New Off Road Tyre's

You will get plenty of replies on why you should lower the pressures under these conditions but you MUST also remember to lower your speed as well for a couple of reasons. Firstly there is more heat build up in the tyre and secondly I have seen many a low pressure tyre damage the walls as the vehicle goes "speeding" through a washout. The vehicle is usually loaded to the hilt and in effect the tyre bottoms out on the rim and fractures the sidewall.

these are the two reasons in my opinion that caause most of the tyre damage when on deflated tyres, the third reason is just bad luck.

Hi Zogs

I just drove (last week) Bourke - Tibooburra - Cameron Corner - Bore Track - Innamincka - Digtree and back.

I expect the roads we encountered were similar to what you expect to drive.

My friends vehicle (2004 Paj) damaged a a Cooper ATR beyond repair on a stretch of gibber road. He was heavily loaded and going VERY fast. I drive a LOT slower and with lower pressures and my BFG ATs suffered no damage.

the weird thing is that al the advice I read on national park signs etc out there said to have high pressure for gibber and lower for dirt / unsealed. This seemed counter intuitive to me and so I didn't follow it. Maybe I was lucky and my friend was unlucky, but I too would be interested to hear from others about reasons for why different pressures suit those different conditions.

good luck.

Ben

The explanation I read recently was that lower pressures give the tyre the ability to bend up over the stones and therefore dont cut as easily.
However too low a pressure and too fast a speed will heat them up too much.
Also bagging can allow a sidewall to get snagged.

A lot of patience and common sense goes a long way to ensuring things stay intact.

I have used bgf AT's for a few years now, I have never had a puncture yet, I also like to lower the pressures a bit, I think that as the tyre encounters for example a sharp pyramid type stone the softer tyre allows the already close tread of an AT to close up even further preventing penetration. This is a problem that has been affecting people running mud tyres with penetration between the tread blocks.

BFG's for me ta

regards

Dave

We have run Mickey Thompsom MTZ's on our trip around oz on both the car and trailer. In 76,000 kms we have had 4 flats. 3 were nails that we plugged and are still on the car and 1 was a railway spike out of wilpena pound. It put a hole in big enough to put my thumb through. We always run lower pressure sand, gravel/gibber, rock and corragation.
Just back from 4 weeks in cape york and interestingly all the tyre repairers up there (helping others with flats not us)we spoke to say they fix more coopers than any other tyre. Don't know if that's because they fail more or if more people run them or if the people running coopers push harder. I'm not starting the which tyre debate just thought they were interesting comments from the guys doing tyres in remote areas. Mind you they had every brand of tyre there with holes in them so every tyre will fail at some point.
We met a guy on the gibb river rd who had done 2 tyres running them at 48 psi. We had ours at 28 and no puntures. From talking to him we seem to travel at similar speeds. I think the important thing as mention is lower pressure lower speed.

Last year on our trip out to Birdsville I had been advised to lower tyre pressures once we get onto the unsealed road. Well, for various reasons I didn't, and 100K's east of Birdsville, Voila!!! a flat tyre! The result of a gibber rock jammed in the tread. I changed the tyre and lowered the pressures all round to 26psi, and we had no further tyre problems.
Usually for gravel type roads, I don't drop much pressure, only for the gibber type roads, the gibber rocks can be extremely damaging to tyres. For sand, mud or just 4X4 driving, I run my tyres at 18psi.

Remember, if you lower your tyre pressures, lower your speed accordingly!! (At 26psi, my top speed would be 80kph) And NO sharp turns!!

Disclaimer: The above works well for me! If anyone doesn't agree with it, that's OK with me. But don't bother telling me about it, I'm not interested.

Cheers

Brian

If you have to go with Coopers ( meaning you have no choice ) I would use the ST's ahead of the ATR's..

ATR's are very good ON road, but I believe there are plenty of better alternatives for OFF road..

I became a low pressure convert about 9 years ago, following advice from the Oodnadatta roadhouse. Prior to that I'd expect a couple of punctures per desert trip.

Since 2000, using many different brands, have had no tread punctures and staked 2 sidewalls, which includes over 20 desert trips and countless weekends 4wding. I've not used Cooper tires, but have repaired plenty of them on other vehicles, and seen a lot of chipped tread from outback roads, so they are not on the top of my list.

Just done a similar trip (7500km, with about 40% gravel/dirt/gibber) and I too was in a quandry about tyres.
I have an 07 Paj, I swapped the 18inch rims for 17s.
I settled on Bridgestone Dueller 694 Light Truck (LT) ATs 265/65/R17.
I wasn't happy with wear on my previous Cooper ATs 265/65/R17
Cooper make a LT 265/70/R17, so enquire about them as LT tyres sem to be the far better option, much more puncture resistant.

The Ooodnadatta and Mt Dare web sites are a must to read. Those guys really know what they are talking about with each having over a decades experience.
Also received some good information from a Bridgestone engineer, who cautiuoned against dropping tyre pressures too low with LT tyres due to the greater heat generation.
Excessive speed seems to be the greatest mistake most of us make.