Nitrogen In Tyres

[bunting]

Hello. New to the forum and my Yaris Hybrid Trend is a week old today. I find that my local Halfords is offering to inflate my tyres with Nitrogen for about £3 a corner. Has anyone had any experience of this? Does it improve the mpg?

[Red Yaris 54]

Hello. New to the forum and my Yaris Hybrid Trend is a week old today. I find that my local Halfords is offering to inflate my tyres with Nitrogen for about £3 a corner. Has anyone had any experience of this? Does it improve the mpg?

Welcome to Toyota Owners Club

Filling tyres with Nitrogen means that your tyre pressure will remain correct for longer because the rate at which Nitrogen passes out the walls of your tyres is slower than oxygen.

ATS are currently charging just £1:25 per wheel which is much less than Halfords

[bunting]

Thank you

[FROSTYBALLS]

See: http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/safety/filling-tyres-with-nitrogen.html

[FROSTYBALLS]

By the way - welcome to Toyota Owners Club.

[Raistlin]

Hi, Welcome to the club... Enjoy

[bunting]

Thank you again, that will save me a couple of bob!

[Nick Brown]

Save yourself even more cash Dont do it.

You dont drive a plane its a yaris

you dont drive a racecar its a Yaris

just enjoy it.

welcome

[Bos]

As I understand it the air we breathe is approx. 75/80% nitrogen.

The molecules of oxygen, because they are smaller 'weep' through the tyre. So if you keep having to inflate the tyre (say every month) then eventually there will be a higher % of nitrogen. So is it worth any amount of cash to inflate with nitrogen by itself.

[Cyker]

You could instead fill the tyre with air from the air conditioner, which would also eliminate water!
Or you could put puncturesafe in the tyres and use any air you want with no air loss! :D (Although the downside is you may have to put up with the car vibrating like a very excited rabbit at motorway speeds... :D)

But yeah, I think the benefit is a lot less than the cost for this...

Anyway, 'tis a good thing to check tyre pressures regularly, or at least before motorway journeys!

[KermitTheYaris]

Waste of money imo.

Better to check you air pressures often with regular air than to pay for nitrogen in the hope that mpg will improve and that it will "last longer".

Also I know that Prius owners and others over inflate their tyres to improve mpg. Its not something I would recommend but they use regular air from what I know.

[alfiejts]

As I understand it, air expands and contracts as it gets warmer and cooler, so your tyre pressures will vary very slightly depending upon the outside temperature and also - as you drive your car - the pressures will rise as you drive faster and the friction of the air inside the tyre causes it to heat up slightly.

So that's why racing teams use nitroigen - because pure nitrogen doesn't expand and contract as much, so the tyre pressures stay the same both at the start of a race and all the way through it.

So the garages sell nitrogen because F1 teams use it and people will pay extra for it. In theory it means that your pressures stay the same and don't increase as you drive the car on a journey.

But then think about this a bit more; the manufacturers recommended pressures are quoted "cold" - so that when you check your pressures, you have a "stable reference point".

(If they quoted "hot" pressures and you checked them after a long journey, you can never tell just how much they've warmed up so it would be difficult to quote a pressure to check because you wouldn't know how warm they were and people wouldn't always be checking at the same temperature (town drives won't warm the tyres up as much as a motorway drive).

But - that means that the "cold" pressure that the manufacturers check aren't the actual pressures that the manufacturers think the tyres should be at when warm - because the manufacturers allow for the extra two or three PSI pressure that gets increased as the tyre warms up to operating temperature.

If you fill with Nitrogen - and set the pressure to the manufacturer quoted "cold" pressure - then on a long journey when the tyres warm up, because the pressure won't increase, you'll actually be running them at a lower pressure than the manufacturer has decided they should be run at.

So what should you do? Increase your Nitrogen pressures by 2 or 3 psi over the "air" pressures, so that both pressures are the same when warm?

Who knows - but given that the manufacturers have done a lot of work to test the cars on "air" and to tell you what pressure should be in them when cold, so that when you're running at 70mph on the motorway, they're at a "higher" but correct pressure, then I'll just stick with air so that I'm driving the car as the manufacturer designed it and not risk doing long motorway runs with a tyre pressure lower than they intended.

[FROSTYBALLS]

At the end of the day, tyre pressures are just a lot of hot, or cold, air.

[Catlover]

Well put together post, Graham

[t-spiritpete]

At the end of the day, tyre pressures are just a lot of hot, or cold, air.

It's left me feeling rather deflated .

[FROSTYBALLS]

Nitrogen has been increasing in price recently - suppose its inflation.

[Jag XFS]

I am having two new tyres fitting tomorrow(255/35/20R/97Y) at ATS I am thinking of asking them to put Nitrogen in the other two if possible

[Jag XFS]

I had two tyres fitted today at ats who put Nitrogen in them and the other two tyres on my car( at no extra cost) I don't know if its imagination but the ride feels firmer now

[FROSTYBALLS]

... or did ATS put too much nitrogen in?

[Jag XFS]

thats a good point I will check you would think that the professionals would know better than me but you could be right

[majik max]

f1 cars started nitrogen filling tyres for fire safety reasons you watch burning tyres when thy burst air causes fireball nitrogen helps put out fire . the other slight benefits are just are just used by your tyre fitters to sell you a product thats mostly in the air anyway.