An expensive lesson in tyres

Hi Richard

Yep

Never too old to learn.....lol

Regards

dj....All tubeless tyres are crap in my book. Have had BFG in past with similar issues

Cheers

Well ya mabey rite there Willem but its horses for courses you know they are great on blacktop but mabey ya expect too much, I dont know what ya running with them personally I dont think much of coopers but as I said horses for courses.

dj Patrol,
True, I've yet to puncture a BFG, but I travel so few km on virgin 'panji pit' country, and when I do, it's fairly gently: unlike that clown Willem who seems to feel a need to go -- "away".
Half his guts. JH.

Yeah maybe I expect too much. But when you are paying top dollar for a tyre with a great advertised reputation, you do expect a little more than just the ordinary sidewall. Having used over 30 tyreplugs on the Coopers over the past year I can vouch for the thin sidewall they have, It would not be more than 2mm thick.....and that is the Armour stuff they carry on about.

I am very particular about tyre pressures for different types of terrain.

To me 4x4-ing isnt just the Oodnadatta Track or the Tanami Road or the Anne Beadell Hwy but it getting out to places where I can enjoy my leisure time in remote country. Sometimes that necessitates cross country driving or using very old rocky tracks.

I will now have to compromise by making the ride harder but the tyres stronger by using crossplies

As for horses.....they make me sneeze............:-)

Cheers

Hi Wayne

The crunch came at 25psi and at around 15kmh

The other isdsue is that the previously staked tyres flex too much in the sidewall and the tear in the tyre from a previoius stake becomes bigger. Some holes end up with 6 plugs in them.The buggered tyre has 10 plugs in at and is still hissing.

I have run the Coopers at 35psi on the black stuff and 28 on dirt roads. But its the 4x4x stuff that kills the Coopers not the gravel roads or black stuff.

Stuff Coopers its a waste of time :-)

Cheers

I saw a previous threads with some inflammatory writings in it by you. You are digging the hole so big you will never get out....LOL

Cheers

Yes I know that hole is getting deeper but I'm sure that you will remember that I always carry a ladder with me so getting out doesn't create too many issues. LOL

Gday Hairy

Yeah I'm not going to bother going back to Coopers. Have to move on to better things :-)

Cheers

Like what, Willem,
.---- staying on formed pathways? no more sneaking off to the side for a quiet camp site or great camel shot? hahahaha, (to borrow from Gramps).Gently eh. JH

Hi Bilbo

Yes today on the station my mate said I could 'borrrow some Nissan rims with crossplies on and should fit them on the back of the GQ. I said 'NO WAY' can you mix them with fat radials. Anyway after a lot of thought I decided to pug the 2 leaking tyres again! and drove the 350km home OK. On with the skinnies tomorrow :-)

Cheers

right. and you have all the experience in the world to make those sorts of inflammatory statements do you? Most people don't do off track as much as Willem, and his experience is not basis for your remarks. The Cooper distributors sell a lot of tyres in Australia. They do a lot of testing in Australia. Bottom line is, for what 99.9x% of people do, they will be the ants pants, and then for those like Willem who venture off track, something like the MRFs or whatevers may be the thing. I don't think the Cooper distributors would argue with that. Whether they are better than [insert the name your favourite tyre], I couldn't say.

I too have STTs with 20K's on them. A lot of that Nullabor Tracks, Anne Beadell and Simpson Desert work. Only problem was a staking from some mad hatter tea party chasing down of a cyclist who had made a wrong turn down a station track where I was fairly pelting along with a BIG load on. They are looking pretty good for 20Ks. I do have 6 of them, and have rotated them twice so far.

As someone else here has said, horses for courses. Most people's courses look rather different to Willem's.

Hi Andrew

I will say that the tread on the STT's is still looking as good as new and if driven and good roads i.e. bitumen or good gravel roads or tracks without stakes, should give up to 80,000km as sometimes warranted. Its the sidewalls I have an issue with :-)

Cheers

Andrew, you sound like somebody trying to justify a purchase.

