which tires?

TIRES don't you mean Tyres

AT tyre with a 4 or 5 rib tread. Mud terrains won't grip as well on the open road. Everyone will have their own opinions on that but there has been some recent tyre tests in magazine to prove this.
Plenty to choose from so depends on your budget. Read between the lines when (not if) people respond saying that one particular tyre is crap or brilliant.

Enjoy the trip.

Hi carps, If your doing the tele track and Gibb river road I would use Mud over AT. Saying that I only use Mud and have tried different brands, and found it's not always the better known brands that give you value for money. tyrekingonline.com will do set of 4 on most brands very cheep and are delivered to your door.
Andy

IMHO, its your decision.
Are you willing to accept the extra noise, poor wet grip and reduced fuel economy of MT's over 15,000Kms of tar, for more grip coming out of 10-20 creeks.

If you have a camper trailer it would be foolhardy to do Gunshot and a couple of other creeks anyway, and in any case you are NOT going to be able to climb the exits of some creeks MTs or not, if you are not first there for the day, as the exits get wet and chopped up very quickly.Winching will be necessary.

My choice would be ATs . The Gibb River Road is just a good to poor dirt road, and creek crossings there are either short and firm, rocky or have a concrete base.
Many MTs have the same carcase as ATs, it is only the tread that is different.
As friends who live on the black soil plains of NSW say "MT's get you another 10feet" . Seeing MTs have much bigger tread voids than ATs , it may be possible that MTs are more susceptible to staking than ATs.

I recently drove to Cape York with Bridgestone D694s AT LT towing a camper in my 92 Range Rover with no problems, and I did GRR and Kalumburu with BFG HTs with no problem.
They should however be pretty new, LT construction, and attention paid to tyre pressures, lowering significantly for dirt and keeping speed below 80Kmh.

Regards Philip A

I acknowledge and agree with Philip A's comment about the AT's preferably being fairly new tyres. We just drove through a few tracks and parks in the semi wet with the AT' set on and they were having a hard time with the wet dirt and mud.

Last year we drove around Cape York and even the muddies had trouble with the creeks. But I would not try it with AT's. Happily we had MT's on all three cars. Only got stuck once.

In planning an early trip through the Simpson and other areas I will opt for the MT's again. Less grip on the road is not a hassle as we don't travel fast. The noise is not as bad as a lot of people make out and it's only there on the bitumen and we minimise bitumen driving. You never know when you may encounter wet or muddy conditions so why not be prepared. I do not want to detour if I do not have to.

We will be leaving the AT set home and putting the MT's on the car in the future. I do have a complete second set of rims so I do not have to remove any tyre from a rim to change between AT's and the MT's.

I will not say what brand they are unless you want me to. I believe that it's a personal and pocket choice. But for my money I would put the cost down as the very last thing to consider when buying tyres. Neither do we place mileage at the top. Grip is what we want. Tyres are the last link with the road so they have to be the best that we get.

Phil

I just finished my lap in a duel cab Triton with soft floor camper in tow. I fitted 5 new Toyo open country AT's before we left and could not fault them. 35,000 Kms maybe 15K off road including Gibb river road and Savannah way. No chipping they still look like new. Had older Cooper ATR'S on trailer but they had 3 punctures (nails and screws) for some reason. Just unlucky I think, all fixed with repair kit.
Enjoy your trip it was the best thing I have ever done.

Dazza

We did the trip to the Cape last year with Bridgestone 693 duelers A/T which were Light Truck construction and had no problems. They were new tyres which may have helped, we also let the pressures down and lowered our speed to below 90k.

Regards

ATs definitely!

Even if you do happen to encounter MUD... they will still do the job if you drive to conditions. In my experience a Muddy will bog you very quickly if you're not careful!

Anyway, you will be doing heaps of ks on sealed and hard surfaces. Mud tyres would be a waste on these surfaces. 95% of the time even the All Terrains are unnecessary. For that matter, two wheel drive will take you an amazing distance through the outback.

More importantly, carry good recovery gear!

thanks for all your help guys, ive decided to bite the bullet and gunna get some pro comp extreem A/T's, they seem to be the only ones that no one can fault (well except for the price).