Tire Pressure...

[FLTRI]

Last Summer, a good buddy and I went for a ride, he has a 2006 Street Glide, but it doesn't leave the garage very often. Anyway, he rides over to my house so we can plan our ride from there. As he pulls into my garage, I'm adding a pound or two of air to the front tire.

He says, "Maybe I should check mine too." I ask him when he checked them last and he says, "Well, I guess when the dealer did the service"...

The rear tire was at 12 PSI... The front was low too, so we filled them both up. After our first stop, he commented that his bike felt much better...

Check your tires often folks, I suspect the aluminum wheels are somewhat porous, and they lose air much quicker than you would expect...

[kd5cqt]

And tires filled to the proper pressure will ride further and your mileage will go up compared to low pressure tires. Air is definitely cheaper than new tires and gasoline!

[Screamin' Eagle]

Nitrogen

[FLTRI]

Nitrogen

Nitrogen still leaks.

It's benefits are that it does not expand and contract when heated and cooled, and oxygen is harder on rubber that nitrogen (oxidation). An important thing for a 747 tire, but I suspect it's benefits are negligible on a motorcycle or car tire...

Just my opinion, though...:trink39:

[Screamin' Eagle]

We've been using nitrogen and it works well the way the temperatures fluctuate around here......

[FLTRI]

Hmmmm. Are you saying that you don't lose pressure as fast with nitrogen?

All four of my bikes tires lose air pressure, albeit at different rates. I can estimate how low each tire, on each bike, will be after setting. The rear on my 2003 is the worst, the front on the work bike leaks the least.

If nitrogen helps, I'd sure give it a shot...

[Screamin' Eagle]

If nitrogen helps, I'd sure give it a shot...

It has helped us a lot......

[FLTRI]

It has helped us a lot......

Thanks! Now if I could only figure a way to get that damn seat bladder to quit leaking...:curseout:

[d190]

Thanks! Now if I could only figure a way to get that damn seat bladder to quit leaking...:curseout:

Do some push-aways from the table.............

[kd5cqt]

I've heard the nitro arguement before, and I still can't figure out why it is such an advantage to pay for nitro when air is free, and BTW, is composed of nearly 80% nitrogen. And inasmuch as the nitrogen molecule is smaller than the oxygen molecule (like it really matters at the molecular level when in a tire) it would, using the theory of leaking through molecular holes, tend to leak out faster than pure O2. And, incidentally, I don't think the expansion/contraction with temperature theory works either. I can't find my old engineering tables book, but the rate of thermal expansion of O2 vs N2 are pretty close as I recall.
I used to use nitro when airing up the landing gear struts on my old Piper, and I even used it in the tires because the hangar guys always left a full tank of it where I could get to it and thus never had to tote a compressor out to the airport when we did maintenance on the plane.

[ms_tapestry]

Last Summer, a good buddy and I went for a ride, he has a 2006 Street Glide, but it doesn't leave the garage very often. Anyway, he rides over to my house so we can plan our ride from there. As he pulls into my garage, I'm adding a pound or two of air to the front tire.

He says, "Maybe I should check mine too." I ask him when he checked them last and he says, "Well, I guess when the dealer did the service"...

The rear tire was at 12 PSI... The front was low too, so we filled them both up. After our first stop, he commented that his bike felt much better...

Check your tires often folks, I suspect the aluminum wheels are somewhat porous, and they lose air much quicker than you would expect...I ride alone a lot and check my tire pressure before every ride. And I do mean before every ride. The bike rides properly, stops properly, and yes, wears better when properly inflated. The last E3 I had on the rear had 19,605 miles on it when I replaced it.

[SLOWHOUND]

I have played with nitrogen vs compressed air at it's extreme limits in our stock car tires,If we put nitrogen in a rt ft will go 20% a compressed air tire will go 25 -28% ,the problem is we don't know which it will be and controlled growth is important.The car companys use it due to the TPMS systems and the H2o in the tires are damaging the TPMS sensors.

[N00DLES]

:olderrr: What did your air gauge below your fuel gauge say?

[N00DLES]

:olderrr: What did your air gauge below your fuel gauge say?

:sterb188:

[Traveller]

Any tire will leak air over time...3 to 5 pounds per month in some cases. Checking the air pressure on your scoot should be a part of your routine monthly preventive maintenance check, at a minimum. I check my air pressure on the bikes weekly, and on the cars monthly.