My comments are based on experience, not only didn't the tyres cut it on the vehicle, but I took them off & put them on the camper trailer & they were no good there either.
I can also assure you, also from experience, that their warranty isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Whatever you think Shaker - make of it what you will, but I am on my second set of Cooper tyres. I can show you them if you want. I've driven with a lot of people running them. I have photos I can show you of them.

I deal with people like Brad Newnham who you would think after some number of years running the Birdsville Roadhouse and lots of time travelling for the testing activities of 4x4 Australia would know what tyres he would sell and run ... or Dave Cox ... similar deal - a F250 doing recover in the desert and he chooses Cooper.

These guys don't do so much of what Willem does, that I know, and that is what I put it down to. Some off-track work is best suited to the MRFs of the world - that I know. Station runabouts and roo shooters being case in point.

I have no need to justify my purchasing decisions - for me, they have justified themselves, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Steve's diatribe was notable for not mentioning any first hand experience and for being full of invective.

As for the Cooper warranty, I have seen first hand their customer relations and I think they are second to none. Do I think Cooper are better than your favourite brand? I am in no position to know.

Cheers
Andrew.

Steve,

You recommend cheking out what the locals use.

Well around Broken Hill, where I am a local, many of the station owners, roo shooters etc. who pay for their tyres are running wide tyres, Coopers, BFG Goodyear etc and there are a few who are funning splits too.

Some of them are very norrow minded people and will only buy the tyres they have always bought and some try different rubber every time.

As for the Government vehicles they too carry a variety of tyres. Yeah the Gov pays for the rubber but when Trevor Technician is stuck 200km from home in the middle of nowhere he is the one with the problem and he is the one who will winge to the boss about the tyre problems.

Willem probably asks "more" of his tyres in terms of stake protection than most of us and has made a decision about what will suit him best. I hope it works out for him but for the work I do the 265/75 16's do the job pretty well and I will buy another set whent the time comes, but that looks like being a fair way off at this stage.

Duncs

>>As for the Cooper warranty, I have seen first hand their customer relations and I think they are second to none.

where Crazie?

The only result I got from the Cooper warranty was lies, broken promises & more lies from a very senior representative, whom I will name by request, but not on a public forum.

I have never had to claim on a Cooper warranty so I can't comment.

I had very poor treatment at the hands of another companies represetative when I mearly wanted to show him the wear on his tyres. TYres that I thought should have lasted a lot longer.

Duncs

Yes Nick R....I hear you...lol

For the time your are on the Forum you must never leave home...LOL

Richard, you're right. Not all of us live close enough or have the resources to go how and when we like.
One big trip a year, and several smaller ones that usually don't get a mention. Pretty sad when I have to look long and hard at a map to find somewhere new that takes my fancy.

Footloose, same here one big trip a year, coming from Perth it's a long way to SA the true Outback LOL...

Our problem is we have the resources but can't fined the time (to busy make all the resources) oh well can't have your dope and smoke it too....

Richard

Richard, you're a lot closer to some of the good country than I am. But I know what you mean. When I had bigger resources I didn't have the time either. One trip I took off at Xmas into the bush with my family pre air con. Never again. Just because you have the time doesn't mean that you can use it :((

Hi Stan

On my trip through the Western Deserts this year my mate was following me in his GU shod with MTR's on splits. He had 7 punctures along the way including a totally melted MTR on the AB. Not sure how that happened as we were only chugging along at about 60kmh. He has however stuck with MTR's and bought some new ones recently.

I am planning two more Extreme Treks for 2007/8 and will go the MRF Crossplies

Cheers

Mtr might be the best of there type but I found them to be just another radial out bush with 1 stuffed tyre and one not much betterin 2 very short trips - I dont care where everyone has or hasnt been or how many 000s of ks they got out of the tread. At the end of the day no radial comes with the bushability of a rag tyre

"It's somwhere on the side of the road between Mt Magnet and Wubin."

Good of you to leave it there on the side of the road.......... too much trouble to take it home with you waqs it?

