Comment: Savannah Way

May be useful Savannah Hwy by NRMA

Cheers, The new car comes with the 265/60/R18 Michelin Latitude all-season tyres, what are the thoughts on these?? I have never run Michelin tyres, always coopers, currently trying Yokohamas.

Hi cheers for that,
Yeah I am a bit concerned running on standard rubber, as I have always replaced them from buying a new car. I will request that the dealer replaces the tires with the usual coopers that I run, I think I will go back to the ATR3's I had them on my Pajero and think they were the best tire I have ever run.

I play with mu pressures allot when traveling off road, depending on what you are traveling on and what weight but often run 20-26 psi on the dirt roads.

Brendan,
Yes, I have the same issue. New triton with stock rubber and a run on the planty., tanami & gibb river road this year. Did replace with LTs on new rims. Now maybe it would have been OK with stock, who knows. Plenty of 4wds with tyre issues, but mainly stock rubber on pajeros, toyotas and jeeps to name a few.
If you drive carefully, possibly get through OK, but I was not going to take the chance.
Talking to the guy half way across the gibb river road who does tyre repairs, $500.00 for a replacement tyre, fitted. Once you got there.

Have a good trip.

I am with you oldplodder. Did a 10k trip a few years ago, three thousand of those with a mate with factory spec tyres on his Landcruiser. You can guess he had the punctures. Two of them.

This year we have done 18k Kms and the only puncture being a pop rivet. A quick plug did that one.Savannah Way dirt was a fair part of the cover. The pop rivet was on the Oodnadatta Track. Not bad for eight tyres in contact with the road all the way.

Don't use passenger spec tyres if you want to do rougher stony roads, or even bitumen with sharp stones, and drop your tyre pressures to take a lot of the shock from your other components

Thanks guys, the only problem I am having is the jeep comes with 20" rims, I have added the 4wd kit which replaces the 20" with 18" as listed above, to get the same size tires they are only made in passenger due to the 18" rims. I contacted our local dealer and the Cooper ATR3 are $415 a tire plus fitment etc. roughly $2200. Trying to work out a deal to swap the new tires to save me money. I would be comfortable doing it in my Pajero as that is well set up, but I have that for sale and get the new car Jan / Feb 2014.

JOHNR, you said you did the Savannah way?? what time frame do you think it will take to go from Borroloola to Normanton? we have allocated 2 days.As always, we travel alone, only the family in one car, so we have to do our homework and make sure we prepared every time.

OLDPLODDER: I agree with the standard rubber being crap,I believe all 4wd manufacturers should offer you a choice of tires you want to fit when ordering a new car. I bought our 2011 Pajero in Adelaide, drove 1500km home to Alice and swapped them out to coopers.. but..with all due respect, I laugh at $500 a tire in the remote areas as we often pay extreme prices for everything in the Alice as it is. as I said above the price to replace the Jeeps tires are $415 plus balancing, fitment and alignment I was quoted yesterday. that's in a large town. I think $500 is a good price remote considering the freight cost and areas.

We are currently looking at a camper trailer to tow behind as well, The Market Direct Camper Expedition Voyager RF
The last trip we did was the Central Arhnam highway to and around Gove area and we run the Coopers and had no problem what so ever.

Brendan, that depends entirely what you want to see along the way. Yes, you could do it in two days, but if you want to go to Kingfisher Camp, if you want to go to King Ash Bay, and whatever. I think we took four days, but we were towing a caravan. There are some good side trips. Lorella Springs isn't that far from Borroloola for instance.

The low profile tyres make me wince, just thinking of running those at lower pressures! Not so bad for a road car, but for outback. How many pinches to cut through a sidewall. I have 17" tyres with higher profile to give cushioning against the stones.