Do you trust air filling stations?

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I'll never use crappy water-laden air from any small compressor except in an emergency. I have been filling thousands of tires for 15 years with dry Nitrogen. Like it, or not it works better than cheap air, and water.
 
What about getting a Tank filled with Nitrogen (1,200 lbs pressure) for filling and topping-off tires.
I use my tankless compressor but the hose is a hassle and very noisy.
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Pros:
1) Nitrogen
2) Many top-offs
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cons:
1) 1,200 lbs of pressure / could be a bomb
2) Initial cost

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I use a hand pump for bicycles to top off the air in my car and pickup tires. It's a lot faster than my pitiful 12V compressor.
 
The Wawas by me usually have a line of 3 or 4 cars waiting for air. It's very popular.
 
Originally Posted by John_K
Around here they were always out of order.

Same here. The tweekers cut the hose end off to scrap it. I have never heard of one that lets you dial the pressure. Just the usual one with a broken gauge sticking out of one end if it works at all.
 
Yes the air is completely free and they have a pretty sophisticated machine which has always been spot on. Apparently it is now out of calibration. The machine is capable of deflating the tire if it is over pressurized. I have a digital tire pressure display available in my dash. It is also very accurate. I always double check my tire pressure with a track quality guage. Everything has always synced except for this time. And also I believe the air machine has some type of water separator built in as I have never had even a spurt of moisture out of them.
 
I have a gauge in the console, so if I ever have to use air at a gas station I can check it with my own gauge. Mostly just fill at home when needed though.
 
Casey General Stores has free air.

all the rest I've seen want you to pay a buck, but it goes to "feed my starving Children" charity. That [censored] me off, the name of the charity and the fact that you need to inflate to be safe, but being held hostage by a "charity". It's like being raped by a Pedo Priest, then donating to the Catholic Priest Protection fund to deliver me from Hades along with a standard mass print thank you letter from papa pope daddy....
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I use the one at Giant Eagle whenever I need air because it's free and always well maintained.

I do have an air compressor at home but my house seems to have been wired by a crackhead and trying to run anything larger than a lamp in the garage will blow the GFCI in the upstairs bathroom thus cutting power to the garage, bathroom, and a few outlets in the basement too.

The few times I have used my compressor I had to ask my neighbor to let me run an extension cord to the outlet on his porch.
 
Originally Posted by Traction
I'll never use crappy water-laden air from any small compressor except in an emergency. I have been filling thousands of tires for 15 years with dry Nitrogen. Like it, or not it works better than cheap air, and water.


Your definition of "better" differs from mine by quite a bit it sounds like.
 
I overinflate my tires at a gas station nearby and remove the excess air as needed measuring with my portable Schwalbe electronic pressure gauge (which is designed for bicycles and can measure up to 11bar with outstanding accurancy for a very affordable price) when I get home and the tires are cold.
 
None of the filling station around here that have air have built in gauges and if they did I wouldn't trust them.

All the $10 digital gauges I have tried have been very accurate when I check them against my Longacre. The last one I bought measures in the .10's which is kind of ridiculous for what I need but it is fast and accurate and I keep one in both vehicles.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073V74T23/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
Are there places that check/calibrate tire pressure gauges like they do for torque wrenches? Probably cost more than a new one but how do you know a new one is accurate either?
 
Originally Posted by atikovi
Are there places that check/calibrate tire pressure gauges like they do for torque wrenches? Probably cost more than a new one but how do you know a new one is accurate either?


I don't know, and frankly for $1 each, I doubt they are accurate. But that begs the question, why would someone want to have their tire gauges calibrated? How is a calibrated gauge going to outperform my $1 pencil gauge for a daily driven car with no special needs or wants?
 
I suspect that racing teams of various levels would do that. Of course, I doubt you can calibrate a $1 pencil gauge. I just keep a stainless steel Milton S-921 in each vehicle and have a a few other pencil ones in the garage and one or two dial gauges. They all read about the same as each other and that's pretty much good enough for me.

Of course, I don't have a scrutineer that will check my tire pressure and disqualify me from a race, either.

atikovi: There are labs that can calibrate certain pressure gauges. There also are suppliers that will provide you with calibration equipment. Of course, that's overkill for almost everyone.
 
a well maintained air compressor should provide air with little to no moisture in it. But who knows how well they are maintained.

I would not use filling station air pump as a first option because:

-air compressor maintenance and gauge calibration

-tyres already warm/ hot (worse still each corner can be at different temperature)

If do use one, I always have my regular guage with me and over inflate by 4psi. Once home and tyre cooled down, I check the pressure.

I have been using nitrogen for few years despite the painful process of finding a place that does it
 
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Casey General Stores has free air.....
A rare thing to find these days. No Casey's around here, however Discount Tire has free drive up air check and fill at all stores.

If one does use an air fill station, best practice to have a tire guage on hand to check/confirm pressure. Simple enough.

I check and fill my tires at home.
 
Originally Posted by The_Nuke
Originally Posted by atikovi
Are there places that check/calibrate tire pressure gauges like they do for torque wrenches? Probably cost more than a new one but how do you know a new one is accurate either?


I don't know, and frankly for $1 each, I doubt they are accurate. But that begs the question, why would someone want to have their tire gauges calibrated? How is a calibrated gauge going to outperform my $1 pencil gauge for a daily driven car with no special needs or wants?

At one point recently I realized I had a stack of pencil gauges, so for fun I picked a tire and tested them all against each other. I tossed several that seemed to be more than a few pounds off from the others. Now I'm left wonder if any of them are all that good! better than nothing but nothing i'd trust to 1psi. [Not that I am that picky about it, most of my tires seem to wear ok where they wind up for pressure.]
 
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