RE: Nitrogen an Low Inflation The use of dry nitrogen in tires has been around for a long time, especially with racers. The object is not to get rid of oxygen or ozone but to get rid of moisture, water vapor in the tire. This keeps the heating to a minimum inside the tire and keeps the pressure down as the tire heats up. More consistent shape to the tire, more consistent performance. And there are two problems combined with running with low tire pressures in addition to the handling and possibility of popping the bead. At lower pressure the sidewalls flex more. This causes more heat build up. Now the hot rubber is being flexed more than was intended in the design and can lead to separations and early failure of the rubber compound. One way to check inflation on your tires is to use a small IR thermometer like those available from Radio Shack. When heavily loaded I'll check the temperature of all four tires the first time I hit a rest stop or stop for gas. I expect to find the temps nearly the same for all four, indicating to me that the combination of pressures I'm running front to rear is putting the same stress on all four tires. On at least one occasion I found one rear tire running about 20 degrees hotter than the others, checked the pressure and it was down almost ten pounds. Pumped it up and the next time I checked temps were equal. |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.