I saw this commercial last night with some NASCAR driver talking about how he likes to do things “fast”. He is showing things the pit crew does to speed things up and one of them is “we use nitrogen in our air guns so we can use them fast”.
Why would using nitrogen instead of regular air make any difference in how fast the air gun runs? All I could think of is that it might let the gun run “hotter” without causing problems, but that’s just a SWAG. Or, am I attaching too much importance to a line in a headache powder commercial?
Doesn’t have anything to do with the air gun’s operation, just the tires. Methinks yon Nascar driver should stick to driving and let the pit crew deal with the air guns.
Complete WAG warning:
Usually an air-gun is recharged between shots by using the barrel of the gun to compress the air.
Obviously this can’t be what you do if you’re using nitrogen (unless you’re shooting in a nitrogen atmosphere), so you need a little cylinder (or a big cylinder and a rubber hose) of nitrogen to provide the charge.
This means less delay between shots.
Of course if you’re using air, you’re already using (mostly) nitrogen.
[pats Hibernicus on head consolingly as he slinks by and gives him a puppy biscuit]
It’s possible that that’s what the Pit Boss told Mr. Hotshot “Can’t You Change Those Any Faster, Dickhead?” Nascar Driver one day, when he was standing there yammering at the pit crew. “Well, you know, Mr. Driver, we do have pure nitrogen in our air guns, and that makes 'em run even faster…”
Duck - OK, I understood about filling the tires with nitrogen but Mr. NASCAR was holding the air gun used to change the lug nuts with when he made his comment and I was pretty sure he was talking about it.
Hmmm… Another WAG. Maybe they use the same compressor to fill the tires and to run the air gun, so the air gun uses the nitrogen but the benefit is really for the tires? And, our driver (or whoever wrote the commercial) heard this and came to the wrong conclusion?
The tires may be the connection though… Thanks for bringing that up.
The reason that they use compressed nitrogen in the impact wrenches is because of the same reason they use it in the tires: it’s more stable than air. They don’t have to deal with moisture, which can jam a gun during the stop. As far as the left-handed lugs, no one is really trying that yet. Besides, you would use them on the right side, not the left, so they don’t come loose during the race.
And for the record, the teams usually have separate tanks for the wrenches and the tires.
Haven’t seen the ad.
Is it possible that the driver says:
“we use nitro in our air guns so we can use them fast”.
rather than
“we use nitrogen in our air guns so we can use them fast” ?
Nitromethane, “nitro” is a high energy fuel used in dragsters, funnycars etc. Dragsters go really fast, so the implication would be that nitro would also make an air gun go really fast.
FWIW, I’m almost positive that any tire they are using during a race has long since been inflated. They don’t waste time trying to adjust the pressure of a tire on the vehicle, they simply swap out the entire wheel.
racinchikki might be able to give a definitive answer, though.
Since one of my businesses is recharging fire extinguishers with dry nitrogen, I always carry tanks of nitrogen. I discovered early on that it was handy to have in case of a flat tire. I also found them handy in my other businesses as well in that you can run multiple air nailers/staplers in carpentry. No reason you couldn’t run air guns the same way.
Since any gas used for such a purpose requires a regulator, there would be no advantage with nitrogen vs. air in speeding up an air-wrench.
Race-car tires use nitrogen a lot. On ordinary cars, most gas-charged shocks and struts use nitrogen because of its thermal stability. In an air-operated tool I doubt very much it makes any difference, for better or worse. Maybe if they use nitrogen for everything, they don’t have to worry about mixing tanks up?
~
As for “Red-Ryder” airguns, I have not heard of nitrogen being currently used in any significant way. It was used in old (70’s and before) competition guns, but not really anymore. -There are airguns intended for air that you could fill with nitrogen or other inert gasses if you wanted to. Helium has been used in pre-charged hunting guns such as the Career and it does shoot perhaps 15% faster, but it doesn’t compress as easily: its pressure “falls off” faster than air or CO2 also lowering shot-to-shot accuracy and it is more temperature-sensitive, so it’s definitely a trade-off.
Most of the current Olympic airguns use scuba-air. - DougC
Back in the 1950s, some Chrysler (I think) products did use left-hand lug nuts and I am positive they were on the driver’s side. Think about direction of travel and direction of wheel rotation.
The post just before my “left-handed wrench” post made it look like the pit boss was pulling the wool over the reporter’s eyes, much like the new guy working in the airplane hanger would get sent out for a gallon of prop wash or a left-handed crescent wrench.
It was kind of a joke, only not as funny. I’ll move along, now…
Another good source to see the difference between compressed air and nitrogen would be paintball. Most guns come equipped with CO2, but there are upgrades and a few upper echelon guns that use nitrogen. A lot of it has to due with volume along with psi.
Not really sure what you mean, DougC.Any bottle of compressed gas that I’ve worked with contained liquid until released.The bottles of nitrogen I’ve used were at 2200 psi. and to get higher pressures you need specialized equipment.
