anyone else's 2010 come with nitrogen in the tires

Costco has it but the atmospher is 78% nitrogen so it wont hurt to add reg air to the tires

 

Just use regular compressed air in your automobile. Afterall, air is about 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% other gasses (mainly CO2), not to mention water vapor.

The biggest benefit for using dry Nitrogen in tires is for aircraft which fly at high altitudes.

Keith

 

And for NASCAR race cars, for whatever reason.

I just checked mine again today, and after 5 weeks they'd all dropped 2 psi. I put them back to 42/40.

 

Nascar uses it to try to keep moisture out of the tires. Which supposedly is easier to control expansion

 

Just bought a 2010 Prius II one sales man told me 25.00 a tire My other sales Man told me it was standard. I was openly working with both of them. I have over 200 miles on the Car love it but dont know if it has nitrogen or not - In my area Buffalo tire, Discount Tire, Gerard tire, And manny dealers carry Nitrogen- tire dealer i spoke with said 24.99 free checkups. google tires nitrogen your city & state for a list

 

We've had our 2010 Level V Prius for a little over a week and this past Saturday I was installing locking wheel nuts on all the tires and noticed each air valve stem had green caps on them which indicates nitrogen is in the tires. Do they come from Toyota like this? Do the dealers take out the ambient air originally in the tires and replace it with 100% nitrogen for anything more than a profit reason when you come back (and "have" to have 100% nitrogen added as the tires lose pressure)?

I've read many threads on here about nitrogen in the tires and I feel it isn't necessary and will add good ol' regular air when the tire pressure changes; can anyone see a detriment to doing this aside from the fact they'll only carry about 80% nitrogen rather then 100%? Some have said the air won't be as "dry" (more moisture in it) but I don't know if this is truly a reason not to use ambient air. Our cars are not airplanes OR race cars so I can't see the benefit of continuing to use 100% nitrogen. Am I missing something?

Thank you for any input.

 

NO NO!
The real truth is that you need to replace your tires air with the proper air for the season.... Summer air for the warm times and winter air for when it's cold. (Spring & fall air is help full too.)
The reason is the the tires are now better adjusted for the season.

:bounce::jaw:

No, the real truths is that nitrogen is great for cars BUT why waste the money. Regular air is A-OK. The fact that nitrogen is used in other areas is the fact that it expands and contracts at a much slower pace thus for planes the temps and altitudes, race cars the can fill up tires all at once and not have issues as the tires warm up over the time of the race.

Yuma Taco,

 

Just my opinion, but especially given the importance of monitoring and maintaining consistent tire pressure with a Toyota Prius there is no way I'd worry about "nitrogen". I'd make sure my tires were consistently inflated to the PSI I wanted, but it certainly wouldn't be worth it to me in either expense or hassle to make sure it was filled with nitrogen.

 

This statement is flat out, absolutely, totally wrong. No, no, no, nonononononoonNO! :Cry:

Sorry to put such a sharp point on it, but stopping this bit of misinformation is like playing Whack-a-mole. Every time you beat it down, it pops up in another thread.

Nitrogen behaves like any other nearly ideal gas. It expands and contracts at the same rate as air. Its diffusion rate is pretty much the same as air.

Dry nitrogen has the advantage of being dry. Other than that, the only advantage is that nitrogen will not support oxidation.

Please stop perpetuating this myth.

Tom

 

Managers of race cars and airplane fleets have hundreds of tires to keep track of and any increase in stability would help in overall fleet readiness which is very important for victory and defense.

How much would you pay not to have a tire blowup when crossing the finish line or when carrying a bomb and moving at 200 mph?

On the other hand, regular car owners just have to worry more than 4 tires, and we don't drive faster than 65 mph, and can pay more attention to each one by checking often and topping off with a bicycle pump.

At $25 per tire, it's $100. I changed all my tires for about $500 last time. $100 can allow me replace my tires 20% sooner, which is safer. I think if I want safely, I'll spend the extra money on buying new tires more often.

Finally, a car is a tool. It'll get used, get old, and get traded in for a new car. You can spend all the money for nitrogen, paint treatment, amourall, clear coat, bug shield, wind deflector, mats, mud guards - you have merely increased the cost of ownership. When you have a 10 year old Prius with 150,000 miles, no buyer would pay too much extra for an extra clean car. So you have merely increased the cost of ownership.

