raGTopper

I think nitrogen pressurized car tires is a bunch of hot air. hooey plain and simple

First of all, good old air is 78% nitrogen ... so you get 78% of any benefit for free !
Thats a passing grade. And if you don't purge the tire at first fill, you dont have pure nitrogen anyway

I've encountered various reasons like "nitrogen molecule size is larger than oxygen"... well um OK yeah , but the inter-ionic radius difference is like 70 nanometers compared to 66 nanometers (NANOMETERS = 10^-9 , thats really small, people). Most tire leaks about the size of a screw , a bad fill valve or a poor rim bead. And if the oxygen is rushing out THROUGH the rubber by diffusion, fill the tire up a couple times and by process of elimination, you might obtain decent quality nitrogen. Maybe you can even sell the purified stuff to a rube! And if the oxygen diffusion rate is so dang high, the low partial pressure (lack of) oxygen INSIDE the tire will cause pesky oxygen OUTSIDE the tire - remember the rest of the world is crawling with it - to be in a rage to get inside. ! Diffusion is a two way street.

Flammability / reactivity ? when was the last time you saw a car tire burning (on the inside), before the car was on fire to begin with ? A tire heats up a couple dozen degrees tops under the worst conditions of hot highway. You have more things to worry about than this. The main source of corrosion inside a tire is water. Poorly maintained air compressors can blow some water into a tire. So can poorly maintained nitrogen systems. You might notice the fill valve sputtering water droplets on some really bad systems. Don't use them. The tiny amount of invisible water vapor leftover after a compression / expansion cycle isn't much a threat. Does oxygen react with tire rubber ? Yes but tires wear out before this could ever matter, or this will occur from the outside anyway in extremely old tires ( about >6 to 10 years if a tire is not used regularly, a regularly used tire could almost never make it that long )


Heat capacity ? pressure vrs. temperature response ? ALmost egligible if you arent landing jets on a carrier deck.

FooFoo dust ? NOW we are on to something.

The real reason is that cylinders of pressurized nitrogen is cheap and plentiful and easy to obtain by any shop, and if nitrogen suckers are born every minute, there is a profit to be made.

Save the umpteen dollars on a N2 fill, blow a few of those bucks on a decent air gauge, check your tires with it, I dunno, say, every month, and casually look over your tire's shape as often as you can while approaching the car, looking for differences (a developing flat) .

PS your name isnt really Windy is it ? that would be too cool

Zoom_H

heh sorry about the 5 months late reply, but yes the 2010 Mustangs use the valve stem type TPMS sensors instead of the rim-strap type from the 05-09 Mustangs, and thanks to your post you just verified my suspicion that they're indeed incompatible systems (ie I can't use an '07 sensor with my '10 Mustang)

nateCR

costco does nitrogen for free.... also their straps are 14-16 bucks, there was a question earlyer about if the light comes on if over infalted... yes normally the 6% applies to both under and over... if you have any questions pm me, i work on this stuff alll day long at a costco tire center...

nateCR

ok, normally say at my work, it should be between 93-97% pure, now the auto inflaters at costco will bring the tire to pressure, then take it down to 15% of the specified pressure then refill this helps it to be as pure as possible....... now also once it is flitered, its less likly to cause wheel corrsion...

Jazzer The Cat

Was down in AZ this weekend and rented a car that has TMPS. Turns out, that little light came on the dash and my first thoughts were "damn, I hate nanny items on cars" I stopped and took a look at my tires. Sho nuff... the drivers rear was low.

Was a pretty cool thing since I was on a dirt road and was not obvious the tire was low.

Jazzer

JeremyAlan

I did not read through the whole thread, only first and last page.

But my .02 cents on n2 in tires is because the TPMS is an electronic device and there is less moisture present in the nitrogen gas. but I'm not 100% sure on that. I do know that in the aviation world the tires are serviced with 100% nitrogen.

macmovieman

I have a 2010 with the 19s and I just bought a new set of rims so it looks like I am going to need to buy ANOTHER TPMS system since I am going to keep both rims. I totally forgot about the TPMS until I saw this thread. I guess I am glad I saw it now and not later when I got the error.

macmovieman

I found some BBS rims online that I really like and decided to dive in and just buy them this last week. They are 18 inch x 10 inch and I am going to use them to replace my stock 19 inch rims that I will also keep for the rainy season. I am sure most of you know what I am about to post but I will post it anyway for those that might not know.

2010-11 Mustang uses Valve style TPMS sensor
2005-09 Mustang uses the Strap style TPMS sensor

Sadly neither system seems to talk to one another. I really wanted to convert back to the strap style sensor for this new rim when I found out there was no way this senor and stem were going to fit through the small hole on these new BBS rims but it was just not to be and we could not find a way to make it work.

I called BBS and they had the racing team and consumer team brainstorm and decided to see if the 8mm stem adapter would attach directly to the bottom half of the Ford sensor to get it to work (stock 11mm adapter on the Porsche GT3). The good news is that Ford uses a 2 part TPMS sensor. The bottom half is the sensor and it is attached to the valve stem. This new 8mm valve adapter had to be sightly modified (dremel the plastic hole wider) so it connects to the sensor and it works perfectly and looks OEM.

BBS has these adapters in 8mm and 11mm depending on this size of your hole. It was about $25 each and $50 to ship it via next day! I spent countless hours this week talking to every Ford dealership and parts department, called local tire stores, ect before finding this and had to buy it without even knowing if it would work. So I hope you find this and somehow benefit from my hard work. Now if I could just find a good 15mm wheel spacer and longer stud so these 10 inch wide rims do not rub on my coilovers! I think I am going to go with the H&R DRS series 15mm wheel spacers?

Jazzer The Cat

Excellent work, my friend

Looks as though you are planning to install longer studs to accomodate the spacer you plan? If so, I would completely agree this is the way to go. I have 1/2" spacers on my rear wheels to allow the 11" meats I am running back there.

FWIW.. the industry standard is an equal amount of threads to the stud diameter and is 1/2" in this case. So 10 full threads of engagement are considered "safe", I personally have 1" of engagement as I had custom studs machined and fitted to this spec. Overkill as seen by some, but have zero concerns running my car VERY HARD in the AX course.

Jazzer