",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,much trouble to take it home with you waqs it?"

Yep.

Bilbo

Why? You must have carried the one that you replaced it with.

But then I suppose we should all dump our old tyres, batteries, oil containers etc on the side of the tracks, should help our image a bit!

Well said Shaker.

Yep, well said Shaker.

,,,,,,,,,,,and what would I do with it when I arrived home 4 months later?

Bilbo

Tyre recyclers ... heard of them?

Ever noticed that tyre retailers charge a recycling fee per tyre they replace.

Most of them are also happy to take old tyres for this nominal charge.

At worst, landfill, but certainly not litter, surely?

What exactly are you saying Bilbo? Are you really proud of the mess you leave about the place?

At least I know I can always come over and dump my rubbish and your place and you'll enjoy living in it.

Why should I drag it round the bush from Mt Magnet to Nullagine and then take it 1400 kms back home and then pay for tyre recycling when the Mt Magnet Shire clean out the bins in laybys "at the side of the road" every week or so?

Where do you dispose of your old engine oil, oil filters, your tins and cans from your house, your old meat scraps, your plastic bags and your plastic wrappings, your old batteries and of course YOUR old tyres?

That's what bins are for. Be they "on the side of the road betwen Mt Magnet and Wubin" or just outside my backdoor. This tyre was just a tad too big to put in the bin. So I left it "on the side of the road betwen Mt Magnet and Wubin". Perhaps, for the benefit of the more pedantic amongst the audience, I should have written, ",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,next to a bin, in a layby, on the side of the road betwen Mt Magnet and Wubin, so that the weekly rubbish truck from Mt Magnet could come and pick it up and thus save me from having to drag it around in the back of the ute for another 700 kms to Nullagine and another 1400kms back to Perth so that I could take it the local tip only to be told "we don't take tryes", and then drive another 90 kms to somewhere in Perth that does tyre recycling and then drive another 90 kms back to home and sit down and reflect how much I'd done for the environment,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"

Bilbo

Oh sorry for being a twit and misunderstanding what you said - I heard you say it's somwhere on the side of the road between Mt Magnet and Wubin - I really thought you meant it was still there. I do apologise - how pedantic I can be. Duh!

Andrew, it was easy to 'misunderstand' as the post read in the present tense ......
"It's somwhere on the side of the road between Mt Magnet and Wubin."

Now we're getting lessons in English Grammar.

This happened in about 1997. At the time, I was prospecting full time, fer a living and broke - as most prospectors are. $40.00 for a tyre was a setback.

If I spent all bloody day telling you the ins and outs of a ducks guts about something as mundane as changing a tyre on the side of the road 9 years ago, you'd accuse me of boring your arriss off or being "off-topic".

Bilbo

Perhaps, Bilbo, but not explaining things leads to misunderstandings and, thus, follow-ups like this ;-)))))

Bilbo is right, there are too many here that are ready to jump on anyone for anything with the slightest reason without knowing the facts, it's getting way over the top.

Mad Dog,

Thanks for that. I didn't want to say too much for fear of starting a war. Whilst this forum is one of the best around, plenty of tech people, experience and good crack, there are a number of "holier than thou" types that raise cause for concern. Every fart and every nosepick is scrutinised by these people. I just need to learn who to talk to and who to stay away from.

I sometimes wonder if I'm in the presence of greatness or just people that don't ever make mistakes.

Thanks Mad Dog.

Bilbo

Wow, didn't I start something?

Bilbo.... my question originally was based on your line "It's somwhere on the side of the road between Mt Magnet and Wubin."
"too much trouble to take it home with you waqs it? "

which you answered.... yep it was too much trouble to take it home....

which struck me as odd as it wasn't too much trouble to have it there in the first place.... but had you said
"yep, it's next to a rubbish bin" everybody else probably wouldn't have jumped to conclusions..... an easy conclusion to jump to when you're post "APPEARED" to condone mindless littering. No English Grammar lessons from me here... just mildly stating that had you clarified it, things would be different.

