I inflated the tires on my 2006 Hummer H2 with helium to get better gas mileage (it improved by approx 5%)?

Will this increase the danger of having a blow out, or is there anything else I should be concerned about?I inflated the tires on my 2006 Hummer H2 with helium to get better gas mileage (it improved by approx 5%)?Helium or hydrogen, less curb weight = better mileage.I inflated the tires on my 2006 Hummer H2 with helium to get better gas mileage (it improved by approx 5%)?First of all, your Hummer H2 is nearly a three ton vehicle and the miniscule lift you would get off of putting helium in the tires would do little to lighten the car, and certainly would not even account for a 1/00th of one percent gain in fuel economy.



Second, curb weight of a car, while a factor in fuel economy, is not so signficant as one might think. While it would have a considerable influence to signficantly lighten a car if that car did a lot of stop and go driving, as each time the car accelerates it must use energy to accelerate the mass, the weight of a car that is mostly driven on the highway bears little impact on fuel consumption, as once the mass has been accelerated to speed, it takes very little additional energy to maintain momentum.



As to your, question about blow out potential, and I am treating all of this with far more credibility than it deserves, yes, there probably would be a greater potential for blowouts. Helium is a very low density gas as compared to air. As such, it has very little capacity for temperature exchange. At highway speeds for an extended period of operation that might modestly diminish the tires' capacity to dissipate heat generated by road friction, and I suppose could result in some slightly higher risk of heat-related failure. There may also be some differential between helium and air in terms of how much the one expands compared to the other when heat is factored in. I am simply not scientifically informed on that issue and no doubt have already dwelt upon this longer than it merits.



I will close by offering that I think you need not concern yourself with losing any traction from the "lift" the helium adds to your tires. You would need something akin to, and perhaps even larger than the Goodyear blimp to lift that vehicle off the ground.I inflated the tires on my 2006 Hummer H2 with helium to get better gas mileage (it improved by approx 5%)?You can be concerned that the helium will leak out at a fairly rapid rate and you'll be riding on under inflated, unsafe tires. Helium is a hard gas to contain. The atom is so small it can seep through the smallest opening. We used it in the hi-tek industry as a leak detection gas for vacuum systems because of those properties. It isn't inherently unsafe but it's so hard to contain in something as porous as a tire that I wouldn't use it. Boogie 4 is wrong. Helium is inert, not flammable.