Comment: Our Troopy Set-Up

Hi Dick,

The trailer is an odd one - a "Road and Track" (precursor of the TVan and no longer made) with a light fibreglass body on a rugged offroad chassis. It weighs in at 375 kg empty and the Troopy doesn't even know it's there. Last year we travelled about 2/3 of the CSR with it, north to south then backtracked and headed west on the Talawana. The trailer gave us no trouble. Friends travelling with us pulled an Ultimate without much difficulty.

As always in challenging terrain, tyre pressures are the answer. Most of the CSR is sand dunes and we used about half bitumen pressure on the Troopy and about 10 psi on the trailer. The Ultimate was also down at about 10 psi. On only one occasion did we fail to take a dune on the first attempt, and that was before we had optimised tyre pressures. The sand is very loose, especially in the afternoon once any moisture has dried out. The dunes are heavily corrugated, but far worse are scollops (hills and valleys up to about a metre apart and "in phase" with the wheel spacing) where the whole vehicle is thrown bodily up and down. These scollops limit the momentum that can be achieved on a runup to each dune.

If I had a choice, I would not tow the heavy Ultimate - it's possible, but your Troopy will be less challenged without a couple of tons of anchor on the back. Certainly I'd suggest not travelling alone if your are towing it. If you were to jacknife backing down a dune for a second attempt, a companion vehicle capable of providing some serious influence would be very helpful.

Our suspension - stock standard 20+ year old leaf springs. We broke one on the scollops and had to limp out to Port Hedland to get a pair of replacements. We were very fortunate that the break occurred where we could bolt the whole spring together and carry gingerly on.

Cheers

John