lol i'm lost. good discussion though.

PV=nRT

osuuma said:Alternative gases for tire inflation:

CH4 - Methane - You can tell your tire is leaking because of the cow toot smell
H2S - Hydrogen Sulfide - How do you want your eggs? Sunny side up, scrambled, or ROTTEN!
O2 - Oxygen - Get stoned legally.
C3H8 - Propane - "Burn"-outs are the real thing!
H2 - Hydrogen - "Oh, the humanity!!!"
Ne - Neon - With clear tires and high voltage, they glow!
CO2 - Carbon Dioxide - Help the environment by containing green-house gases.
CCl2F2 - Freon - Even if your tires are bald, cupped, and falling apart, they are still "cool".

CH4 doesn't smell.

why are so many morons here? in the industry, crude nitrogen was prepared by cooling the air to below -200C, slightly warming up will vaporize nitrogen (-196C) and leaving crude oxygen (-183C) as a liquid. a lot of rare gas was also separated in similar ways.


hubcaps said:In this months popular mechanics jay leno wrote about using nitrogen, and it's supposedly not that expensive any more. There's a new machine that extracts the nitrogen from air, so no need for trucking in nitrogen. I don't know the purity of it though. The article/editorial wasn't too technical. He wrote when he does burn out and stuff with nitrogen and the tire pressure would remain the same. I'm not sure with cars, but on a motorcycle I could feel the difference with just a few psi difference due to tire/air temp. I think with cars it is more obvious with the mpg.

jujubee02 said:where do you go in the costco to get this done? the customer service part or the tire installation place outside?

i'm waiting on an answer for this also.

doing it yourself would be nice for refills but if they do it at the customer service part that'd be cool too since they can put your car on jacks, fully deflate your tires, and then refill it w/ the nitrogen.

someone listed arizona as having a recovery fee of $4 per tire. any other states have similiar fees? particularly interested in ca.

nomenclature said:jujubee02 said:where do you go in the costco to get this done? the customer service part or the tire installation place outside?

i'm waiting on an answer for this also.

doing it yourself would be nice for refills but if they do it at the customer service part that'd be cool too since they can put your car on jacks, fully deflate your tires, and then refill it w/ the nitrogen.

someone listed arizona as having a recovery fee of $4 per tire. any other states have similiar fees? particularly interested in ca.

I am in SoCal (L.A.) and no mention of any kind of fees (I personally asked the manager, he confirmed it FREE). If there IS a fee, then it is really STUPID. We do not put anything harmful into the air, just pure nitrogen!
You have to bring your car into the tire center for fill/refill!

Nitrogen is actually cheap.

How do you get the air in the tire to be 100% nitrogen? You can't really deflate the tire completely to remove the 21% ambient oxygen because the tire is mounted in room air, unless you have the tire mount in a nitrogen filled room.

karnalz28 said:"You have got to be kidding. Basic science: the "heat" of any tire at highway speeds cannot blow a tire! Look at a steam table. From 5 deg C to 60 deg C at 100% rel humid only causes a Max of 8% increase in presure.
"

Actually, what happens is if your tire pressure is low, your sidewall tends to flex more. As the sidewall flexes back and forth, back and forth, the heat buildup in the sidewall can cause the side to literally "melt" away. I should know, I've had it happen - at 25mph, my tire lost air from a nail or something. When I stopped (for a smoke break), I looked in my rearview mirror to see smoke rising up. Went to the back of the car (rear wheel drive v8, didn't notice it) and my tire was pretty friggin warm... and the sidewall had a nice crease the whole way around from heating up so much.

Kinda sucked, seeing the tires were 120$ a piece. Oh well.... That's not the point of this thread though.

Just fill up with air and check once a month. And make sure you're not leaking from your valve stems - go buy a valve stem tightener and a 4 pack of valve stems just in case....


Finally somebody who talks from experience. When tires are underinflated the contact surface with the road forms a concavity causing the sidewalls to flex in a direction the side belting was not designed for. Sidewalls, for the most part, are not supposed to flex (got my nice 18R35 specifically for less flexing and better lateral rigidity). The walls disintegrate from sheering forces and the tires starts smoking. I've done this to 3 tires so far so I really don't care if I die sometimes after a 36 hour call shift wahaha (seriously who wants to patch a tire instead of sleeping).

O2 is not that expensive. Just find a neighbor with some bad COPD and borrow one of his tanks hehe. N2 is not that cheaper than O2. Some hospitals actually have their own on site generation facilities so you can actually buy N2 or O2 as you want from them (USC County sells both at cheap rates to public).

Just fill with regular air and try not to drive on shoulders and pick up nails and the like...


PS: For all the chemists - who gets a kick out of saying SN2 "BACKSIDE" reaction? Just me?

I just read this entire thread, and now my head hurts from all the crap posted in this thread both scientific and not.

I'm gonna go fill up my coffin with helium and talk like Michey Mouse while they bury me alive because my head is gonna explode.