A tire store in the Detroit area is advertising nitrocize as a way to save money on gas & extend tire life by using 100% nitrogen instead of air. OK air is about 80% nitrogen anyway, the oxygen may oxidize the tires a little but gas milage… Isn’t this ad campaign a crock of old tires??
Basically, yes. If they give you the nitrogen free, take it. If they want to charge money for it, forget it. Any difference in oxidation over the life of the tire would be too small to measure. Nitrogen in passenger car tires is a profit generator, that’s all.
They also claim pure nitrogen will maintain correct tire pressure longer than air, but checking tire pressure is still necessary. Free nitrogen? OK, “Go ahead, fill them up,” otherwise, “No, thank you.”
It’s the newest scam. If you’re losing air to where you have to regularly refill it you have a leak.
Race cars use nitrogen for reasons that don’t exist in passenger tires. Nitrogen won’t feed a fire in the pits, race tires run very hot, and race tires are thin and made of a much softer compound and more pliable carcass, meaning that their handling is affected far more by variations in pressure than your car’s is, and meaning that they’re far more susceptable to losing air than your car is.
don’t pay for it. The longer lasting tire part is certainly a crock. I have nitrogen in my last set of tires from Costco, and they are not lasting better than any previous set in my MPV. The only effect I saw was that the nitrogen did not lose as much air in the winter, but you still have to check and account for temperature fluctuations.
At a tangent, one has to wonder how many tires have a load of water from all the air stations which don’t use any means of removing the humidity from the air. I’m sure that water inside the tire casing does wonders for tire balance. //// Someone who has changed, and balanced a number of tires, personally, could give us an answer, right?