nitrogen in tires

Kerry Montgomery said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:
http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm

Costco uses nitrogen in their tire center, and there's no extra charge
for it. It cuts down on failures and on mileage related warranty claims.

I doubt if bicycle tires would receive the same benefits.

Kerry Montgomery said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:
http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm
Kerry

Doesn't this come up about every other month here?

"SMS" wrote: Costco uses nitrogen in their tire center, and there's no
extra charge

Quoted message said:

for it. It cuts down on failures and on mileage related warranty claims.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I doubt that there is any actual benefit. I can think of only two reasons
that Costco would use nitrogen:
1.) Someone in Costco's purchasing or marketing organization actually
believes these claims.
2.) Someone in Costco's marketing department thinks the customers will
believe these claims.

Out of respect for those who are already tired of these discussions, I will
not go into it further.

"vey" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Kerry Montgomery said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:
http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm
Kerry

Doesn't this come up about every other month here?

Yep, but this was the first commercial site I'd seen with any info on it.
Sorry if it brought up an old subject, but it's at least technical, and
doesn't deal with whether someone is a liar or not.
Kerry

Kerry Montgomery said:

I've heard both aquaplane and hydroplane in American English referring to
car tires lifting off the road on a film of water. Hydroplane seems to be
the only term used to refer to big speedboats like Miss Budweiser.
Kerry

This has nothing to do with nitrogen tires either.

you want me to read this Kerry?

WHY?

___
http://wind-car.go-here.nl

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:58:16 -0800, "Kerry Montgomery"

may have said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:
http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm

Snake oil, pure and simple. If you read that site's propaganda
carefully and check their statements, you'll discover tthat there are
gross factual errors.

Note that the site is owned by Air Products, a supplier of compressed
gases. (At times like this, I miss NCG; they may have been less than
cordial at times, but they knew their business and didn't resort to
[censored].)

The whole N2-fill subject was debated to death here a couple of months
ago. Nitrogen fills have one critical reason for being advantageous
in heavy trucks and aircraft, and that reason does not exist outside
those two environments. Pure nitrogen as an inflation gas in
preference to simple compressed air has no measurable value in
automobiles or bicycles at all. Promoting it as having some special
properties that will make tires last forever (which is what some of
the claims seem to be implying in some of the statements I've seen)
carries the distinct likelihood of causing people to defer
repressurizing an underinflated tire until they can get to a location
where an N2 fill is possible...which is a mistake (and a potentially
serious one) 100% of the time.

Even in the trucking industry, the maxim is "Inflate with nitrogen IF
AVAILABLE, but NEVER run underinflated." (And since every truck has
an on-board air compressor and a hose that can be used to reinflate
the tires, you'd better believe that they use air for maintenance most
of the time.)

I strongly recommend AGAINST following the advice of the site
mentioned, and I even more strongly recommend AGAINST pointing the
uninformed at it. The world has an oversupply of mindless fanatics
seeking nirvana through meaningless and questionable practices now; we
don't need to increase their numbers.

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail.
Typoes are not a bug, they're a feature.
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Kerry Montgomery said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm
Kerry

it is not all that great. nitrogen makes the tire work cooler, so
there is less grip and traction.i would not wanna have less traction
on my road bike
carlos
http://www.bikingthings.com

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

it is not all that great. nitrogen makes the tire work cooler, so
there is less grip and traction.

Eh? There's no way it does anything like that.

Think about what air is...

cheers,
clive

Kerry Montgomery said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:
http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm
Kerry

The web site makes the claim that oxygen migrates through tire rubber
four times faster than nitrogen. Starting at first inflation nitrogen
comprises 78% of the gas filling a tire. Each time you top up a tire
thereafter you're adding mostly nitrogen (78%) to a mixture becoming
more and more nitrogen rich. One can easily see that with age the gas
in one's tires asymptotically approaches 100% nitrogen. ;-)

--
jeverett3<AT>sbcglobal<DOT>net (John V. Everett)

John Everett said:

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:58:16 -0800, "Kerry Montgomery"

Quoted message said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:
http://www.ultrafill.com/consumer/index.htm
Kerry

The web site makes the claim that oxygen migrates through tire rubber
four times faster than nitrogen. Starting at first inflation nitrogen
comprises 78% of the gas filling a tire. Each time you top up a tire
thereafter you're adding mostly nitrogen (78%) to a mixture becoming
more and more nitrogen rich. One can easily see that with age the gas
in one's tires asymptotically approaches 100% nitrogen.  ;-)

--
jeverett3<AT>sbcglobal<DOT>net      (John V. Everett)

Wonderful! That's the sort of info I can use. Wait til my gadget
conscious buddies hear I use "asymptotically derived nitrogen" in my
tires!

