Nitrogen vs Air In Tyres - Fifth Gear 

the only noticeable difference is that nitrogen is more expensive lol

Personally, I'd be more wondering if the nitrogen being sold in the garage was actually just compressed air.

You'll never get 100% nitrogen in a tire unless you mount the tires and rims in a vacuum chamber. But I just take mine to outer space just to make sure there is absolutely no air in them at all.

Mine's filled with radon - nice green glow at night so I can find the car easily.

Identical laptimes... What an amazing consistent racing driver.

I've used it for years and the pressure almost never varies compared to air filled tyres which go down constantly... It's well worth it

Since Oxygen leaks out, a few Air fills should eventually turn the tires air to near Pure Nitrogen.

Even with Oxygen leaking through the rubber and topping up the pressure you're heading towards a Nitrogen filled tyre. Fill with air initially and 21% (the O2) eventually leaks out. Replace that lost gas with more air and you're putting 78% nitrogen back in place of what was O2. So after one top-up you've now only got (0.21 * 0.21)*100 = 4.4% O2 in your tyre.

Think about this as follows: Every time the tyre loses pressure, it loses mostly oxygen. And everytime you have to top up, you fill in 78% nitrogen when pumping up with plain air. Consequently, the proportion of nitrogen in the tyre will increase over time anyway.

My current tires are manufactured in Canada, and I live in the state of Iowa in the USA. So every time I need to air my tires I have to wait for a Canadian cool front to blow in. Of course my compressor is made in China and doesn't like pumping anything but Chinese air. Dam world economy!!!!!

We use nitrogen in aircraft tires. But that is mainly because of brake and wheel fires. A lot of aircraft wheels are made with magnesium which burns very hot and if plain air is in the tire it would increase the fires intensity. I've seen quite a few tire and brake fires and it makes sense to me. As far as maintaining pressure we always checked tire pressures on daily and turnaround inspections.

Loved that point at the end! Say it how it is!.... I check my Motorbikes tyre pressure every monday morning as a routine check.. Some may say that isn't often enough others might say it's a bit overkill... but i prefer routine and every Monday along with chain slack, brakefluid/brakepad wear, chain condition ect ect....

i run a garage that pumps tyres with nitrogen, heres the trick, i dont use nitrogen i use air

this all bullshit ..I fill my tyre with water..

Thank you! Very valuable information!

Actually, if you fill it with gasoline, you will gain a lot of horsepower.

Great test, Thanks !

Also there are two valve stems on race-spec wheels so you can force all the air out one side while filling it with nitrogen at the same time.

I agree with Tiff. I've been using his special mixture of gases for years - about 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen with just a dash of Carbon Dioxide, Sulpfur Dioxide and don't forget a trace amount of Argon (very important).

nitrogen filled tires IS a VERY good defense against tire slashers tho ... it will fucking toss them like a ragdoll and daze them enough for you to get there and beat the shit outta them.. defense

Air is mostly Nitrogen anyways, unless youre racing its a waste of money to get nitrogen

Well done, without making a short story long.

Excelent clip! Now, if you're a picky driver and have a performance car driven accordingly I still recommend inflating the tires with Nitrogen but make sure you do it form the very beginning (when you fit the new tires on the rims). The water vapours which are very often found in the air from air compressors have nowhere to go once they are pushed into the tire. We've also made a test by inflating the tires on one diagonal with air and on the other with Nitrogen. At the end of the test the pressure was 3.1 for air and 2.8BAR for the Nitrogen (starting from 2.4BAR), and this is a huge difference.

"if you are no checking your pressure regularly, you shouldn't be on the road at all" golden words!

I used to use Nitrogen and after about I year I stopped. Because I didn't see any performance benefits, nor stopped me from having to top up every month. Complete waste of time and money

A good overall look, but a minor quibble about the testing: Although the vehicles in the test were equal enough to offer parity, the only real way to ensure A/B testing is meaningful would have been to use the same car with the different tire sets. Had that been done, the result may have been slightly different.

One of the reasons the tire with nitrogen had a higher PSI, was due to yes in lab conditions and Formula 1 garages, they have vacuum pumps, and ways of sealing tires to remove all contaminants before they introduce the nitrogen. The station they use is mixing nitrogen and whatever else is in the tire/rim space.

My tires are filled with concrete. :D

I use my farts to fill up my tires,works good.