 

Aircraft tires use dry nitrogen for three reasons:

1) It's easy to carry a small tank of liquid nitrogen out onto the tarmac.

2) Aircraft tires are exposed to very, very cold temperatures while they are stationary at altitude. In this situation, water vapor can condense on the low side, which will cause the tire to be off balance when landing.

3) Aircraft tires are suddenly accelerated upon landing. The resulting frictional heating can cause tire fires. Nitrogen does not support combustion.

Race cars use nitrogen for three reasons:

1) It's easy to use a small tank of liquid nitrogen in the pit.

2) Dry nitrogen does not contain water vapor. Water vapor is a non-ideal gas. Its rate of expansion varies as it goes through a phase change. Contrary to popular opinion, the pressure in race car tires does rise as the tires heat. Because of the fine-tuned nature of racing cars, it is important to be able to predict how much the pressure will increase. Removing water vapor from the equation makes it much easier to accurately predict the increase of tire pressure during the race.

3) Race car tires are subjected to high frictional heating during loss of control. Nitrogen does not support combustion.

That's all there is to it. The rest is just myths and unfounded speculation.

Tom

 

Of course you can add atmospheric air! This whole nitrogen thing is just one more profit center for some.

I have heard all the stuff about how nitrogen prevents deterioration of the rubber inside your tires and how the nitrogen molecule being larger than air molecules (and I am not one bit sure which one is larger), takes longer to leak from the tires and all sorts of other stuff.

My theory is that IF in fact, nitrogen leaks more slowly than oxygen, since you start out at 78% and the oxygen keeps leaking out, as you refill the tires you keep increasing the percentage of nitrogen until eventually you are at a pretty high percentage of nitrogen at no cost whatsoever. I also wonder how they purge the tires they are going to fill with nitrogen of atmospheric air? Is there some sort of large chamber where the technicians have to wear space suits?

I do know that in many years of owning cars, I have never had a tire fail from the inside.

Save your money.

 

Double post by mistake

 

I am mostly in agreement with you except there is also MONEY. "Purge 98" a nitrogen seller sponsors NASCAR and some drivers tells us to use nitrogen may have something to do with it. It's MONEY and GREED.

I think they probably provide the nitrogen for free and pay the teams to use it. Why not use it if they are paying you?

As for ease in racing. Yes, most people have trouble finding an air hose. However, in racing, those guys use multiple compressed air hoses for jacking up the car, and removing bolts from the wheel. I don't think they have trouble finding compressed air in the pits. Watch the pit stops, there are 4 guys with 4 hoses whenever the car pulls into the pit stops.

The problem with air, you can't get a dime from the air sponsors.

 

I fill my tires up at Costco with nitrogen for free. That's the only reason I do it. Plus they fill it for you to the proper pressure too. I will pose a question, if nitrogen is dry air, would it help prolong the life of the TPMS inside the valve? I'm sure it electronic, right?

 

Hard to say, it is most likely electromechancal. There may be a membrane to be pushed against and a strain guage to measure pressure. These might me miniaturized into a chip but it is still there.

Now the electronics may last longer. Since you have no oxygen in an absolute nitrogen environment (this is debatable since we all know the tires are not 100% nitrogen), there is no oxidation and no rust.

But the electronics and the membrane are encased in plastic, resin, etc with plasticizers. When those plasticizers dry out, the unit will fail. I don't know what dry air does to the rate of plasticizer evaporation. Plasticizers don't last forever - you have any old toys, old rubber bands left in the house? Remember the cracked dashboards?

 

comment deleted

 

I'm sure that nitrogen isn't necessary after reading previous posts and then this. The only reason I saw as even a possibility was it might help protect the life of the TPMS because it's "drier" but I doubt if even this is an issue (if it was, I think Toyota would have listed this in the drivers manual and all tires with the TPMS system would be filled with nitrogen).

I didn't ask for N2 nor did I pay for it (I bet the dealer put it in) and I'm certainly not going to make it an issue when I have to add air to my tires; I'll just get the free 78% "Nitrogen Light" air.

Sorry to rekindle an old myth but I just wanted to be sure with our new car.