Tyres for a new Prado

Hi Sass

This is not a naive question at all and from the sound of things you are new to four wheel driving. You will find that most new four wheel drives, from all stables including Toyota, Nissan, Mazda etc will fit a Highway type tyre on their vehicle as standard. If you are only ever going to be using your new Prado on the bitumen, these tyres will be fine.

If however you intend to use your vehicle for what it is made for, the standard tyres will be out of their limits and can cause all sorts of problems and to be fair for the standard tyre, they are not made for true four wheel driving.

Others can give a greater explanation, but if you are off next week for a trip up the Birdsville Track and beyond, I would be looking for a good quality LT construction tyre that is made for all those rocks and what ever else that comes in its path.


Cheers


Stephen

Thanks for the explanation Stephen. We will be taking our Prado around Australia next year towing a 17ft dirt-road pop-top, including some dirt roads leading into National Parks, Arkaroola (SA) and the top eastern end of the Gibb River around El Questro and Home Valley. Would we need to change the tyres before we leave to ones that are both highway and dirt then?

Hi Sass

This is the question that only you can answer. If I was in your shoes to speak, yes I would change the tyres purely for the peace of mind knowing that if you happen to come across some very rocky section, from which you have outlined you will encounter, you know that a LT constructed tyre will not damage as easy as the standard tyres on your Prado.

I know from personal experience that most areas in the Flinders can be very hard on tyre if you have the wrong type of tyre on your vehicle. If you check my profile, you will see that I also have a Prado and like to head away from the normal tracks and use the Bridgestone 694 LT, see my previous reply above. Below are a couple of examples of where I would never even think of taking a standard tyre.

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Cheers


Stephen