Would oxygen permeate the rubber much more than nitrogen? Well, just think a bit before you fall for that... If it would, then you would end up with only the nitrogen left in the tire. Just fill it up with air again and you have 95% nitrogen. Wait for the oxygen to go away and fill it up with air again, and now you have 99% nitrogen. Have you filled your tires a few times to fix that falling pressure? If it was the oxygen escaping causing that, then your tires would already be filled with 100% nitrogen by now.

Well done Tiff, As always Just the Facts.

The first time I came to know about filling tyres with Nitrogen was 3 years ago for a long trip with my Uncle and His Suzuki Swift - after 3 years I am watching this video and that to with Swift again ❤

My trucks TPMS used to put on a check light twice a year every summer/winter. When I got new tires I opted for the nitrogen fill to try it out. I haven't seen that check light since.

I just want to know if my standard pressure gauge is still accurate and do I still run the factory recommended tire pressure with nitrogen.

Nice info

Funny thing is, air doesn't really go through the rubber like they say, it goes through the bond between the rim and the tire. I had a tire for 2 years that kept its pressure because I cleanred the rim perfectly and applied tire sealant. Most often tires leak out over time because the technician installing the tire did not clean or apply sealent to the rim.

As far as a gas goes, there is almost no difference between air and nitrogen. Air is already 80% nitrogen, and nitrogen has almost the same molecular weight as oxygen, 14 vs. 16. While the change in gas pressure from tire heating is small and identical between air and pure nitrogen, water vapor pressure increases about 3 psi. Dry nitrogen or dry air, will eliminate this change. If you double the pressure of 50% humidity air from 15psi to 30psi, it becomes 100% humidity air, and starts condensation. So the air in your tire is saturated with water. If you pump up your compressor to say 120 psi and allow to stand for a hour, the air in your tire will have 30psi/120psi, or 1/4 as much water.

science with tiff excelent

I was wondering what is the tyre temperature of both after running on car?

I love how most moderators (Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Motor Trend Channel...) who are used to driving super cars or luxury cars enjoy driving cars like this Suzuki Swift or other clamped up bead up vehicles :D

One of the most lucrative scam ever invented.

thanks Tiff.

The tyre centres I've used that fill with nitrogen don't suck all the air out of the seated tyre (when it 'pops' onto the rim) first, they just inflate with the nitrogen. Basically, all the unpressurized air in the atmosphere will be in the tyre already, so filling it up with nitrogen is technically a waste of time, it only increases the percentage of nitrogen in the tyre. Use a specialist if you have a performance car. They'll suck all the air out of the tyre and it looks all concave. Then you know you have a stable tyre pressure.

I guess a lot depends on the conditions that existed when the tyres were fitted to the rim. A certain amount of air will get trapped underneath during fitment and if it was on a very humid day that would mean a lot of moisture is present between the tyre and the rim. Trapped until the tyre is removed most likely. The perfect test would be to fit the tyres to the rims in a 100% nitrogen, clean room. (with the fitter wearing a hazmat suit and breathing apparatus)

Lol I love that last line, not enough people these days know how to check their tire pressure anymore..

I just want to know how you purge the regular air out of a tubeless tyre before it inflates and seals at the bead. How could you know if they were all even, or if one had more nitrogen?

Have a look at the video "Top 10 reasons not to put nitrogen in your tyres"

Tiff's engineer side comes out (yes. he is a real life Engineer and not just a race car driver).

High-performance tires hold maybe 20 grams each of regular air and switching to all-nitrogen drops this weight by 3% -- taking us down to 19.4 grams per tire. Considering a spinning tire / wheel /axel / brake assembly weighs ~80 pounds (36,000 grams) -- feel free to pump in nitrogen to remove 0.00008 of the weight of your spinning assembly. (And as others have pointed out -- you'll also need a large vacuum chamber to get rid of the air already in the tires.)

Did I just sip into another dimension and am watching their version of Top Gear?

i juz get my tyre pump up wit air everytime i went to fill up the tank. Thats like every 3 days or so. Tyre pressure kept in checked n its free. No need for nitrogen n wasting ur money. But of coz, do it wen ur tyres are cold.

Some people will buy into anything. Love getting reamed out at work by customers who demand nitrogen in their tires when a - we don't have any b - it doesn't make a difference in your fucking 150hp, 200000km van

The amount of moisture in the air is what really makes the difference between nitrogen (dry) and regular air (sometimes very humid). In the past, using regular air, the tires would routinely go too low during the winter. Since using nitrogen, the tires remain very stable and trips to refill the tires every month in winter is a thing of the past. Nitrogen is used in aircraft tires and racing tires because there is a proven advantage in doing so.

I find it funny that the conclusion from seeing the higher temperature was that it must not have been pure nitrogen. What was he testing for?

