The Story.
Four stone punctures in the
Pilbara in three tyres in a 13 day trip.
1. One destroyed BFG from running flat before I realised it was flat.
2. One Pirelli Scorpion with a thumb sized shale rock through the tread
3. One BFG with two holes.
HJ61 1989 Landcruiser running 31x10.5x15
I'm not interested in any debates about tyres or pressures, this is a post about what can happen even when you leave home confident you are
well prepared, having problems and coming across unexpected obstacles.
I carried one full spare, and one bare tyre.
After destroying Tyre 1, (Road from
Newman to
Nullagine) I needed to fit the bare tyre. Using my R&R Beadbreaker I was able to get one half of the destroyed tyre off, but due to the 8.5"wide alloy rims and the small ring of rubber to push on, I couldn't get the rest of the tyre off. Fortunately the happy Chamberlain tractor mob were camped in the same truck bay and I borrowed a large sliding hammer. My Supercheap compressor also gave up, but I was saved by the wide load truckies in the same truck bay.
Refitting the bare tyre was not easy. The tyre was
well used, so a little softer than a new tyre and eventually slipped over. I'd not brought a rubber hammer, so had to lever it back on with the R&R and tyre levers, and plenty of slippery stuff.
I picked up a second bare spare tyre in
Karratha, but it fell off the trailer on the way to
Millstream. I also bought a better quality compressor in
Karratha.
Tyre 2 with the thumb sized hole. (On
creek crossing going in to Wittenoon Gorge) Three plugs held for three days, then popped out and I could never get a seal again. The rubber glue supplied with the plug kit was too small to apply to many plugs, so maybe I was a bit stingy with it initially. The R&R kit has a much larger and apparently better blue glue - "Rema tip top Special Cement BL"
Tyre 3 Hole 1on
Millstream to Auski Road probably as I was off the main cleared track in the road seeking some smoother surface. One plug held for a few days
Tyre 3 Hole 2 probably happened on the same
creek crossing as above. These three were on the same day. We got good at plugging by then!!
Eventually all the plugs started working out, in particular when running on bitumen. No 15" tyres were available in Paraburdoo so we pressed on to the NW Coastal Highway instead of returning 80kms to
Tom Price.
I planned to use the tubeless repair patch supplied in the R&R kit, but when I read the instructions it needed to be left for 24 to 48 hours to set properly. So we plugged again and got moving. In the 110km to Nanutarra Road house we stopped twelve times and replaced plugs 4 times. This was a bad experience.
I was running out of plugs, had run out of tyres, and was a long walk from anywhere. I still had VKS 737 up my sleeve, or setting up
camp for the family and me hitching into the road house as fall back options.
We arrived at the road house early afternoon and I ordered two new tyres to be freighted up with Toll overnight. They won't accept payment over the phone, you have to have the goods delivered to their depot and paid for unless you have an account. They don't set up accounts for casual users. Pack and Send 'may' have been able to help, but I was fortunate to have buddies in
Perth to help me out. I owe them big time.
Tyres arrived and I set about fitting these $290 investments, plus freight to the spun aluminium 8.5" rims with only levers and no rubber hammer. This was tough going. I bent the soft rims, and have discovered today I have ruined one of the tyres with the tyre lever by damaging the bead as I was levering it over the rim. :-(
This could happen to anyone on this
forum folks, I'm no one special neither completely lacking competence, nor completely expert.
Inflating the tyres across the wide flat part of the rim caused a huge bang that brought all and sundry to see how many pieces of body were splattered on the walls. I tell you I was pretty nervous doing the second one which went off even bigger bang. Yes I used plenty of lubrication.
I'm trying to think of some tips to pass on, but can't find too many.
Buy good gear.
Don't head to the
Pilbara with tyres on less than 50%.
Tyre pressures: who knows. Plenty of you will say to drop the pressures. Some of these punctures happened with 45psi, some with 35psi.
Tyre plugs are great, to a point. They got us out of trouble, but then into more. They are not so great with stone holes, probably much better for screw and nail holes. Part of the leakage problems around the plug was the ragged penetration of the stone, like a star chip in a windscreen, hard to find the end of them.
So do I get rid of my nice fat rims and tyres, or to I buy new tyres all round and make sure I have more spares on rims? FWIW, I'll be doing the latter so I don't have to change bare tyres on the road. With wide alloys it's just too risky. If someone nicked my rims, I'd probably get steel replacements.
All the punctures were on the rear tyres. The trailer carried 600 litres of Canola oil which fuelled our trip, and was running skinny light truck tyres on 13" rims that are 40 years old from my EH Holden.
Apart from all of this, we had a great trip out east of
Nullagine to the Oakover and
Carawine Gorge,
Karratha,
Millstream, Karijini. We planned to head south vi Mt Augustus but common sense prevailed and we took the bitumen south. It'll be a long long time before I get my missus out trekking again; bad tyre problems made for bad memories.
An on board tyre pressure monitoring kit would be a real good thing too!
Enjoy your travels folks. :-)
Tim