Cooper STs follow up to post 22445

Mate and I did a runner up through Sunny Corner / Capertee / Sofala two weeks ago. He has the ST-Cs and I've got STs, both sets got chipped out pretty bad on the run, even though we lowered tyre pressures.
He took his back to ARB Southern on wednesday and through Coopers is getting them exchanged (so they can keep their name good) for the new STT Armour Teks. I'll be taking mine back to Rod Spence at Miranda on monday. Mine are actually in worse condition than the ST-Cs and have less than 6,000 klms on them. Be interesting if they don't come through with an exchange on mine.

Shawn

Gday Redback

Remember the factory tyre pressure is to make the ride in the 4WD seem smoother and is not necessarily what is best for the tyre as far as on road grip and wear goes. 28 front 38 rear, the 28 on the front sounds a little low. What’s the recommended cold pressure on the sidewall placard and I would stay closer to that.

I run my cooper AT’s at 48-psi front and back on road and the ride and handling doesn’t worry me

Only my thought’s if 28-psi works for you then use it.

I have had two ST's changed from chipping. No problem at all when this was done. They were replaced with ST-C's. Much softer compound. I wouldn't drive around town with them (I have a bush set and city set of tyres, coopers are the bush set). Haven't done rocky conditions with the ST-C's as yet but going by the feel of the tyre I would expect that they would chip alot less.

I thought the new ST-C's were the new "non chip" tyres ?

But , they are a soft compound , so they DONT chip , but dont last as long ?

Ya know, reading all these Posts about the problems many forumites are experiencing with the Cooper tyres, they would just have to be the LAST piece of rubber I would consider for my vehicle. I'm sold - NOT!!!

Hi All,

Just to put in a GOOD word about the Coopers..........

I have the A/T's on the Prado in 265/70R17 and they have done nearly 38,000km. I have just returned from a 10,000km trip from Adelaide to Weipa in FNQ via the Strezlecki Track and SW QLD.

I encountered several hunderd kms of some really aggresive Gibber rocks and thought I was going to lose at least one tyre. I was on a tight schedule so had to keep the average speed up and mostly did 80-90 km/h on the track and the Gibber sections east of Innamincka. The sort of roads where you just steer around the worst looking rocks and hope for the best!

I also did the 600km of dirt from Lakelands to Weipa just a week after Cyclone Ingrid went through and the road (I use the term loosely!) was as rough as guts. Washouts a foot deep every few hundred yards in spots. Sharp rocks everywhere and the washboard corrogations on the banked corners were just awful. Again we were doing the trip in one day so had to keep the speed up a bit so the tyres copped a real flogging.

I can say I had absolutely no tyre problems on the entire trip. They did the job just great. I had 40psi in them on the blacktop and let them down to 28 front and 30 rears on the dirt sections.

There are only a few very small cut marks here and there on the tread face and they seem to be just about 50% worn. No Chipping at all.

I have just ordered a set of the new Cooper ATR to go on and will be using the current set on a camper trailer to be built soon. The ATR are supposed to be even better than the A/T.

I realise that most of this post is about the ST's and ST-C's but I wanted to give people the perspective of how the A/T's went, especially since most people have to go for an A/T as an allrounder tyre rather than specific off-road tyres.

Another member on here did a very similar trip to me on ST's in his patrol and was surprised at the amount of chipping his tyres suffered. My A/T's look like they could to that same trip another couple of times over before starting to look tired.

Just my thoughts... Will let you all know in due course what I think of the ATR's that will be going on this week.

Cheers
Muddy