As for using nitrogen over air, well, it's like this...air is free.

[warlockz]

i have been using nitro for about a yr now ..i dont have to refill them as often as i did with air but ...around here if you pay to have them filled the first time they dont charge u to keep them up ..also have noticed they ride different for the better and have gotten better miles out of the tires ...

[d190]

My best guess is, if you used a very good "drier" on your compressed Air, you would get very similar result as compressed nitrogen...

USAF has been using nitrogen (aka Dry Air) in those fancy bombs and missiles that use more than HE to go boom...the biggest advantage compressed nitrogen has over compressor air, is almost zero water....

We used the nitrogen cart to air up tires if it was closer than the compressor line...just a matter or convenience...

[Berserker]

Does it matter mixing air and nitrogen? For the most, I will probably stick with the arguement air is free, and widely available.

How much does air and nitrogen change with temp anyways? Is there a rule of thumb?

[N00DLES]

I am an Air Adder..... ( i need to G00GLE that~)

[kd5cqt]

Try as I might, I can't find my Handbook of Engineering and physics to get the coefficient of volumetric expansion vs temperature for air and pure nitrogen. My aging and increasingly feeble mind seems to recall the figures were very close and the degree of volume change per degree temperture change is very small. Can we say insignificant difference unless you're an engineer in the lab?

[warlockz]

Most tires are filled with compressed air, which when dry consists of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and 1 percent other gases by volume. Water vapor (humidity) can make up as much as 5 percent of the volume of air under worst-case conditions. Filling your tires with nitrogen mainly does two things: it eliminates moisture, and it replaces skinny oxygen molecules with fat nitrogen molecules, reducing the rate at which compressed gas diffuses through porous tire walls. That means, theoretically at least, that a tire filled with nitrogen retains optimal pressure longer, leading to more uniform tire wear and better gas mileage. The commonly quoted figure is that tires inflated to 32 psi get 3 percent better mileage than at 24 psi.

Overall, filling up with nitrogen won't hurt and may provide some minimal benefit. Is it worth it? If you go to some place like Costco that does it for free with new tires, sure, why not? Elsewhere, though, I've seen prices quoted as high as $10 per tire, which is way more than I'd pay. Rather than shell out for nitrogen, you'd be better off just checking and adjusting your tire pressure regularly, something the NHTSA says less than 60 percent of U.S. motorists actually do.

[warlockz]

