Tyre Treatment?

[sulavaca]

Wouldnt be that hard to inflate with CO2. Bit of yeast and sugar.....

Nitrogen.

In my experience it is not terribly necessary to treat most tyres in Taiwan as the vast majority of users will wear them out before they become dangerous.
Also I have no knowledge of any, single compound which can protect a tyre's tread well enough to extend considerably the time which it takes for it to become brittle over time. This reaction can be slowed slightly in some cases, but almost never significantly enough as tyres are made from vulcanized rubber, and this process is an irreversible process which causes the rubber and carbon black element to combine and become ever stiffer over time. Its a process which both offers advantages, i.e. the rubber in the tyre doesn't fall apart and separate readily, and also disadvantages, i.e. that the compound always gets harder over time and causes distortion of tread, hardening and splitting of rubber and separation from the internal wire framework.
In fact this process is so irreversible that so far no technology has been found to separate the rubber from the carbon black compound. This is why to this day tyres are non-recyclable.

[Ducked]

Wouldnt be that hard to inflate with CO2. Bit of yeast and sugar.....

Nitrogen.

.

That'd be better, and is cheap to produce industrially in bulk (by fractional distillation of air) but there probably wouldn't be payback for setting up a system in petrol stations, even if you could prove it worked.

I don't know of any cheap supply of pure N readily available to individuals.

Methane or propane might be all right, though the slight fire/explosion hazard would be a deterrent. One would have to purge all the air from the tyre, which would be difficult.

[sulavaca]

http://www.costco.com.tw/eng/products_services.htm

They offer a nitrogen service.

[Ducked]

http://www.costco.com.tw/eng/products_services.htm

They offer a nitrogen service.

Knock me down wiv a fevva!

I get the tyre life bit, not so sure about the fuel economy and handling. Is it expensive?

[sulavaca]

Keeping your tyres inflated properly increases handling, fuel efficiency and tyre life.

[Ducked]

I can only pick out the production date clearly on this tyre:



This states it was produced in October, 2005, which makes the tyre potentially dangerous and outside of any manufacturer's recommended usage period. The fact that it is cracking up now suggests that the rubber and carbon black compound it is produced from has become unstable and prone to failure. You will also notice that running this tyre as opposed to a new tyre will result in much greater road noise. This is because the rubber compound is now relatively brittle and will not flex or grip as well as it was designed to.
Continue using this tyre at your own risk, but I would recommend a new replacement.

I thought I'd better check the codes on the other tyres. Allways meant to but never got around to it.

There are two shallow lozenge-shaped depressions each side of a "C8FH" moulded into the outside sidewall. One of them seems to be empty, the other contains a very faint alphanumeric code, which I assume is the date stamp. These are, if I'm interpreting them correctly:-

Front OS : JDJ0905 : Week 9, (i.e. Feb) 2005
Front NS : JDJ1005 : Week 10 (ie Feb) 2005
Rear NS : JDJ1105 : Week 11 (ie March) 2005
Rear OS : JDJ1005 : Week 10 (ie Feb) 2005

They are all Bridgstone 175/70R13 SF-226 radials. There are lots of other codes on the tyres but the only one that varies seems to be WK154941-2 (FOS) and WK154941-1 (other three wheels). I've no idea what that means but suspect it might be a mould number.

So they were fitted as a matched set, and are still well within the manufactures advised 10 year lifespan. OTOH, they are outside the 6 year lifespan apparently advised by many car makers.

That seems to be a blanket advisory that has to cover some very heavy and high performance vehicles, which my sub-litre car isn't, especially when driven by me. A lot of the impetus for it seems to have come from Germany, where high speed driving is legal, and some high profile US litigation involving a Ford Explorer rollover.

So I wouldn't personally scrap them on an age basis, but I don't like the look of them much, so I'll probably at least replace the two with the most obvious sidewall fissures.

I'm told part-used tyres are pretty cheap here, (though I dunno where you get them) so I'll look into that.

The spare, which I'd expect to be older, but looks better, is a Chengshin 831 155SR13 (different nominal width and aspect ratio, same rim diameter).

It has an 11-digit code (42707105610) in a shallow lozenge, which seems to be using a different system which I can't interpret at present.

Nearby there's DOT UYE5 HEO427 moulded in relief. Dunno what all that means either, (apart from DOT, probably) but if I had to guess I'd say all the alpha stuff was secret manufacturer jive, and it was made in week 42 of 2007. A youngster!

The last three digits match the first 3 of the numeric code above, so maybe its a mirror, to go with all the smoke?

[Ducked]

Keeping your tyres inflated properly increases handling, fuel efficiency and tyre life.

Yes, of course. But why would keeping your tyres inflated properly with nitrogen increase improve handling and fuel efficiency?

(These are in conflict in any case, though thats a separate issue.)

[sulavaca]

Edit, yes, sorry that's the tenth week of 2005, not October. My mistake.

Nitrogen per se does not improve any of those things much within normal use over normal air. They have simply mentioned those things in order to serve as an advertisement.

Read more here: http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/ ... -3606.html

In my experience, nitrogen does little to nothing to improve the experience and the effectiveness of typical passenger vehicle tyres.
Personally I don't use nitrogen and can't really be bothered in squeezing out just that little, tiny bit more performance from a good set of tyres.
Personally, I would recommend accepting that tyres will simply deteriorate over time, and that there is little you can do about it.

The best piece of advice I can offer is to keep the vehicle garaged. This will not only reduce weathering to the vehicle's tyres, but will reduce all issues overall.

[Ducked]

Nitrogen per se does not improve any of those things much within normal use over normal air. They have simply mentioned those things in order to serve as an advertisement.

Read more here: http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/ ... -3606.html

In my experience, nitrogen does little to nothing to improve the experience and the effectiveness of typical passenger vehicle tyres.
Personally I don't use nitrogen and can't really be bothered in squeezing out just that little, tiny bit more performance from a good set of tyres.
Personally, I would recommend accepting that tyres will simply deteriorate over time, and that there is little you can do about it.

The best piece of advice I can offer is to keep the vehicle garaged. This will not only reduce weathering to the vehicle's tyres, but will reduce all issues overall.

I know you didn't write it, Mr S, or explicitly endorse the content, but I have to say that article appears to be mostly bullshit.

Eg "The moisture content of nitrogen leads to a cooler running tyre"

I asked one of my private students, who runs a Ford dealership, and they do nitrogen tyre fills, so I guess most of the main dealers might.

(There was me thinking I'd invented something, "They all laughed when Edisson discovered sound" stylee.)

Apparently they have a "club".

(Dunno what its called, I fancy "The NInert Club" but I guess that might not work in Chinese, if indeed it works in English ).

IF I understood them correctly, 100NT (I'd guess a year, though they seemed to be saying it was a one-off payment) buys you all the N you want. Doesn't seem too bad.

[TainanCowboy]

Ducked -
If & when you decide on new tires, you might look into the tire package offered by CostCo here on the island.
It looks to be a pretty comprehensive plan with good after buy service included.

Also, they do offer that 'nitrogen' inflation. Although, IMO, the jury is still out on actually how much of an advantage that is for non-commercial users. Still, if it has a good side and its part of the package - good for them.