Where did you get your estimated cost of $60.00 per tire? “Therefore, what’s needed isn’t to charge $60.00 per tire to replace air with nitrogen ”

The figure was given to me directly by the Ford dealer that was attempting to sell it to me. It was the initial cost to replace the normal compressed air in each tire with pure N2. You are, however, correct that periodic maintenance to “top off” the tire was less. But the caveat was that should I find that I have a need to fill my tire (perhaps following a puncture on the side of the road where I plug the tire myself then top off with my portable compressor), I need to pay the $60.00 to have the tire emptied and recompressed with N2.

The average cost is $5.00 per tire and to me it’s worth it. I have been involved in the racing industry for years and see the difference in heat build up in air filled versus nitrogen filled tires.

Cool. I’m not in the “racing industry” nor are the majority of consumers.

Here is a study for you, it appears you don’t look to deeply for things since it took me all of about 1 min to find this on google.

Actually, I could easily make the same ad hominem accusation of you, punctuating it with the fact that you don’t read well. In this or another post I made on the topic, I readily conceded that: 1) N2 does permeate normal tire walls more slowly than normal compressed air; 2) there is a benefit to both the “racing industry” and the long-haul trucking industry.

My chief contentions are, which you have not successfully argued against:

1) While N2 permeates rubber at a slower rate than normal compressed air, it isn’t that much slower.

2) The situations that cause increased leakage such as tire defects, poorly sealed valves and stems, punctures (where the foreign object remains in the tire), etc. will necessarily cause N2 to leak faster than O2. This is due to Graham’s Law and is a matter of physics. In terms someone in the “racing industry” might understand, the hole is large enough for both molecules to fit, therefore the lighter molecule is faster in leaving. The diatomic molecule of nitrogen is lighter than its diatomic cousin made of oxygen.

3) The average consumer doesn’t need to pay for the additional cost of N2 when a good service station that does an oil change every 3000 miles or 4 months will also check their tires. If this isn’t automatically done, one need only ask. I have yet to see a Jiffy Lube or Walmart charge for air in tires.

3.1) The average tire holds its pressure longer than 4 months baring any tire deficiency (see point #2) according to the Consumer Reports study (which is published and cited in the post above).

4) The argument that the tire degenerates or deteriorates at a quicker rate because of O2 and moisture in the compressed air is neither cogent nor sound since consumer tires get replaced due to wear on the tread, which occurs at a rate that far out paces internal wear. The premise to that argument includes the assumption that, for the average consumer the reverse is true.

I feel I must also point out that that the “study” you so graciously link to above is, in fact, not a study at all but a tire or nitrogen industry slide show that claims to present data from a study. The actual citation for the study the slideshow author claims exists is no where to be found in the pdf file, though I may have overlooked it. If you should know of the peer-reviewed publication that published the actual study, feel free to link it or cite it here. Publication, date and name of the study would allow me to locate it, but you can add the page number(s), volume and issue if you know them.

But I can’t see how it would make a bit of difference since, even if we were to accept at face value the information the company (which seeks to make a profit from N2) presented, its being presented in the context of long-haul truck tires.

Finally, I also conceded in at least one of the posts I made that, all things being equal, pure nitrogen would be a better choice for tire inflation than normal compressed air. But all things aren’t equal: the average consumer uses his car to get to work whereas race-car drivers and OTR truckers are at work. The cost/benefit analysis doesn’t favor the average consumer. As long as there is a fee to compress a tire with nitrogen that exceeds $0.50 / tire, filling a tire with nitrogen is a scam.

The nitrogen tire industry, when sold to the average consumer is a scam.

http://www.retread.org/PDF/M-Mech%5B1%5D.pdf

The average cost is $5.00 per tire and to me it’s worth it. I have been involved in the racing industry for years and see the difference in heat build up in air filled versus nitrogen filled tires.