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Charging customers for nitrogen filled tires that contain no more nitrogen than air (hey 78% is a lot!) reminds me of an idea I had to market regular salt as "a
by gmarx 4y ago
Charging customers for nitrogen filled tires that contain no more nitrogen than air (hey 78% is a lot!) reminds me of an idea I had to market regular salt as "ancient sea salt". I cracked myself up with this idea and thinking about the suckers in Whole Foods switching to it from their pink Himalayan or whatever regular sea salt.
Then I searched and discovered that of course some scumbag was actually doing it. Hehe
- wincy 4y agoI mean Pink Himalayan Salt is funny marketing too. “Pink Pakistani Mine Salt” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
- ak217 4y agoWhere I live, Costco sells potato chips with salt inspired by ancient Himalayan salt which cracks me up every time.
- kube-system 4y agoYesterday I bought some vegetable chips at the store. It contained one vegetable: potato.
- konfusinomicon 4y agodon't forget about the beet juice used for coloring!
- kube-system 4y agoThese ones didn’t even have that!
- andrewia 4y agoMost of the chips I've seen are guilty of this, from Trader Joe's to the popular Veggie Straws. They're essentially baked/popped chips with no extra nutritional content. "Veggie" is definitely deceptional to the average consumer, who expects vitamins and minerals.
- xeromal 4y agoI wouldn't call potatoes a vegetable, but they are nutrient dense. They are actually about the most well-rounded thing you can eat if you had to choose only one food to live off of. The only negative to them is the glucose spike, but if you have an active job, it's less of a problem
- echlebek 4y agoThey are literally a vegetable
- tmh88j 4y ago> Charging customers for nitrogen filled tires that contain no more nitrogen than air (hey 78% is a lot!) Are dealerships claiming to use nitrogen and just pumping in regular air, or are you talking about the unnecessary upselling of it? It's common in racing to use nitrogen, but yea, totally unnecessary for a Camry or whatever. One of my cars displays a warning telling me to visit the dealer when the tire pressure is low because the manufacturer recommends using nitrogen. I laughed the first time I saw the message on my gauge cluster before I knew the reason...still a ridiculous thought going to the dealer to top off my tire pressure even for nitrogen.
- ska 4y ago> totally unnecessary for a Camry or whatever. Forget the Camry, it's hard to construct a road use application that actually makes sense. I guess you can be a bit more relaxed about checking during seasonal changes....
- tmh88j 4y ago> Forget the Camry, it's hard to construct a road use application that actually makes sense. For daily driving, sure, but a lot of people track their cars. I don't care about nitrogen in my tires because I'm hardly a competitive racer or frequent track-goer, but for owners of "from the factory" track cars like the ZL1 1LE or GT3 RS I'm sure it matters more to them.
- ska 4y agoAs I said, "road use". Applies to most track days too, really. Maybe if you are club racer with a dedicated (i.e. trailored) track vehicle.
- tmh88j 4y agoRight, I meant that people often track their street cars. I've already said that I don't bother with nitrogen, but it takes a special kind of person to run R compound tires on the street...
- mister_tee 4y agoSome bottled water brand had a tagline "no other water hydrates better" in case anyone does want to use nitrogen in their tires, I think at least US Costcos with tire centers have free self-service nitrogen inflators for members.
- foobarian 4y agoSpeaking of bottled water, guess what Evian is spelled backwards...
- Bloating 4y agoWhat?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cercatrova 4y agoUnderrated joke
- kazinator 4y agoNivea.
- flavius29663 4y agowell, not all liquids hydrate the same. Some even de-hydrate (coffee, seltzer water etc.). The water you're drinking is not pure, it always has some impurities which affect how much you hydrate drinking it. Pure water (distilled) is "undrinkable" for humans. I can see how a water with ions and whatnot (like a gatorade) can hydrate and replenish your electrolytes better.
- kube-system 4y ago> Some even de-hydrate (coffee, seltzer water etc.) This is mostly a myth. Water hydrates you regardless of whether it's mixed with CO2 or with coffee beans. The thing about caffeine is that it is also a diuretic, so some of that water will be quickly expelled.
- Gracana 4y agoI think the point of “nitrogen” is more that it’s dry and impurity free, vs shop air that can have a lot of moisture and other junk in it. Ever drain an air compressor tank off the water that accumulated inside? They get filthy with rusty water.
- b3morales 4y agoThat's not the pitch that is made for the stuff. And I'm not sure that I've ever heard of rim failure due to filling air moisture being a widespread issue.
- dahfizz 4y ago> That's not the pitch that is made for the stuff. I mean, how often do salespeople understand the technical details of what they are selling?
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoTrue. But you almost never see any significant amount of that in tires.
- mnahkies 4y agoThat's true, although you should be draining them to remove water frequently enough (just to keep it in good health) that I wouldn't have thought it'd make much of a difference
- LorenPechtel 4y agoDraining the water doesn't mean what comes out isn't at 100% humidity--and thus can condense out water if the temperature drops enough. (Which doesn't mean that it isn't total overkill to use nitrogen rather than just dry air.)
- colpabar 4y ago"Nitrogen. It's what tires crave!"
- jandrewrogers 4y agoThere is a legitimate use case for dry nitrogen in tires, it just doesn't apply to the average person's situation. When the interior of the tire can become very hot, such as due to compressive loading in heavy construction equipment, there is a risk of accelerated oxidation and weakening of the tire material. In more extreme cases, the oxygen can react with atomized tire bits inside the tire causing an explosion via the same mechanism by which a Diesel engine works. It is exceedingly unlikely that the tires on a normal road car will ever become hot enough for this to matter.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoI thought it was also about removing the water vapor which could condense out in cold conditions.
- jandrewrogers 4y agoMy limited knowledge comes from a former life where I was trained diesel mechanic for heavy machinery, and this was a specific part of our education. Cold weather was never a concern related to nitrogen. The scenario everyone worried about, and was beaten into our heads, was a bit of oil or grease leaking into the tires, which is pretty normal on heavy equipment. Under typical conditions, this is harmless. However, under high compression that oil can start to vaporize, which basically turns it into highly flammable fuel. Under the right conditions this fuel when mixed with the pressurized air can and will spontaneously combust. Failures can be pretty spectacular, and they had video to prove it. The nitrogen removes the oxygen from the equation so that the combustion can never occur. Apparently it happened often enough historically that it is mandatory practice in many domains. For me, this was received wisdom because I've never seen this kind of explosive failure in real life, which is a great thing. But if I put my chemical engineer hat on it also is eminently plausible, so I put it in the category of "lessons they learned the hard way".
- LorenPechtel 4y agoI didn't know that scenario but I certainly could see it happening. Oxygen under enough pressure becomes a pretty nasty oxidizer. Especially when it happens suddenly. (Open the valve on a high pressure oxygen tank, pressurizing a system that wasn't previously pressurized.) By the time you add enough heat to the mix--rocket engines always run fuel-rich because at those temperatures an engine that runs oxygen rich probably then runs engine-rich. If you burn an engine to fuel exhaustion you likely destroy it.
- jacobr1 4y agoI once saw a big display in my local grocery for "organic salt" a few years ago. Which struck me as just fundamentally wrong. We are talking about non-organic material. Of course they meant "organic certified" which just meant they didn't includes additives. But still ... it seems so misleading.
- chasebank 4y agoWe've been selling nutritional supplements online for over a decade and I remember reading once about how some dirt on food really helps the microbiome. I considered selling dirt pills for a while. I think we'd have some success.