Ray..... not knowing the facts???? I asked him for the facts and he didn't give them at first. Had I saw the response before Andrew and Shaker, I probably would have posted similar comments.... littering the countryside is bad enough but appearing unconcerned about it is undoubtedly worse.

Just my opinion

Cheers

Brian

Now, Now its not like you to get BLEEPED....lol

What tyres were on the Tuf80 when we slid backwards down the hill?....LOL

BFG all terrains , then swapped to mud terrains

Shaker,
thanks its good to hear some honest advise I might have to look at the Firestones. My Coopers have done 60k and are getting low. Although I have not sustained any major stakes or cuts, I don't like the hundreds of little cuts and chips in the tyres after my last few Pilbarra and goldfields trips.

I have seen a mates Patrol with almost all the main side tread blocks ripped off his Cooper ST. I thought it was that his vehicle is much heavier than mine and his right foot but maybee the tyres just don't handle the load and demands.

Great move. Firestone had a little recall a little while ago, remember? 6.5 million wasn't it? How do you say "Ford Explorer"?

Come on now - there is potential for every tyre to have problems, and the more you sell, the more potential for a problem, but to argue at 60K from a tyre of that class and to still be driving on them - come on now. I am only expecting 50-60K - although in context with a very loaded vehicle and reasonably hard work including a little offtrack.

Cuts and chips - even tread blocks ripped off, when doing hard work with heavy loads is to be expected (Yes, I hear Shaker's rhetoric). Generally, they should be looked at, but are unlikely to be a worry.

As for Shaker's "useless" categorisation - well it doesn't marry with my experience.

Andrew a Firestone is an American Birdgestone

Hi Andrew,

The Ford Explorer problems had several other factors but the lawyers were going to get very rich if something was not done quickly so they decided to recall.

I think that you will find that high road temperatures, low tyre pressures, speed, weight, high centre of garvity and dumb driving combinations caused the Explorer problems - not the tyres. Almost no problems from countries other then the USA.

No Kiwi the Firestone tyres fitted to the Exploders were just plain CRAP. Even the ones after the recall were very thin & I saw 10 flat tyres & one totally destroyed just driving up the Birdsville track to Mungarannie. Not that you can compare those Firestone tyres with the current RMT's either Andrew.......they may be out of the same factory but they're are nothing alike ;-)
Cheers Craig..............

Not comparing - just reminding.

Notrhing like a discussion on tyres to bring out the polerised opinions.

Anyway, point taken Andrew: any tyre brand can have problems, it is just a bad way to find out when you have as many flats as Willem.

My previous tyres BC (before coopers) were BFG AT KO and they all went badly wobbly with 40,000 k and several of them had bitts of steele belt sticking out between the treads. They were great on the road and good offroad. The tyres before that were also BFG AT and my two 15 year old spares with about 100,000km are still on my camper trailer.

Also tried Bridgstone Desert Duelers they were OK untill half worn down and I wanted to stop in the wet, I didn't.

My current Coopers ST have had their share of abuse and tough rocky tracks in WA, SA, VIC and TAS. They have held up well with no punctures at all. I do not like seeing bits of tread chip off, but other than that I am happy.

So what tyre can you trust to do the job?

I reckon with a bulge in the sidewall, that Cooper who whatever you're running would replace that in a heartbeat.

Mine had bulges & I was told it is the way they are constructed!

Of course they are constructed that way.

In this case, it sounds like poor construction or quality and something that I've seen Cooper distributors replace in a heartbeat.

I would suggest not letting the lazy dealer or his tyre monkey provide poor service or get away with telling you such baloney.

Was the senior Cooper Rep that told me!

That doesn't tell me much - drop me an email if you want to tell me who - location/company - andrewatvividadventuresdotcomdotau

Victoria, senior rep for Exclusive Tyres.

G'Day John,

Did you have the 10ply Terra's?

Lots of loggers using them now. For the price you can change them more often and still come out ahead.

