In the beginning of Four Wheels Driving for me, …it was 1977,…I had a whiz-bang Suzuki two-stroke, shod with Bridgestone bar tread tyres. Never had a
puncture with them. But they were ugly and did not do
well in the mud in the northern tropics. The pressure was on in the club to upgrade to nice wide, fat, tubeless tyres. Yeah!!!
My first set of fatties, were Armstrong Rhinos. They stuck out about 50mm beyond the mudguard and so I had to fit flares. But in those days flares were few and far between. So I made up a set from heavy-duty rubber. There was much mirth in the club for my invention, as the flares looked a tad gawkish. Thereafter I progressed to Dick Cepek Mudders, and later settled with BFG Mud Terrains on a variety of vehicles. Never had a
puncture with these tyres on the little cars, even when driving in extreme off track conditions.
Later in life, the size of my personal girth changed and as we had other variables come along in our lives, I upgraded to larger 4bies. I ran cross-ply tyres on some Nissans and Landrovers, and then also on my old FJ55. Went on the wallaby in 1995 and the cross-plies on the LC and the radials on the caravan did not mix
well and I decided to switch to radials on splits and Telecom Tyres (
Dunlop Road Grippers) were fitted. I lost count how many punctures I got with those tyres and this was mainly on the bitumen. But I persisted with them as one could pick up seconds anywhere in the country. Later I bought a set of Bridgestone Desert Duellers 7.50x16 and they fared much better with punctures. It basically boiled down to the fact that inner tubes were losing their quality control and could not withstand the heat that the tyres generated when running on the bitumen.
In 2004 I bought my current Nissan and replaced the Kelly’s on it with the first set of Cooper STT’s. These tyres fared reasonably
well, suffering only a few stakes but they developed cracks around the beads and Coopers offered me a set of new STT’s at cost price. Shortly after that I bought a set of Eldorado ZTR Sport for my trailer. These tyres are also manufactured in the Cooper factory. Their side walls are seemingly even thinner that those of the Coopers and I have suffered too many punctures with them.
In 2005 and 2006 I did some extensive touring along remote tracks and quite bit of off track driving in the Simpson, Victoria, Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts. Punctures galore!!!!!!
The problem as I see it, is that to drive off-track over sandy terrain necessitates the need to lower tyre pressure substantially. Now if you were driving over pure sand this normally would not be a problem. But in Australia we have Green Deserts. That is, deserts covered by a variety of shrubs and trees. Over the years there have been fires through these deserts burning down a variety of foliage and especially Mulga trees and shrubs. This in turn creates a
hazard that we know of as Turpentine (description unknown) whereby sharp root stakes lurk just below the surface of the sand and are deadly on most tyre makes.
Once a tubeless tyre has been staked, it can usually be repaired, by one or two, or more, tyre plugs. The trouble is that with the raising and lowering of tyre pressures there is more flex given to the tyre side wall and invariably the original
puncture hole will widen, letting air out. It could even tear beyond repair out in the bush. I have had ‘gaters’ (inner sidewall tyre patches) glued to my damaged tyres by Tyre Repairers, but due to the nature of the flexing sidewall and tread wall, the patches come loose. Then the only option is to fit a tube to a tubeless tyre.
Frustrated by all this tyre damage and endless punctures I sourced 10 Nissan split rims (after a lot of searching) and bought a set of MRF(Indian) Super Traction 12 ply rating cross-ply tyres. I also recently bought 2 x Triangle(Chinese) 14 ply rating tyres for the trailer to replace the ‘seconds’ MRF M77’s which I had found at the
Warraweena Station dump. I removed the Nissans flares(which were being torn off anyway when doing cross country driving).Image Could Not Be Found
The MRF’s, which come with MRF tubes, and at $180ea, have given me 25,000km trouble free motoring so far.
The downside however is that:
a) They are very noisy on the bitumen
b) They tend to dig in on sandy surfaces
c) Digging in results in a higher fuel consumption
d) They throw large pebbles up driving on gravel roads
e) They distort when aired down to 10psi.
f) The tread probably will not last to 35,000/40,000km.
I have lowered the psi to 10 on the MRF’s and although they do distort, I have not run one off the rim.
Next time around I will go with the MRF Super Miler with a highway pattern tread, as they are good for desert journeys. They are used extensively by Beadell Tours, who do a lot of cross-country
treks.
So there you have it. The pros and the cons of wide vs skinny