[MT_Hyderabad]

I was at the petrol pump, when I saw a car with two flat tyres and thought what an unfortunate incident.

Just as this thought crossed my mind, I saw this guy start filling air in one of the flat tyres. I immediately realised that this car is getting air swapped with nitrogen.

Perplexed, I was at a loss of words for this method. It appears to do more damage to the tyre than the benefit of N2 in them. It must have definitely broken something inside the tire with the full load of the car plus atleast one sitting passenger on the completely deflated tyres.

Is this method of air swap correct?

[HappyWheels]

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

I was at the petrol pump, when I saw a car with two flat tyres and thought what an unfortunate incident.
...
Is this method of air swap correct?

Not the best of practices, but nothing bad is going to happen. This is the fastest jugaard approach.

And, this momentary resting of rims on the tyre is not going to cause any damage. Much less of a pain a tyre goes through when it goes flat due to puncture.

[Mr.Boss]

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

Is this method of air swap correct?

Best solution is to deflate and fill Nitrogen during wheel balancing, where the wheel is off the vehicle without any load.

In the above case, the damages are obvious but very minimal. Tire sidewalls take a higher impact during running (especially during a flat tire condition)

[SS80]

Is there a real-world difference between the two air-filling options? I mean a major portion of our normal air is nitrogen. I also highly doubt if a petrol bunk machine can extract pure nitrogen from the air. May be possible in a lab, but not at this scale and place.

[aviator1101]

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

Is this method of air swap correct?

Whether something goes wrong or not, it is more so a matter of convenience for the tyre shop guy and one should not allow such experiments/jugaad with own car. After all it's rubber, doesn't take much time for sidewalls to develop a crack.

With my little experience,what I have seen is either the trolley jacks being used in tyre shops to lift the axle/ tyres before completely deflating them.
OR
Changing from air to Nitrogen during wheel balancing/ tyre rotation.

Originally Posted by SS80

Is there a real-world difference between the two air-filling options? I mean a major portion of our normal air is nitrogen.

I also had this inhibition about the efficacy of using nitrogen, but after I installed the TPMS in my car, I realised that Nitrogen keeps the tyre temperature lower by at least 4-5°. The difference is more evident while traveling on concrete highways on hot sunny days.
The inert gas actually (humbly) does it's job.

[Gansan]

I have seen tyres swapped to nitrogen during wheel balancing, while my car was being serviced at MSM Chennai. Else the car will be partially lifted off the ground before swapping. Never like this.

I too got it done once during service long ago, but found during the monthly air filling that the drop in pressure was the same whether I filled air or nitrogen, and lost interest, convinced it is just a gimmick!

[jinojohnt]

1. Normal air has 78% nitrogen.
2. If you need to replace this with 100% nitrogen, first you need to suck out all the air from the tyre and create a vacuum inside.
3. Even if this is technically possible, the tyre walls will (almost) crumble inwards due to the pressure difference with the outside air.
4. If you are able to remove all the air, now you need to fill 100% nitrogen in the tyre. The tyre (including the valve) has to be leak-proof so that the outside air doesn't mix with pure nitrogen in the tyre. Our tyres cannot be 100% leak-proof, that is the reason we are filling air at least once a month right?
5. Even if you can successfully replace 78% nitrogen with 100% nitrogen, you will still get only a 28% improvement in performance (be it slower heating up, or anything else), which may not matter much unless you are in a race track.
6. You may be better off by maintaining correct air pressure (frequent filling) than filling nitrogen and then running on low pressure (due to infrequent filling).

[narayanang76]

This isnt the best method, but it is also not going to create major damages to tyre. Tyre can withstand such short duration abuses when stationary. If a car gets a flat tyre for few hours when parked, there is lesser chances of tyre damage, compared to getting a flat tyre when vehicle is moving, where chances of tyre damage is high.

Best method to replace air in tyres are either with vehicle lifted with those trolley jacks or when wheels are removed during wheel balancing/alignment.

cheers
narayanang76

[RD410]

Originally Posted by SS80

Is there a real-world difference between the two air-filling options?