here is another scientific explaination of it lol



Are Nitrogen Molecules Really Larger Than Oxygen Molecules?
The correct answer, with respect to “permeation”, is yes.
Graham’s Law Explained:
The Difference between Effusion and Permeation
There's often confusion associated with the molecular size, molecular weight and permeation properties of
oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and GNI is often called to task to explain why nitrogen actually migrates
(permeates) out through the rubber of a tire slower than does oxygen. We felt it best to leave it to the expertise
of Dr. Keith Murphy to elaborate on the scientific principles:
"Effusion" calculations are not appropriate for "permeation" of gas molecules through materials, such as the rubber of
tire walls. There is a fundamental difference in transport occurring through “effusion”, and transport occurring through
“permeation”.
Effusion would be appropriate, if the O2 and N2 molecules were passing through a relatively large passage way
through the tire wall, such as a leak. Graham's Law for "effusion" applies ONLY if the exit through which the molecules
pass is relatively large compared to the size of the molecules and does NOT obstruct or constrain one molecule from
passing through relative to the other molecule. O2 and N2 molecules are only slightly different in molecular size but
both are very small. Thus, to constrain one molecule's (e.g., molecule of type A) passage relative to the other's (e.g.,
molecule of type B) passage, that passage way size must be fairly close in dimension to the sizes of the molecules
themselves.
Graham's Law does not apply, if the passage way is very small, as occurs for dimensions of passage ways in-between
the polymer chains in a solid rubber, where the dimensions between the polymer chains do indeed constrain passage
of the larger size molecule, which is actually N2, compared to less constraint on the smaller size molecule, which is
actually O2.
It is often mistakenly assumed that "molecular size" correlates directly with "molecular weight". O2 does have a greater
molecular weight (32) than N2 (28), but O2 is actually smaller in size. Thus, O2 fits through the relatively tight passage
ways between polymer chains in the rubber more easily than does N2. The difference is size between O2 and N2 is
very small, only about 0.3 times 10 to the -10th meters (0.00000000003 meters).
Among the various descriptions of the sizes of molecules, that most applicable to transport phenomena is called the
"kinetic diameter" of molecules. The kinetic diameter is a reflection of the smallest effective dimension of a given
molecule. It is easy to visualize that a given molecule can have more than one dimension, which characterizes its size,
if the molecule is not spherical. O2 and N2 are diatomic molecules (two atoms joined by a chemical bond or bonds),
not spheres in shape but rather cylindrical in shape, akin to the shape of a tiny jelly bean. Thus, a "length" dimension
of the cylindrical shape is a larger dimension than the smaller "waistline" diameter of the cylindrical shape. In transport
phenomena, the molecule with the smallest effective waistline diameter is that which behaves as the smallest
molecule, i.e., has the smallest kinetic diameter.
Literature reports of kinetic diameters for O2 and N2 molecules, derived from several different types of experimental
measurements, give slightly different values, but all show that O2 has a slightly smaller diameter than N2. The
following examples expressed in Angstrom units demonstrate this (one Angstrom unit is 10 to the -10th power meters,
i.e., one-ten-billionth of a meter): from gas viscosity data, O2 2.96 and N2 3.16 (difference 0.20); from van der Waal's
interaction data, O2 2.90 and N2 3.14 (difference 0.24); from molecular refraction data, O2 2.34 and N2 2.40
(difference 0.06). Other experiments, less applicable to transport situations, such as from closest packing, when the
two molecules exist in a frozen solid state at very low temperatures, still show O2 to be a smaller size than N2 (O2
3.75 and N2 4.00, difference 0.25).
The reason that O2, despite a larger MW 32, has a smaller diameter than N2 MW 28, lies in the electronic structure of
the molecules. As indicated by quantum mechanical theory of molecules, the electrons of a molecule form a diffuse
"cloud" surrounding the nuclei of the atoms in the molecule. The electron cloud around the oxygen nuclei in the O2
molecule is smaller, more compact in size, due to attractive electrostatic interactions between the electrons in the
cloud and the greater positive charge of the nuclei of the O atoms in the O2 molecule. Each oxygen atom has 8
protons in its nucleus, while each nitrogen atom has only 7 protons in its nucleus. Thus, the overall size of the electron
cloud of the O2 molecule is smaller than for N2, in part because its electron cloud is drawn in closer to the O nuclei by
the greater positive charge on the O nuclei.
The dimension of the molecule's electron cloud defines the size and shape for a given type of molecule. When one
molecule bumps into another molecule, the outer-most extent of the electron clouds of each molecule repel each other
in that local vicinity of the contact between the molecules. Each colliding molecule's electron cloud experiences a
repulsion, due to the proximity to the like electrical charge of electrons around the other molecule in the collision. Since
like electrical charges repel each other (like-repels-like), the electrostatic interaction between the electron clouds of the
colliding molecules is repulsive. That repulsion effectively defines the size of the molecules.
O2 "permeates" approximately 3-4 times faster than does N2 through a typical rubber, as is used in tires, primarily
because O2 has a slightly smaller effective molecular size than does N2.
A relationship that governs "permeation" is based on Fick's Law of Diffusion and Henry's Law of Solubilities, which
takes into account the relative sizes of the molecules and their sizes compared to the very small passage way