Tire (tyre) stores here in Pennsylvania (USA) tout adding pure nitrogen to tires installed on your car. I guess it's just better to check your pressure weekly?

Do you have a video based on Suspension? (Spring Suspension & Suspension Alone), and what substance to use in the suspension (Fluid, or Gas)? Fifth Gear

So wont your tires eventually fill with a higher and higher percentage of Nitrogen?

My first set of wheels I ever bought for my car had nitrogen fill on them from the company who sold and mounted the tires to them. Over the next 2 years on those tires I never had to fill or lower tire pressure between summer and winter. They stayed at 42 PSI for 2 years. Now as mentioned in the video I am almost positive that they had a good compressor for doing the nitrogen fill but I haven't been able to find a place were I live that would recommend it because of the issue of it not being 100% nitrogen.

What is the difference in weight for same tyre with same air pressure for nitrogen and air???

The biggest problem with the gas inside of tires is the WATER VAPOR. The water condenses when the tire becomes deeply chilled and it forms condensation inside the tire against the rim. This promotes corrosion on the side of the rim; especially along the bead. This leads to air leaks. The water separators on air compressors are sometimes removed, or not maintained properly, which leaves a lot of moisture in the air that you are using to fill your tires.

And what about the air that is in the tyre to start with? Unless the tyre is repeated filled with pure nitrogen and deflated again to purge the air, the tyre at 30psi will have one third air in it anyway.

I recently bought a 2004 Mazda 3 and it had tires with green caps instead of black. My dealer said the owner who traded it in bought brand new tires and they use nitrogen instead of air. It's been a while since I've had the car and the tire pressure is getting low. Should I keep the tires nitrogen, mix nitrogen and air, or just drain out the oxygen and go regular air.

What would filling tires with helium do to the car's performance if it works in the first place

Heat generated in tires causes gases to expand, increasing pressure. Does not matter much which type of gases are in tires. At extremes of temperature, however (such as aircraft and racing tires) is does make a difference.

Thanks for shooting down this marketing scheme

They dont vaccum the tires befote adding the nitrogen so the proportions of nitrogen are not that different in the tires and also, following the gas rules they should all expand the same unless there is more water vapor in one

I found that my tyre pressure has been great for up to 2 years without a refill (summers), my winters are going through their first storage season (vehicle came with winters on had to replace due to the wear), I bought my summers back in 2018 and that's the last time I had them filled before this year which it was down 4-5 psi from my manufactures recommended range or 32 psi. I get N2 free from my Cost-Co service and a guarantee as long as I own my vehicle and all products were bought and installed ( mounted) by Cost-Co they'll service just about anything I bought till I need to replace the parts. If I had to buy the gas each time I wouldn't since I have a compressor at home and why bother paying a bit extra since the inconvenience isn't that bad, I with reg air I found my tyres need refilling every 5-7months (avg) of the year.

All I needed to see was that the dealer had "Nitrogen" on the add-on tag at $279. A tire gauge can be had for under $10, and my air-filled tires only lose pressure between routine 5000-mile rotation-balances if I have a puncture or a failed valve core. See also the ideal gas laws.

why wouldnt you just change the tires on the last test instead of changing the whole car.

Only thing it'll help is maintaining pressure... I fill my tires with nitrogen for about 2 years now and I always check the pressure every 3/4 months. My tires have to be at a 32psi pressure, before on just air they would lose about 5~7psi every 4 months... now with nitrogen it's only 1~2psi.

Nitrogen in your tyres is a tyreseller scam. The size difference between O2 and N2 is miniscule (300 to 293)

how did they get the oxygen out of the uniflated tire?

Iv opened a lot of tires up to only find any moisture at all in maybe one out of fifty tires. That's likely due to someone using unmaintained air compressor than it is from condensation within the tire. The average driver never really drives there tires hard enough to get them any hotter than the ambient temperature of the road.

under high heat cant the O2 content also cause internal wear?

Nitrogen is also called "spring gas" because it is used in pneumatic springs/dampers in assorted contraptions, this because it is more temperature stable expansion-wise than ordinary air; it expands and contracts less. Thus, the tyre-pressure will stay more stable over a wide temperature range.

In The Netherlands they do this almost standard with bicycle tires if you buy a new bicycle.

The only people that benefit from nitrogen in your tires are the people selling it to you.

Expanding foam!that's your answer xx

how can I fill my tyres with nitrogen at home? do I have to buy tanks of it?

I use tungsten, because it doesn't leak through the tire.

