FBinNY 

I hate to spoil it for you, but I happen to know that it's a 50/50 blend of Argon and Krypton.

GlennR

Let me guess... methane?

kbarch

One other advantage of nitrogen or CO2 inflation; if there's fuel on the road and you have a blowout, the sparks from your wheel scraping the pavement won't cause a fire like they would if there were more oxygen present to support combustion.

Just thought I'd add that to the mix - anyone else ever hear such a thing? I'm not sure how true it is (and of course it's ridiculous in the context of cycling), but it's the reason we were given for nitrogen being used in aircraft landing gear.

datlas 

Makes me think of plankton...1% evil, 99% hot gas.

Vicegrip

Aircraft tires go through extreme temp swings and are then pressed into full service upon landing with no warm up.They are filled with single element dry gas to reduce pressure changes and moisture issues and have more predictable pressure / temp. In race cars very dry air gives a slight advantage by being more predictable in the pressure rise from cold to hot operating temps. I build and race road race cars and trust me the hot pressure of the tires is critical. A pound or 2 to high or low and the handling will be notably (and measurably) impacted. The proper operating temp for the tires I race on is about 190 deg. Much below that and the tires are cold and slippery and much above that they get greasy feeling and short lived. In addition on the hot grid at most tracks you are only permitted to use air powered tools. A pit cart with a 330 cf or so size bottle of Nitrogen is SOP for the airguns and onboard air jacks often used in non Nascar or F1 racing.

I work in the automotive sales and service arena. I don't think the #1 reason for using dry air in modern street cars has been mentioned. T.P.M.S. Tire pressure monitoring system wheel sensors are very sensitive to being damaged by condensed water. By far water is the #1 reason for the sensors going bad. Fix a flat or driving on a flat will kill them dead too.

There are ways to make very dry air without the need for compressed Nitrogen. Disposable silica desiccant filters are cheap and easy to use. I have seen some gas station air systems spit liquid water from the fill hose. Google in line painters desiccant filter for examples such as this one.VALUE BRAND Dryer, Air Filter, Pk2 - G1191942 at Zoro Put a schrader fitting on the intake and an air chuck on the output side and toss it in the glovebox of your TPMS equipped car. When you top up your tires run the gas station air through the filter to produce -40 deg dew point air. -40 deg dew point is way beyond dry enough and as dry as bottled Nitrogen in use.
With bikes the temp rise between cold and hot operating temp is not much and a PSI one way or the other means nothing. With the air contained inside an inner tube there is no corrosion issue for the rim. with tubeless tires we intentionally inject water borne sealant into them. Dry air fill might reduce the service life of the sealant if anything.

Short answer / opinion....TPMS or on track automotive racing? Dry air is good for street cars and a 100% given for competitive level track cars. Bicycles? Um, no. No demonstrable value, no need.

Homebrew01

Ummm, you're on BikeForums ..... don't get your hopes up.

thehammerdog

He is crazy and or lying to state he can tell any difference.
Thanks

rpenmanparker 

OOH, that's harsh. Correct, but harsh.

RIRview

Just fake it and put green caps on your valve stems.

Marcus_Ti

And laugh as other cyclists ask about the wunder-gas in your tires when you're stopped on the MUT.

zvez

whole nitrogen in car tires is ridiculous, it's another excuse to get you in the shop. It's use in bicycles would be even more ridiculous as everyone would need a tank of nitrogen to inflate the tires.

znomit

What if you ride into a river and get pinned under your heavy non carbon bike. With no oxygen in your tyres what will you breathe while waiting to be rescued?

CliffordK

Well, I don't live in Indiana, so up until now, I've resisted the temptation of riding my bicycle out on the Indy 500 race track during a race.

Pressurized 20% O[SUB]2[/SUB] is not much more flammable than just the air in the atmosphere. It may even blow out a small fire, although it can fan the flames of an existing fire a bit, perhaps due to replacing O[SUB]2[/SUB] depleted air. The volume in a bike tire, however, is pretty small.

