Ten day desert trip - tyres and punctures

G'day Stephen,

Off topic query -

I wonder if I am able to have permission to copy the image of Mt Finke on your members profile?
If you email back to me, rickmoore@pacific.net.au, I'll tell you the purpose.

thanks in advance,

Hi Rick,
By the time you read this, the photo will be in your in box of your email.

Cheers

Stephen

and was the white writing on the inside?? ;))

Cheers Kev

Yea Kev- that would have been a contributing factor !!

Aha...As I always thought...The white writing and the moon phase does have some thing to do with tyre flat.ulance

The Patrol punctures were all high on the side wall, on the corner of tread and sidewall area

rear vehicles get more puntures for the same reason as rear tyres cop mre flats. lead vehicle kicks stuff up and braks stuff off for which the others cop the flats.
your findings are simular to mine while tyres nowadays have very good punture resistance in the tread the walls are still wafer thin. 9 wrecked tyres is damn expensive work

Hi Davoe ,

I don't agree with your statement that the rear vehicles get more puncture .

We did the Eagle Camp / Mt Madley / Calverts two years ago , and most of the time cross country as we could never find the track .

Three vehicles , 18 punctures ( all sidewalls )and the lead vehicle sustained 60 % of the punctures . We regarded him as our sacrificial lamb . We stayed right up his clacker on his wheel tracks and found that he was flattening them and often taking a puncture doing so .

It was impossible to see the stakes as the spinifex seed stalks were a metre high and thick .

We have used this method before , always with the lead car copping the majority of staked sidewalls .

What I find fascinating , is why everybody seems to get most of the staked sidewalls on the outside of the tyre ( shut-up up you crazy white lettering buggers ! ) .

Cheers ,

Willie .

The idea of airing down sounds good in theory however it does increase the risk of sidewall damage tenfold. The thickness of the wall on the roll from the tread is quite fine and very open to penetration by anything sharp. If you're going to follow this theory my view is it is very important to use a tyre that has straight sidewalls so that when you do air down there is very little bulge in that area. The Cooper STT does have straighter sidewalls compared to the other tyres that were used. I suggest this is why ii did not receive any punctures. The Cooper AT when aired down does have more bulge than the STT.

If you talk to the people who live in the outback you will find that a majority of them will tell you to crank your tyres up to max cold psi unless you're operating in sand. I have been running Cooper ATR's and copped 2 punctures and was told by a local who came on the scene while I was changing the tyre to crank my pressures up which I did and I never had any problems after that in terms of punctures but the tread did chip a fair bit. I challenged Coopers about that and was advised that the ATR was not the best of their range for the country I was in as the ST or the STT would have been a better choice.

Jeepthing,

I don't agree with that either. Aired down bulging sidewalls will often flow around a sharp obstacle - tight stiff sidewalls do not .

A bit like pushing a nail against a fully inflated balloon and one that is half inflated .

Willie .

Ive heard the ballon analagy and it is flawed. A tyre is not a balloon it is made up of a tread area containing around 7 plys with at least one being steel. A puncture in this area is often repairable.
and also a sidewall built soft and thin for heat disapation with no steel belts.. Exposing them to stakes can only have one result and it isnt repairable

Hmmm... well a lot of them legally and technically are repairable (not if you've driven it flat for a few hundred metres, or it is blown to smithereens).

It is just that most remote tyre sellers prefer to sell you a new one and make a lot of money from you than do a proper repair of it.

So, carry the old one home with you and take it to someone who is willing to repair it.

Davoe ,

You are correct , a tyre is not a balloon - that is an analogy .

I do not agree with you about low vs high psi . I guess we will just have to do our own thing .

Hopefully forumites seeking sound advice , will do some more reading on this subject .

Willie .

Willie,
11 punctures 2 in the tread and 9 in the sidewall!! The bulging sidewalls didn't flow around too many did they?
I use to adhere to the airing down theory but when you start talkng to people when travelling around who have had many punctures from airing down and here we have an example on this thread, then when you talk to the locals who do much more driving on outback roads than us grey nomads and holidaying tourists and DON'T adhere to the airing down concept and DON'T have very many punctures I think you have to sit back and start thinking about what they are saying.
I've had occasions now to visit a number of tyre dealers in the NT and WA and every one of them have told me to airup do not air down unless you are on sand. A couple of them have jokingly said to me we love you tourists who air down it's great for my business. They say that by airing down the obstacle is held by the tyre and this combined with the weight of the vehicle provides more chance for the obstacle to penetrate. They say that by airing up the obstacle is flicked out of the way a very high percentage of the time and will significantly reduce the number of punctures.
Anyway I'll guess we'll agree to disagree.

Jeepthing ,

How do you know how many stakes they hit with their tyres ? 11 punctures might be bugger all in the circumstances .

