so I've read. I'm no scientist, but the N2 molecule is supposed to be somewhat larger than the o2 molecule...thus taking a longer time to escape through the rubber, and allowing one to maintain proper tire pressures for a longer period of time. ANY moisture containted between a tire and the rim will degrade the tire over time ...more quickly than a tire with no moisture. Moisture also causes the tire to heat more than an N2 filled tire...causing larger pressure variations. Finally, I'm told that repeated use of "regular" air will slowly corrode the TPMS sensors.

At any rate, how does one go about getting "dry" air?

 

I think the biggest deal with N2 is that since it is a pure gas, the effect of temperature and pressure can be accurately predicted (unlike air)

So racing teams etc use it because they can make accurate models to predict what will happen in terms of tire psi as the race goes.

For common cars (even tracked once a week), N2 is overkill ... (much like huge rear spoiler wings )

 

its all just marketing. unless you get it for free its a waste of money. only places ive seen it are costco and wal mart. if you want your own supply of nitrogen, you could probably buy a tank of it at a compressed gas supplier, or welding supplier. youll have to put a deposit on a tank(usually 200-300) and pay for the nitrogen in the tank which is preety cheap(probably $20 or something like that).

just go buy something thats actually an improvement instead

 

So it's not necessarily that N2 doesn't have advantages over "air"...it's that there is a perceived (or perhaps even real) notion that using it instead of air is like killing mosquitos with machine guns.

As long as it's easy for me to get N2 added to my tires, I will stick with N2.

BTW, I LOVE those big *** wings on FWD cars. That's always good for a nice hearty laugh. I've seen so many nice cars get defaced by the BWS (Big Wing Syndrome).

 

Speaking of laughing at other people's cars...When I see Hummers, I always like to laugh and make the little ***** sign with my thumb and forefinger...I'm sure it'll probably get me killed some day, but I just can't help it. lol

 

Try powertank.com (http://www.powertank.com/), my co-worker use it for his new off-road FJ. I saw it in person when he deflated and inflated his tires just like that. CO2 is safer and cheaper to refil i think. I think 1 small tank can do up to 40 tires before you refill the gas again.

 

The powertank stuff is pretty cool. If I was offroading, a canister of the CO2 would be damned handy.

For anyone that wants dry air 'on the cheap' go to and look at "point of use dryers". The dessicant snake is $20, and works like a champ. I spent the extra $20 to get a humidity indicator so I know when the snake stops working.

 

This has been a really interesting thread... Thanks for posting the powertank site...they had some very good information there.

N2 AIR C02 Truth v Hype

 

 

I never purchased anything. My dealer checks the pressure whenever I bring the car for service.

 

how little mileage do people do that they have to worry about tire corrosion?
if it were a 10 year old car on stock tires maybe, but for the 2 or 3 years tires usually last, it shouldn't be an issue.