I switched to Nitrogen on my Honda Dio and WagonR and ride quality of both the vehicles have improved significantly. Now it feels like the tyres are absorbing a good part of the road shocks. I don't know the exact scientific reason behind this, but maybe it has something to do with Nitrogen helping lower tyre temperature.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by SS80

Is there a real-world difference between the two air-filling options?.

For normal use, not really. Nitrogen is used in special application such as aircraft and or racing car tires.

In theory your tires might require a little less filling. But I somehow doubt that would be measurable in normal regular circumstances.

Originally Posted by RD410

I switched to Nitrogen on my Honda Dio and WagonR and ride quality of both the vehicles have improved significantly. Now it feels like the tyres are absorbing a good part of the road shocks. I don't know the exact scientific reason behind this, but maybe it has something to do with Nitrogen helping lower tyre temperature.

There is no scientific engineering reason to it. Your tires never get hot enough for any nitrogen effect to become visible or to be needed. The effect you see is all in your mind. You like to take good care of your car, you spend money on it, you see benefits. I think it’s that simple.

There are about a billion article on the internet about the myth of nitrogen filling for our cars. Here is one of these from a reputable source

https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/artic...late-car-tires

Jeroen

[RD410]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The effect you see is all in your mind. You like to take good care of your car, you spend money on it, you see benefits. I think it’s that simple.

Yes, you may call it placebo, I have no means to scientifically prove it anyways. All I will say is that I know my 18 year old car and 9 year old car very well that I can sense even the slightest change in their behaviour. Both my vehicles are beaters, utilitarian with stiff, almost non existent suspension systems. Especially the Honda Dio, which possibly has the most horrible and useless suspension ever. So it's hard for me to not notice the improvement in ride quality. And there's zero extra cost incurred because where I live, filling nitrogen costs the same as filling normal compressed air.

[pjbiju]

Originally Posted by RD410

Yes, you may call it placebo, I have no means to scientifically prove it anyways. All I will say is that I know my 18 year old car and 9 year old car very well that I can sense even the slightest change in their behaviour. Both my vehicles are beaters, utilitarian with stiff, almost non existent suspension systems. Especially the Honda Dio, which possibly has the most horrible and useless suspension ever. So it's hard for me to not notice the improvement in ride quality. And there's zero extra cost incurred because where I live, filling nitrogen costs the same as filling normal compressed air.

If the air pressure inside your tires are exactly the same for both normal air, and with Nitrogen, you should really see no difference in the ride quality. Possible scenarios because of which you may have noticed the difference:

1. The pressure calibration of the regular air pump is off (on the higher side) and you have been filling it, keeping a higher pressure than recommended resulting in less flexing of the sidewalls of your tires
2. The pressure calibration of the Nitrogen filling machine is off (on the lower side) and you have less pressure than when you were filling regular air, resulting more supple tire sidewalls
3. The air pressure in the Nitrogen machine is correct (and that of regular air machine was higher), again leading to a more supple tire side walls compared to when filling the regular air pressure

The only way to check that would be to fill your tires exactly to the same pressure at the same tire temperature from both the sources and then measure the pressure with a calibrated pressure gauge.

[RD410]

Originally Posted by pjbiju

The only way to check that would be to fill your tires exactly to the same pressure at the same tire temperature from both the sources and then measure the pressure with a calibrated pressure gauge.

I used to fill compressed air and now filling nitrogen from the same shop. Tyre pressure is also same in both cases. But yes, calibration difference between both pumps cannot be ruled out.

[Leoshashi]

Originally Posted by aviator1101

The inert gas actually (humbly) does it's job.

True. It actually depends a lot on the purity of nitrogen supplied by the nitrogen inflator. One of the leading tyre stores here had a nitrogen purity tester and I could appreciate the real benefits like lesser heating of wheels, lesser pressure variation on TPMS meter when the Nitrogen was pure.

Most tyre shops don't have proper functioning nitrogen inflators.

[enj0y_ride]

Originally Posted by MT_Hyderabad

Just as this thought crossed my mind, I saw this guy start filling air in one of the flat tyres. I immediately realised that this car is getting air swapped with nitrogen.

Is this method of air swap correct?

I dont think anything bad will happen anyways. Normal Air is anyways 78% Nitrogen.