dimensions in the solid material (such as a rubber) through which the molecules "permeate". Combining Fick's and
Henry's Laws yields the overall equation governing permeation of small molecules, such as gases, in material, such as
rubbers and other plastics.
Let's call the rate of permeation of gas (i), Ji, J-sub-i, which is simply the volumetric flux of gas permeation per unit of
time. Conveniently used units of Ji are cubic centimeters of gas per second, or cm^3/s.
Consider a sheet of the rubber, such as a section of the tire wall.
That flux of gas permeating through a material is directly proportional to the first three factors, below, and inversely to
the fourth factor, below:
1. the area, call it A (in units of square centimeters, cm^2) of the sample of the rubber - More flux of gas would occur, if
the area were larger, if everything else were the same;
next,
2. the driving force for transport across the wall, which is the difference in concentration of gas (i) across the tire wall -
for convenience with gases, a nearly exactly correct measure of this is the difference in partial pressures (pi) of that
gas (i) on the two sides of the tire wall (i.e., pi inside minus pi outside) - Obviously, a higher partial pressure (pressure
units are cmHg, centimeters of mercury, and remember that 76 cmHg = 1 atmosphere = 14.7 psi) inside versus
outside means there is more driving force to promote transport across the tire wall;
then next,
3. the intrinsic permeability P, call it Pij, or P-sub-i-sub-j, is the "permeability coefficient" for the particular material (j) for
that type of gas (i) - Note that various materials, i.e., different types of rubbers or plastics will permeate O2 faster or
slower depending on the details of solid state structures of the materials, and different types of gases will permeate
each material faster or slower depending on the relative sizes of the gas molecules, as well as on how soluble the gas
is in the solid material; then lastly,
4. the thickness L (in units of cm) of the material - you can see that if the tire wall were, say, twice as thick, one would
expect half the permeation rate (flux, cm^3/s), all other things being equal.
Combine these four terms, and you get the permeation equation:
Ji = [ Pij x A x (pi inside - pi outside) ] / L
flux = permeability coefficient of gas (i) in material (j) of the tire wall multiplied by area multiplied by the partial pressure
difference for gas (i) across the tire wall divided by the thickness of the tire wall.
Similarly, for the other gas (m), its flux would be:
Jm = [ Pmj x A x (pm inside - pm outside) ] / L
since it would have a different permeability coefficient in that same rubber (j) and a different driving force across the
tire wall.
So, the fluxes for different gases will be different, depending on the relative magnitudes of the permeability coefficients
of the two different types of gas molecules and the relative concentrations (partial pressures) of the two types of
molecules on each side of the tire wall (i.e., inside vs outside).
From the early part of this discussion, you will now recognize that Pi, where gas (i) is O2, is greater than Pm, where
gas (m) is N2, principally because O2 has a smaller kinetic diameter than N2 and thus O2 has a larger permeability
coefficient than does N2 - actually O2 has a permeability coefficient in a typical tire rubber material, which is about 3-4
times that of N2 in the same material. Permeation of O2 and N2 is primarily determined by size effects, because at
normal temperatures and pressures relevant to the discussions of tires, these gases behave almost perfectly as Ideal
Gases. As such, the differences in solubilities of O2 and N2 in most rubbers and plastics are too small to contribute to
differences in their permeability coefficients. The differences observed are essentially solely due to the slight
differences in the size of O2 relative to N2.
In case you wish to do your own calculations, the units for P (the permeability coefficients) most often used in the
technical literature are:
[ cm^3 x cm ] / [ s x cm^2 x cmHg ] and for convenience, a standard unit of permeability is called the Barrer, after
Richard Barrer, one of the early pioneers in studies of permeation in materials, such as rubbers and plastics. One
Barrer unit is:
1 times 10 to the minus 10th power [cm^3 x cm]/[s x cm^2 x cmHg]
In Barrers, for a typical rubber material, the permeability coefficient P, is dependant on temperature, but at 25C
(77F) for O2 is about 10 and for N2 is about 3.
I hope this helps clarify why O2 permeates faster through rubber than does N2 and a major aspect of why it is a good
idea to significantly reduce the amount of O2 used to fill tires by replacing most of the O2 in air with enriched N2. Since
N2 permeates through the tire rubber more slowly than would O2, using enriched nitrogen instead of air for tire filling
contributes to better maintenance of the proper inflation pressure for the tire. Better pressure maintenance contributes
to reduced tire wear, so that tires last longer and tire replacement costs are reduced.
A simple but approximately correct explanation of this lies in the mechanics of the flexing of tire walls. If proper inflation
pressure is maintained, the tire wall most effectively bears the weight of the vehicle. If pressure is allowed to fall too
low, extra flexing that occurs as the vehicle bounces somewhat along the road causes excessive mechanical fatigue of
the structure of the tire. Similar to flexing a wire coat hanger, this fatigue can weaken the tire faster than would be the
case were it kept inflated to a pressure more consistent with that intended in its design.
Dr. Keith Murphy
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
Prism Membranes
St. Louis, MO

[kd5cqt]

Good explanation...best one I have seen on the subject yet.

[SLOWHOUND]

Good explanation...best one I have seen on the subject yet.

Ditto, I can't find any fault in it.

[warlockz]

did alittle rearch on it and thats what i came up with


good to know the facts

[Your_Worst_Nightmare]

Who would have ever thunk it?