Tyre Pressure

Baz

Give me an an all expenses paid trip to Fraser Is and I'll test your theory.

Regardless of the results I'll tell everyone that your a great bloke and your theory is correct.:))))))

Regards Bob

afraid it is without question the advice about letting your tyres down and towing. I watched a guy in a pajero struggling down the beach towing with his trailor tyres doind one revolution to his 2 before he became bogged and unhooked his trailor. I moved in and let his trailor tyres down and towed his trailor to firmer ground in an underpowered 3 tonne +2h diesal cruiser campervan while he watched on.
As for destrying tyres, why the heck would you be running radials on such equipment anyway? and 15 inch tyres would not even go close to having the load range you speak of.
16 inch 16 ply tyres would be the only choice for that type of work probablly about 150 bucks each

I don't see the issue.
Its always been that there is no question that rolling
resistance reduces as you let tyres down in the soft sand and
that as tyres bag they become more suscepablte to sidewall punctures.

Figuring out best compromise is harder being terrain dependant.

Robin Miller

Oldbaz , no bl--dy way can we fill a wheelbarrow with water in seQld at the moment but sand pressure is all about footprint length NOT width , tanks go better on sand than any truck ,, looooooong footprint ,spread the weight lengthwise not widthwise.

I always thought the same about tyre pressures on the trailer, but my brother has proven it several times while launching his boat from the beach at Coral Bay. Others come along and have all sorts of trouble untill they heed his advice and let the trailer tyres down.

Old baz,
I agree with you 100%.
I read your account as applying to rough roads or gravel, while most people above are talking about sand. These are two different things entirely and need to be approached totally differently.

Thanks for the support - no need for me to go into "for instances" again, but our experiences over the years concur with yours.

Oldbaz - farming must be where my husband gets his reluctance to let down tyres, stating risk of side wall damage. I quote the basketball - blow it up tight and drop in to the floor - bouncy bouncy. That's what our caravan was doing on the corrugations (not to mention us in the patrol, although he let our back tyres down a bit after a used "but Willem said" a couple of times). Drop the basketball flat and there is very little bounce. From the posts i have read on the forum, the letting down tyres is winning over the sidewall damage risk.

Always and interesting topic that gets people going.

Following are my experiences:

* Our Rangie on its tyre pressure plate says use the same pressure on and off road.
* We do not drop our pressures, even in sand and have had no problems and never been towed.
* In our Troopy, when we have dropped pressures when offroad, we have had tyres (750/16 LT) that have disintergrated in a manner that suggest under inflation. (30 to 40psi) When we have had the manufacters recommended pressures, no problems even though the rears are at 60psi.
* once again in 3 years of offroading the Troopy, we have never been towed or winched with these tyre pressures. Also we have done less damage to tracks that those with lower pressures as we use a softly softly approach than the ones that are rip s**t and bust and usually have their tyre pressures lowered.

Admittedly we do not do the extreme types of work where we need every bit of traction which is what most people are after. We also found that there was not much difference in comfort in the Troopy with lower tyre pressures when we did lower them.

As for beach driving, we live on Bribie Is and are on the beach every couple of weeks and have no problems at all.

We have friends in NZ who are 4wd trainers and run a training company and they never let their tyres down. They know what they are doing, they wrote the training standards for the NZ government for 4wd's.

At the end of the day, if we need to lower the pressures becuase we need extra traction, we will do it (and we carry a compressor for that day that has not happened yet).

Stevesub