Willie .

I was referring to sharp obstacles in accordance with your reply I never used the word stake. The fact of the matter is that there were 11 punctures 9 to the sidewalls. It doesn't matter whether 11 could have been bugger all in the circumstances 9 still received sidewall penetration.

The issue is what "caused" that to happen and I'm suggesting it was because of sidewall bulge. Now I'd don't care whether you agree or disagree that is my opinion.

I have tried the balloon test on a sharp stone the deflated balloon still burst under downward pressure. I've seen the Coopers video they didn't do it on a very sharp object did they and from my viewing of it it didn't seem to me that they used a great deal of pressure on the deflated one either.

This is the same as their test in their adds the object used is not sharp it is rounded on the end I would like to see the same test performed with a sharp rock or stake and see what the results are.

In a loaded vehicle such as a patrol you'd have to be looking at 3+ tonne? on an aired down tyre on a sharp gibber or if you want to use a sharp stake right on that "thin" bit of tyre near the tread roll; I'm saying that on the balance of probabilities the likelyhood of penetration still bears a risk and as far as I'm concerned a much higher rish than if that same tyre was inflated so there is no bulge.

Since I've been following the views expressed by the people who live in the outback I have not had a problem.

As I said before we'll agree to disagree

Only some times in my experience andrew. A tyre dealer will not touch anything in the sidewall. i hvae been taking mine to a tyre repair place they do truck tyres etc. Of the 3 i have taken there only 1 did they repair the other 2 they said wasnt safe. they dont sell 4by tyres and they had nothing to gain by not repairing them except doing the right thing rather than take $60 and hope for the best

Andrew ,
Like Davoe , I have been refused whenever I have turned up with sidewall punctures .
Willie .



Jeepthing ,
"Since I've been following the views expressed by the people who live in the outback I have not had a problem."

That's great mate . Oh , and sorry for getting you flustered saying stake instead of "sharp Obstacle".

For those in Adelaide, Mick Hutton will do major repairs if they are legal...

Cheers
Andrew.

Willie,
Me get flustered mate I was only correcting you:))
Something I didn't tell you is I lived in Charleville Qld for 5 years and most weekends went pig shooting in all sorts of rough country and we always had tyres to max pressure never ever had sidewall damage. In recent times this air down theory evolved and it made sense to me problem was I started getting sidewall punctures with sharp sticks the size of a matchstick. Tyre dealers will not repair a sidewall puncture because they cannot guarantee the repair, I also understand that it is illegal. So after having to pay $300 a pop for a new tyre it wears a bit thin.
So I've taken the advise of the people who travel the outback the most and basically gone back to what I did when chasing pigs and have not had sidewall damage since. The guy that I mentioned who came along in my first reply was the station owner of a property close to where we were and he told me all that airing down stuff was b### sh#t and that if he ran his station vehicles with aired down tyres he'd be destroying tyres every week.
You mentioned in your reply to Davoe that on that trip you did 3 vehicles had 18 sidewall punctures, Mate surely that must tell you the sidewalls are running too low to the ground.
Anyway have enjoyed the debate with you.

Statistics- bloody statistics..
Bet ya had the calculator working overtime to get those figures out!

Statistically none of it is of any consequence.

An experiment with uncontrolled conditions and insufficient data size ;-)

And the 150 km off track was where to where ?
Willie

Hi Phil B, would that dogger be Peter Muir? I'm just reading his book "Blue Peaks & Red Ridges.

Cheers

D

Hi Dunworkin (WA)

Yes Peter Muir was the dogger.
Other than publishing Blue Peaks etc via the people who produced the Guide to the CSR he has self published many other books. one for each year he did his dogging work between Wiluna and Jigalong and later east and north of Laverton. Unfortunately they are around $200 each.

cheers

Phil,

That sounds like a great bit of country you went into .

A few years ago now I went through the Carnarvon Ranges - entering through Neds Creek and exiting to the South along the CSR .

Can you tell me where you went , or is it hush hush ? Maybe you would rather email me . I am interested in the aboriginal art in that area .

My email address is jigalongjigalongATgmaildotcom

Cheers ,

Willie .

Alastair
I deliberately stayed away from saying one tyre was better than another.

I just wanted to report the facts as they occurred. I agree with you do the same trip again at another time and the results would be different.

I like you comment
Statistics: Head in an oven + feet in a freezer, Average body temperature is normal.

cheers

Phil

Alastair,
That remins me of the first Madigan line trip I did - 2 vehicles in the group had 100series with 265/75 BFGATKOs. One had no punctures, the other had six. So I guess they averaged 3 per vehicle :-)))

And Phil B,
I think you've done great - just reporting what your group's experiences is great. Nice to see others who use the tyre plugs well. I wouldn't leave home without a plug kit.