Bad experience with Cooper ATR

Hi,

I recently bought a set of Cooper ATRs for my GUIII Patrol in preparation for an outback trip. The tyre size is 267X70R16, bascially the stock size for TD3.0 Patrol.
Prior to purchase, I was told about the various features of the Cooper tyres including strong sidewalls that "stand up straighter" and also deeper tread.

To my surprise and disappointment, they do not "stand up straighter", in fact they bulge quite significantly more than the standard Bridgestone Duellers that is shipped with the Patrol, I know this because I had to fit the spare wheel with the Bridgestone on the car and was able to compare to the Cooper under the same load and air pressure.

Running at 20 psi across the Simpson was a scary experience with the ATRs, the sidewalls were very close to the ground, my companions with Goodyear Grand Treks and Yokohama Geolanders running the same pressure did not have the same degree of bulging. In fact, each time we stopped, we checked my tyres because they actually looked punctured of deflated! Needless to say, with the bulging so prounouced, I eventually staked the RH rear tyre and this was after I increased the pressure to 24psi as soon as I could to reduce the bulging.

Running at 30psi on the rocky outback roads (as advised by the locals) also saw the sidewalls bulging. Whilst doing 60km/h on a track in the Flinders, the left rear tyre had the sidewall torn open, again not surprising considering the amount of bulging.

The final insult was running at 40psi on the blacktop where the Bridgestone spare continued to have straighter sidewalls than the Coopers.

I did a similar trip on Bridgestones 2 years before and had zero problems, this time with the Coopers I had 1 tyre puncture and 1 totally destroyed. I also noticed significant chipping in the outer tread on the one rear tyre running on the freeway at 40psi and doing 100km/h, this has never happened to any other tyre on that wheel before.

I will be trying anothe brand of tyre from now on!