Anyone here use nitrogen in their tires?? Supposedly it doesn't expand with heat like regular air does, so you would set your pressures differently I would imagine... Just wondering cause my buddy has a nitrogen compressor at his work and was gonna put it in his tires. If anybody does use it, how do you handle your PSI at the track???
nitrogen still expands with heat, it just does so consistently since there is no moisture in it like compressed air. I use it since Stough, the Michelin guy at Loudon, fill tires with nitrogen.
If you're using dry air nitrogen won't improve anything worth the effort of doing it. If you have some moisture in the air in the tire the pressure rise versus the actual tire temp would be different. But if you set your pressures hot and monitor them hot pressures you would never know any way....
As far as I'm concerned if the F1 guys think it works, it works... BUT "normal" compressed air out of 99.9% of everybody's air compressors has too much water vapor and when that vapor heats up the tire pressure goes WAY up, so unless you are willing to ride on underinflated tires and wait for the pressures to climb to whatever level you need for proper traction, the less water vapor the better. Dry nitrogen as opposed to regular nitrogen has almost no water vapor and allows/causes tire pressures to stay as close to optimum as possible. Plus it costs lots of money for the gear and you get to look way cool (AND run your airguns off the nitrogen tank too).
i use CO2. the molecules are larger and the theory is, it won't leak through the tire as soon as other gasses..big whoop tho' cuz if anything leaks out, you're prolly not doing any maintenance. BUT, that's not the reason i use it. i use it cuz it's not stored in a cylinder with 2000-4000 psi on tap. typical cylinder psi for CO2 is 700-800...inherently safer and prolly cheaper but i don't know, i don't buy N.
I use nitrogen, I've leased a small bottle of it that lasts me the whole season of racing and street riding. You guys hit it right with the humidity in the air supply causing the pressure rise; it's funny watching guys at the track change their tires slopping many many ounces of soapy water into them and then filling them. Using nitrogen is good just watch how you mount your tires as not induce to much moisture into the assembly.