Joseph

"John Everett" The web site makes the claim that oxygen migrates through
tire rubber

Quoted message said:

four times faster than nitrogen. Starting at first inflation nitrogen
comprises 78% of the gas filling a tire. Each time you top up a tire
thereafter you're adding mostly nitrogen (78%) to a mixture becoming
more and more nitrogen rich. One can easily see that with age the gas
in one's tires asymptotically approaches 100% nitrogen. ;-)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
By the same token, a person who buys tires at Costco, for example, starts
out with almost pure nitrogen in the tire. Typically, that person will top
up the tires with air for the rest of the tire life. So the nitrogen
concentration decreases, and asymptotically approaches the asyptote in your
paragraph.

Has anyone ever kept and reported tire inflation data comparing the top-up
frequency requirements for tires filled with air vs. nitrogen? I doubt it.

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:45:51 GMT, "Leo Lichtman"

may have said:

"John Everett" The web site makes the claim that oxygen migrates through
tire rubber

Quoted message said:

four times faster than nitrogen. Starting at first inflation nitrogen
comprises 78% of the gas filling a tire. Each time you top up a tire
thereafter you're adding mostly nitrogen (78%) to a mixture becoming
more and more nitrogen rich. One can easily see that with age the gas
in one's tires asymptotically approaches 100% nitrogen. ;-)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
By the same token, a person who buys tires at Costco, for example, starts
out with almost pure nitrogen in the tire. Typically, that person will top
up the tires with air for the rest of the tire life. So the nitrogen
concentration decreases, and asymptotically approaches the asyptote in your
paragraph.

Has anyone ever kept and reported tire inflation data comparing the top-up
frequency requirements for tires filled with air vs. nitrogen? I doubt it.

Actually, several truck fleet operators I used to visit maintained
such logs when evaluating which of a selection of tires to purchase
based on samples obtained. It was quite important to them to minimize
the air loss rate, and if a given tire's compound proved more porous
in actual use than another, the information would make a big
difference in their decision. In point of fact, they found that air
loss rates for various brands varied by a considerable range, and
*all* of them lost air at a rate which indicated that mere
permeability of gases was secondary to other mechanisms in the
results. These tracking efforts were undertaken about 20 years ago; I
haven't been in touch with the folks involved much since, but I ran
into one of them a couple of months back. I asked about his
experience with the new tires, and whether the nitrogen fills were
making a difference. He said that they had, as is now recommended,
swapped over to N2 fills for their trucks when replacing the tire or
performing a service that required deflation in the shop, but they
hadn't seen any difference *at all* in the pressure loss rate after
the change.

The only change he had seen was that a few less tires were
exploding...but it hadn't stopped. Given the usual scenario that
obtains which leads to such an explosion, that's hardly surprising.
It is only a risk when a tire is run underinflated, and the drivers
are largely pretty good about checking inflation frequently (as in, at
least once per day). If a noticeable inflation loss short of a flat
is present, it is very likely due to a still-embedded puncture. The
driver will almost always reinflate with onboard compressed air in
that case, and proceed on his run; repair will happen after the run.
(If the tire is nearly flat, and he feels it's already unsafe to
continue, he'll call for road service to come to his location and
patch or replace the tire...but as he's not making any money when he's
standing still, the drivers tend to avoid doing that if at all
possible.) If the puncture leaks enough, the tire will get a quick
refll of compressed air several times, bringing the O2 content up to
external levels...and if the leakage rate is enough to case pressure
sag to the pouint that the tire overheats badly before the next stop,
an explosion can still happen.

Car and bike tires simply can't get hot enough for this to be a
problem.

If N2 loss rates through a tire were low enough that using 100% N2 was
going to make a big difference, a tire that was originally inflated to
100 psi would sag to about 80 psi and then lose pressure much more
gradually. My experience, on my van and cars, is that pressure loss
is far more linear well past the 20% loss point, so I have no
confidence that permeability of the tire compounds is the majority of
the cause of pressure loss. In particular, the rear tires on my van,
which require 80psi as the running pressure, regularly sag about 5 to
6psi per week until they reach 45 to 50 psi, after which it slows to
about 4 to 5 psi per week. (The van spends several months of each
year unused during the period when I'm not on the road to
conventions.)

The whole "Use Pure Nitrogen To Inflate Your Tires" thing for purposes
other than explosion reduction is based entirely on theoretical
considerations, not real world results. In theory, theory and
practice should mirror one another; in practice, this is seldom the
case.

Oh, lovely. My case fan just started smoking. Later!

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail.
Typoes are not a bug, they're a feature.
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BTW, is there a good reason why inflator cartridges contain CO2 rather
than N2? (My initial guess would be that CO2 cartridges for soda
siphons were widely available back when the thing was invented and
it just kind of stuck.)

On 30 Jan 2008 21:00:17 +0200, [email hidden] (A R:nen) may

have said:

BTW, is there a good reason why inflator cartridges contain CO2 rather
than N2? (My initial guess would be that CO2 cartridges for soda
siphons were widely available back when the thing was invented and
it just kind of stuck.)

In part, the simple availability is doubtless a major factor, but not
the only one.

