checked your tires psi lately?

[rmarshal]

Re: checked your tires psi lately?

What is the tire pressure after normal driving? It rises from 30 lbs to ......?
This final pressure is what is "supposed" to give best wear, ride, performance, etc.

[Ray]

Re: checked your tires psi lately?

I've experimented with various pressures in my Bird, and for me anyway, 32 works best. I prefer a quiet and smooth over performance in my Bird, so 32 seems to be the best pressure to give me that.

I'm getting new tires on my Impala SS this Friday. I've never used nitrogen in my tires in any of my vehicles, as plain old air has always worked fine for me, but since the store installing them is offering free nitrogen, I'm going to give it a try. I'm very skeptical of the nitrogen claims, but I'll soon have first hand experience with this wonder gas, or flatulence as some have suggested.

[ThunderBubba]

Re: checked your tires psi lately?

Yesterday, before I saw this thread, I checked the pressure on my '02 'Bird
tires (bought it it July--hadn't taken the opportunity). All read 35 lbs cold.
I checked the spare, remembering dire warnings about low pressures, and it read 15 lbs. Oops--that one is now 60.
If I remember correctly, dry nitrogen is used in military, airline, and racing vehicles. Dry, because compressed gasses can also compress and concentrate water that also contributes to expansion with heat.
So, how much does gas expand with heat? To learn more, I turned to the ultimate source of information, Science Fair Projects. In this one, http://www.selah.k12.wa.us/SOAR/SciProj2000/BreeS.html, various gases were heated and volume increases measured. The attached graph shows the results. Not much difference between pure nitrogen and pure oxygen and one might conclude that a mixture of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen mixture (aka air) won't expand much more than pure nitrogen.
Oxygen can deteriorate rubber, so there's another consideration whether to use pure nitrogen. I would guess that DRY is the operative word for interior health of tires, but I would imagine that more deterioration occurs OUTSIDE
the tire than in, so the inflation gas won't make much difference in the long run.
Unless you inflate with krypton, of course.

No Krypton gas for me. It leaves me feeling weak.

[rmarshal]

Re: checked your tires psi lately?

No Krypton gas for me. It leaves me feeling weak.

You're thinking about one of the salts of krypton, kryptonite made from kryptic acid. However, since krypton is inert, any resulting compounds are VERY difficult to come by, even kryptically.