Nitrogen fill

Local Toyota dealership sent me email for complimentary nitrogen fill in my tires. Is this worth taking advantage of?

 

sure why not if it's free

 

Sure. Nitrogen is a bigger molecule and your tires tend to stay inflated better. I think it's less sensitive to the heat that's developed from friction when driving too.

 

fyi Costco inflates their tires with Nitrogen and they usually have a self serve station next to the tires bay...

some dealers would charge you $200 for Nitrogen charged tires...

 

Most anything is worth taking advantage of if it's free.

 

Wow! Thanks for the info

 

78% nitrogen fill here.

 

Free ok. I would never pay for it. I am not sure how they purge regular air out, can't pull a vacuum on the tire. Doubtful they are breaking the bead and purging the air out. They are only enriching the N2 environment.

Remember air is already 78ish% N2. We get that for free.

 

You’re not going to notice a difference. Not worth taking time out of your day to go and have it done, in my opinion.

 

Dealers will do anything to get you on their lot so they can attempt to sell you something.

 

No free lunches..I would do it anyway. Should prevent psi fluctuations that set off you tire pressure sensor. I have to convince my wife every cold snap we get that she doesn’t have a nail in her tire.

 

Almost same % amount of nitrogen you breath already.

 

I use to keep different wheel/tire sets in the garage for years and they always stayed full with nitrogen. I don't like paying for it either so I bring my truck to a welding supply store for nitrogen fills.

 

I think this is one of the great cons being perpetrated on the automotive public for obvious reasons.

 

Nice, let someone else pay for your N2.......

 

This ^

 

It is not a con from a scientific sense, nitrogen with a decent purity is an inert gas without the moisture and contamination that air has. It also will have have better thermal properties than air. Nitrogen is used in a lot of applications as a clean inert gas.

Now wether or not you are actually getting pure nitrogen, that might be a con.

 

Yep, Toyota of Rockwall tries to gig the fools for on all their vehicles. I negotiate price and then tell them to knock off another $200 for the nitrogen.

 

Next time a dealer tries to sell it to you ask them how they get all the air out of the tire before installing nitrogen and watch them backpedal. Last time I checked my wheels don't have bleeder valves.

 

We use laboratory grade nitrogen at work. Kind of skeptical that car dealers are going that extra mile to pay for lab grade nitro. Just sayin....

 

I don’t doubt they are all not doing it properly but you don’t need bleeder valves. Purging is a simple process. Just let out all the air then fill with 20 psi of N2. Drain out till just barely readable like just a few psi. Repeat that a minimum of 3 more times and you are good. You don’t need UHP N2 because it nots a laser or test equipment after all it will be exposed to air. If people are charging $200 bucks for N2 air fills that has to be largely due to labor not gas prices.

Unrelated has anyone seen if these guys are just using cylinders or do they have a liquid tank?

 

I'm just curious as to how us old folks survived all these years using air in our tires before nitrogen saved the day??? (And I'm a sci tech geek)

 

I know when I was in the Navy everything we serviced on an aircraft was with N2. Those big old F-14 tires sure did take a lot of N2. Landing gear struts sucked up a lot of N2 as well. But with a supersonic jet aircraft it was more about the extremes of temperature the Aircraft was subject to as well as the stability and purity of the N2.
We used it in the accumulators on Weapons Elevators on CVN's as well. That was due to the corrosive nature of the hydraulic fluid we used when exposed to normal air. We used to receive N2 at 5000 PSI and reduce it down to a nice usable 3000 PSI.

With all of the above being said, my take is, if you can get it for free use it!

 

Exhibit A for those of us in the the "Nitrogen is a marketing gimmick" camp: https://archiveblog.gasbuddy.com/posts/Tire-inflation-the-truth-behind-nitrogen/1715-432662-482.aspx

 

I would bet a few paychecks that the purging is not being done by the techs at the dealerships......

 

I'd only do it if they also offer a free blinker-fluid refill.

 

Exactly^^^^^ "Extreme temp changes". Now one could argue that off road racers truly abuse their tires. Put their tires through all extremes. But seriously how many of use our tires as mentioned in the great comment above? I haven't made any winter carrier landings on the North Atlantic lately. Do the freebie. Can't hurt anything.

 

Exactly. The other part of this is that if for some reason one of your tires goes low and you fill it with air then you would have to have them purge it back out the next time you go to a dealership/store. If you wanted to maintain your nitrogen filled tires. And I’m sure they would charge you for it. I had N2 in my tires in my Tacoma when I bought it new...at least I had the green valve stem caps. I’m sure there may have been some benefits to trying to get this to take off(other then $$$) but I don’t think it worked.