CO2 has a much higher condensation temperature than N2 and most other
atmospheric gases. As a result, a much greater mass of CO2 can be
contained at a much lower pressure than would be required for air or
N2. This means that a CO2 cartridge can be much smaller, lighter and
cheaper than an equivalent N2 or air tank would be.

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Typoes are not a bug, they're a feature.
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Werehatrack said:

On 30 Jan 2008 21:00:17 +0200, [email hidden] (A R:nen) may

have said:

BTW, is there a good reason why inflator cartridges contain CO2 rather
than N2? (My initial guess would be that CO2 cartridges for soda
siphons were widely available back when the thing was invented and
it just kind of stuck.)

In part, the simple availability is doubtless a major factor, but not
the only one.

CO2 has a much higher condensation temperature than N2 and most other
atmospheric gases.  As a result, a much greater mass of CO2 can be
contained at a much lower pressure than would be required for air or
N2.  This means that a CO2 cartridge can be much smaller, lighter and
cheaper than an equivalent N2 or air tank would be.

--
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Typoes are not a bug, they're a feature.
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Where does the CO2 in cartridges come from? Where does the CO2 in
commercial sodas, etc come from? This came up in a recent discussion
about relative car emmisions.

Joseph

Werehatrack said:

...
Oh, lovely. My case fan just started smoking. Later!

How not to deal with the situation:
<http://www.thebunnysystem.com/?stripID=577&month=1&year=2008&nav=1>.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

aka Joseph Santaniello said:

...
Where does the CO2 in cartridges come from? Where does the CO2 in
commercial sodas, etc come from? This came up in a recent discussion
about relative car emmisions.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Industrial_production>.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

In article <[email hidden]>,

Werehatrack said:

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:58:16 -0800, "Kerry Montgomery"

may have said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:

[...]

Quoted message said:

Snake oil, pure and simple. If you read that site's propaganda
carefully and check their statements, you'll discover tthat there are
gross factual errors.

Note that the site is owned by Air Products, a supplier of compressed
gases. (At times like this, I miss NCG; they may have been less than
cordial at times, but they knew their business and didn't resort to
[censored].)

The whole N2-fill subject was debated to death here a couple of months
ago. Nitrogen fills have one critical reason for being advantageous
in heavy trucks and aircraft, and that reason does not exist outside
those two environments. Pure nitrogen as an inflation gas in
preference to simple compressed air has no measurable value in
automobiles or bicycles at all. Promoting it as having some special
properties that will make tires last forever (which is what some of
the claims seem to be implying in some of the statements I've seen)
carries the distinct likelihood of causing people to defer
repressurizing an underinflated tire until they can get to a location
where an N2 fill is possible...which is a mistake (and a potentially
serious one) 100% of the time.

Automobile racers use N2 tire inflation advantageously.
The tires react uniformly and predictably to heat
compared to compressed atmosphere inflation. The atmosphere
has a varying fraction of H2O and that will make for
different pressure/temperature behavior.

--
Michael Press

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:05:36 -0800, Michael Press <[email hidden]>

may have said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Werehatrack said:

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:58:16 -0800, "Kerry Montgomery"

may have said:

Hello all,
Here's a web site touting the benefits of nitrogen in auto tires - may or
may not relate to bicycles:

[...]

Quoted message said:

Snake oil, pure and simple. If you read that site's propaganda
carefully and check their statements, you'll discover tthat there are
gross factual errors.

Note that the site is owned by Air Products, a supplier of compressed
gases. (At times like this, I miss NCG; they may have been less than
cordial at times, but they knew their business and didn't resort to
[censored].)

The whole N2-fill subject was debated to death here a couple of months
ago. Nitrogen fills have one critical reason for being advantageous
in heavy trucks and aircraft, and that reason does not exist outside
those two environments. Pure nitrogen as an inflation gas in
preference to simple compressed air has no measurable value in
automobiles or bicycles at all. Promoting it as having some special
properties that will make tires last forever (which is what some of
the claims seem to be implying in some of the statements I've seen)
carries the distinct likelihood of causing people to defer
repressurizing an underinflated tire until they can get to a location
where an N2 fill is possible...which is a mistake (and a potentially
serious one) 100% of the time.

Automobile racers use N2 tire inflation advantageously.
The tires react uniformly and predictably to heat
compared to compressed atmosphere inflation. The atmosphere
has a varying fraction of H2O and that will make for
different pressure/temperature behavior.

Some racers use it, but not all, and the SCCA folks I know report that
the ones who have tried it found zero difference in their results.

One should always beware of published claims of a Great Advantage in a
given piece of tech in racing; the tradition there is to baldly lie
about such matters both to conceal what's actually being done that's
not discussed, and to cause the competition to waste time and money on
things that have been tried and which don't work. And, to be honest,
some of them use N2 because they've discovered that a high-pressure N2
bottle with a regulator is an easy way to run impact wrenches for fast
tire changes...and they'd use the same hose, and therefore the same
gas, for tire inflation in any event.

That which actually works in racing, and which isn't mandatory
according to the rules, is generally not going to be disclosed.

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail.
Typoes are not a bug, they're a feature.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.