Jason Plato achieved a 48 second lap when driving a honda civic type r mugen RR. the swift is quicker ??? fifth gear explain please.....

how come my old farm equipment tyres(light truck tyres) are still up after 15+ years, never put air in them. That was your old regular air compressor air! I also owned a tyre shop, I had customers with Nitrogen. I did not see any advantage. they still wore out their tyres at the same rate as everyone else. Under race conditions where things need to be worked out to the Nth degree pure Nitrogen can be used to give accurate tyre pressures at what ever temp. For us the normal road users it wont mater two hoots.

Nitrogen filled tubeless tyre are good for the fuel economy and it pressure does not drop for a long time. Check whether the air filling station has an Nitrogen generator.

You dont need to check your tire pressure regularly. Thats what the tire pressure light is for!

I recently got a new car and just found out they were filled with nitrogen but after looking at a few vids I don't think I'll be getting them refilled with nitrogen because it look like it's proven to be a money getter. unless you are a racer I don't think you need nitrogen filled tires and heck after watching this racers probably don't really need it.

In the hot room Fifth Gear concluded that the Nitrogen filled tyres were not completely filled fith Nitrogen (probably even with normal air instead?). Still they went to the circuit and long and behold, there was no time or feel difference and, how surprising, they concluded that there was no difference at all between Nitrogen filled tyres and air filled tyres. Sometimes I think they think we are idiots.

Many new cars come "filled" with nitrogen, this of course sucks if you live in a climate where you experience both hot humid summers and cold dry winters which can cause wider variation in tire pressure than normal air filled tires. Most people don't bother to look at their valve caps nor understand what the green paint means. Fill with normal air if you don't live in an area with consistent weather

how much is that in bar?

Finally a fair test showing real world application,but if you insist I don't mind taking your money you want nitrogen I be happy to fill it. 1 question what are you going to do when it does eventually leak out, drive around till you find a refill station or just put air in for free or pay for a top up?

Why use nitrogen? ... Having read the posts I will agree with most of what was stated. Now the real reason to use nitrogen would be the reduced moisture which can increase corrosion around the internal tire pressure sensor and poor choice of of metals used in the tire stem. If your tire doesn't have a sensor then I would not consider nitrogen. For those of us with internal sensors I would suggest dry air over the expense of nitrogen. The dollar saving solution (IMHO) is to put a desiccant dryer on our compressor outlets to remove moisture. I am looking for a multi-stage which would have the empty bulb with manual drain plus another bulb with desiccant granules. The granules work via adsorption as opposed to absorption which means moisture collects on the outside of the pellets. This means the pellets can be reused by merely placing them in an oven to vaporize the moisture off. Some dryers have another pellet that changes color to let you know when to replace or reclaim the pellets. Having experienced the corrosion issue mentioned with required replacing the internal tire pressure unit, I am convinced removing moisture is a good play whether it is nitrogen or dry air. The dry air units I have seen so far will likely cost $100 +/- depending on what I care to pay for and how much plastic is involved. I hope this helps someone.

~2psi is a different in F1 because the tires have a way wider track compare to any of road car even like the lambo. it is also slickier and the car go way faster than any of our road cars. these make the tires perform differently in race. but in road, there r no difference at all.

My grandpa in the 40s worked at a gas station. he would “change out that stale air” in Peoples tires for a few dollars🤣. Good for a laugh and a buck! When I was In High school I worked for his carpet store “Fred’s carpet” he would sometimes tell customers his name was Fred Scarpit. His name was Dick. Fred was his long passed father-in-law. I miss him.

Why didn't you do a blind air / nitrogen drive test?

It has a nice placebo effect. Just ask my wife!

Air will always seep out of the rubber slowly but being a larger molicule nitrogen will seep out slower...also since their is a lower or no moister content in nitrogen it helps prolong the life of your rims and also the life of your non rubber valve tpms sensors witch all tend to corrode over time...also in colder weather like here in Canada salt does a number on your tires and with the drastic drops in temp the nitrogen stays at a more constant pressure....my company owns a nitrogen filling Machine that hooks to all 4 tires and deflates the air our of the tire and then pumps nitrogen into the tire a few times in a row to slowly push all of the air out and making it 99.9 % nitrogen

Use expanding foam

Why is this better then Top Gear do you agree?

So if the O2 molecules slowly seep out, you will eventually end up with a tire that is mostly filled with nitrogen. Sounds good to me.

Nitrogen works for me. I put in 32 pounds per tire when my BRZ was new. 35,000 miles later I am at 31 pounds per tire. It is almost time for new tires!

cant watch this video without thinkin about the SAAB 900 lol