Price at the show yesterday $191 for Terra's, $305 for Cooper ST

O.K. for 90% of the places most travel

Regards

Rolande

Rolande, they are the 'normal' ones not the 10 plies. I will have a set of tyres for normal running and have a set for special use. Well that was the theory. The Coopers have hardly been special but had a look at the Terra Trak MTs. Liked the look of the Dick Sepeks but probably too expensive Site Link

Where will you be?

Beachport from Friday till Monday/Tuesday morning

You will be about 700km from my place. Not far. Duck over for a cuppa between brekkie and lunch one day :-D

AJ was going to show me round, btu aint heard s hit from him... :(

There are some new spiffy maps of the tracks at Beachport that the 4WD club seems to have spent a motza on making ... you should be able to pick it up at the visitor ctr.

Yep, you are right

Unfortunately on my last trip out to the west in June I couldnt fdind any suitable splits for the GQ in time and HAD to take the Coopers along with the inevitable results. Now I have 10 splits and tyres are on order for desert travel. Getting 12 ply MRF Super Milers to try out first.

Cheers

they are OK but nothing special 8 ply tyre with 4 tread plys and 1 sidewall ply they work fairly well but we have wrecked quite a few as they still suffer the same old radial weakness of thin sidewalls

G'day Brian

On one of my treks this year out into the Gibson Desert a convoy member arrived with those Bridgestone V Streels on his 100 series. He was travelling tail end charlie but sustained a number of punctures as the sidewalls are 'typical radial' (as Davoe says). Then he cut one Big Time and had to throw it away. He was not amused.

In a previous life I ran Bridgstones on a smaller 4x4 and sustained 12 punctures in 14 days in the Kimberley. I swore Never Again but have had Desert Duellers since.

Bridgestones are pretty much an average tyre.

I have 12ply MRF Super Milers on order for my next desert foray. They will be fitted to splits.

Cheers

rags dont have to be offensive sure some are. But I have used Dunlop dr2 a fair bit ,had them on the beachin soft sand betweenEsperance and cape le grand. They are quite and handle quite accetably on the blacktop and dirt. Besides the usual flatspots in the morning they work as well as other 7.5x16 tyres fitted to skinnys

G'day Davoe
I'm sure I've read on this site in the past that MRFs are bloody noisy.
But I accept that not all rags are noisy (and that my post could be interpreted to infer that they are all noisy).
It will be interesting to see Willem's next report on tyres.
Cheers from the Moose

ive used the super grippers and yep they are bloody noisy I think the ones Willem is trying are not aggressive but I am not familure with them so I will be interesting to see how he finds them

G'day Moose

I should have the MRF's by the end of the year and will be going back to the Flinders for January. I should be able to report back then how they behave. In the mean time I will drive what is left of the Coopers into the ground...lol

Cheers

dont think he has trouble getting home - he is just annoyed at wasting money, I have been in the same boat and and saw an instant lack of problems when I chucked the spits on and and instant resumption of problems when I put the 1 pieces back on despit running the supposed all singing all dancing mtr bottom line is radials do not belong in the bush it is as simple as that

Hi Glenn

One of the problems with tubeless tyres is that after you have stuck a patch or gater on the inside it does not stay there forever and peels off as the tyre flexes too much. I have carries spare tubes in the past but did not relish the idea of pulling the tyre off the rim.

I will go back to splits for my orugh bush work and keep the radials for black top driving till they wear out

Cheers

Hear hear!

The only thing I would like to know is how you got them to honour their warranty?

G'day Baz

Hows life treating ya? ( Aprt from Cooper woes, that is....LOL)

Shaker our tyre suppler is a great bloke and he arranged the Cooper rep to meet us at his shop to show him in person, he couldn't argue when he saw them.

Hi Willem, goin good mate, give my best to jude.

Baz.

My tyre supplier is OK too, he arranged for the Cooper rep. (read State Manager) to meet me at the suppliers premises, I was promised the world face to face, but when I went to get my new tyres, the goal posts had moved ...... HEAPS!