Nitrogen has long been used in aircraft tires and in the tires of race cars. Its use in average road cars and trucks is new and controversial.
Do you think nitrogen instead of air is worth the added expense?

 

The real advantage to Nitrogen, up here anyway, is two things. One, there is no water moisture in it. When it gets cold up here, the tiny amount of water in the air, turns into ice, and tears the insides of tires to shreds. The second, is that it doesn't change pressure with temp changes. Is you out 56 pound sin at 80 above, then its still 56 pounds at 60 below. They use it in trailer tires mostly from what I have seen.

 

As a service tech, Nitrogen inflated tires are a pain in the butt. Regular gauges don't work right, and when a tire gets under inflated, I can't easily re inflate it. Plus I can't imagine how TPMS sensors react to the lower pressure but equal volume of air ... I mean TPMS sensors are calibrated to read regular air PSI instead of pure Nitrogen PSI, right?

I dunno. Seems like a fad/gimmick thing for passenger tires anyways. Plus with the amount of road debris I pull out of car tires every day, it really isn't worth the extra cash to pay for Nitrogen tires. Not for car tires anyways ...

 

To me, nitrogen is mostly valuable for high performance tires that are being used in a track. For normal driving, air is enough.

 

A typical truck tire with two retreads costs $480.00 and lasts approximately 270,000 miles. Inflating tires with nitrogen will help to prevent premature casing failure and allow tires to be retread multiple times, with confidence and reliability. Tires filled with nitrogen maintain pressure for a much longer period of time than tires filled with air. So I think nitrogen is better as compared to air.

 

some n2 systems don't fully evacuate the tire anyway. The ones that do, as soon as it goes in for service, you can bet most technicians top up with shop air.


Does anyone think a flat rate mechanic is going to take the time, on a 0.3 oil change, to locate a n2 outlet and properly top up these tires....Or if you have a truck with different pressure requirement front to rear for tire rotations.


I wouldn't do it if I had to pay for this service.