100% O[SUB]2[/SUB] may be more dangerous, but still limited by the small volume in most bike tires. And, one still needs the spark, fuel, and leaky tire. Even pure Hydrogen gas might not give much more than a small poof if ignited.

Flames are not normally associated with bicycle accidents, although perhaps rarely with bike vs car accidents.

Team Sarcasm

I am not sure about you guys....but me being lactose intolerant, I just drink a ton of milk and buy a funnel. I adapt one end of the funnel to fit a presta valve and the other end goes uh..... um.....Lets just say if you have never farted you way up to 100psi you need to try it. Nothing is better than riding on gas that is au naturale.

Doge

In racing tubulars the behavior may be different with thin racing latex tubes . The issue is air loss in long races more than weight or handling. If you ride thin latex tubed tires you may have noticed they can drop 10-20 PSI in 8 hours. Having used hundreds of latex tubed tires over 35 years - the pressure loss is not consistent - even with the same tire and pressure front and rear to start. Team Sky played a lot with this. I got that info from the guy who made some custom racing tires for me who also makes them for Sky. Other than for some races that are long - AIR is pretty much the best. An ex TdF rider told me they would put a thimble full of talc in the tube and that the tire held the pressure.
More reading...
Under pressure: Tire tech from Paris-Roubaix 2013 - VeloNews.com

OldsCOOL

Personally, my experiences with nitrogen oxide have been a bit fuzzy.

merlinextraligh

Even doing HPDE on the track, pushing hard enough to seriously blister a set of tires, the pressure difference in the tires is not that signficant. If you're racing and looking for every last increment of performance, there's a slight advantage.

Pretty silly for a street car, and rediculous for a bike.

pallen

... nevermind

Scooper

I like Car Talk's take on nitrogen in tires. Basically it's a scam.

Using nitrogen in the tires of some aircraft does make sense, though; FAR §25.733 (e) states: For an airplane with a maximum certificated takeoff weight of more than 75,000 pounds, tires mounted on braked wheels must be inflated with dry nitrogen or other gases shown to be inert so that the gas mixture in the tire does not contain oxygen in excess of 5 percent by volume, unless it can be shown that the tire liner material will not produce a volatile gas when heated or that means are provided to prevent tire temperatures from reaching unsafe levels.

indyfabz

The above post contains too much common sense for many.

indyfabz

lmao!

OldsCOOL

We dont need no stinking nitrogen.

RomansFiveEight

The advantage is the fact that rubber isn't as solid as it looks, and oxygen and other gasses are capable of escaping through the rubber. So is nitrogen, but at a much slower rate.

My car has nitrogen in the tires, my wifes doesn't. Every two weeks, I check tire pressure (Using a good old air compressor. My car came with nitrogen from the factory) Her car needs more adjustments than mine does. And as I replace the very slowly leaking nitrogen with slightly faster leaking fresh air, those tires need adjusting more and more. But it's trivial.

I wouldn't go out of my way to get nitrogen in my bike tires. On my motorcycle I'm even more religious about tire pressure (because it affects handling so much). Checking at least once a week, and at the beginning of the day when I'm going to be riding all day / long distances. I'm new to the cycling world but that's my anticipated plan for the Bicycle too.

rpenmanparker 

You are wrong about the rate of nitrogen permeation of butyl rubber being much slower than oxygen. The difference is about 11%. Trust me, this is my field of expertise. When you consider the 21% concentration of oxygen in air, that makes a difference of about 2% slower for air-inflated tires losing pressure than nitrogen-inflated tires. And as FBinNY pointed out, the air in the tire keeps getting enriched with nitrogen by the faster loss of oxygen. So bye and bye your have a much higher nitrogen concentration in the tire at steady state than the normal air you started with.

RomansFiveEight

Thanks for the clarification.

Either way, that's still the purpose of nitrogen, is it not? Not preventing corrosion, but reducing the rate at which tires deflate. Right?

So, for someone like myself who doesn't mind consistently checking tire pressure, there's probably no advantage.