Thread: D697 Tyre Damage on Road to Birdsville

Bob,

How many k's on the tyres?
What pressure were you using on those roads/tracks?
Did you get any flats?

Scott

Not good to see the cracks and other damage but with the tread that low they're bound to sustain damage more readily. I suspect they would be due for retirement from trip work anyway.

How old are the tyres????
The cracking is a worry.They were second on my list after wranglers.Have had a good run with wranglers over several vehicles,including work vehicles.
Andrew

I did the same road (from Cairns, so going south not west) with same tyres. Mine look hardly dented, with 30k on them. Towing a KK, family, 2 kids and dog on board.

Bob, as previously said, your setup looks very heavy ? And you didn't exactly hang about either, so they probably have done you well. My previous set of Coopers left me with no confidence compared to these tyres.

My BFG A/Twere a lot worse after a trip out there,i will have to dig out a pic.

Japanese tyres generally don't chip as badly as American tyres on those types of roads.

As has been discussed on this forum previously, it is pretty much impossible to replicate the same operating conditions for any given tyre or loading, when an issue such as this is shown. Just too many variables at play. Stay with the major brands and use commonsense in how the vehicle is loaded, the pressures used for the conditions, and the speed at which the trip is taken.

Every driver, vehicle, loading and road chosen will be different.

I'm not critical of the tyres and just put up the photos to show the sort of beating you get on that stretch of road after the previous poster mentioned doing that section on old tyres at up to 140 kph. It's only the rears that get that damage and the fronts are always perfect.


I was running around 30 psi on the gravel and reduced to mid twenties on corrugated road at lower speed. I usually do 42 in the rears on bitumen and 36 for the fronts. That tyre is probably around one year old, not much more. The trip was a two week trip, from Perth to Brisbane via Broken Hill and Louth in 4 days then 10 days to travel back to Perth with the KK that I had just bought, travelling via Birdsville etc as previously mentioned.


I basically replace two of the tyres once a year after each big trip. The D697's always get cracks in the carcase between the treads on every trip on rocky roads but only on the rears. The first time they did it on brand new tyres on the Binns track and the tyre specialist told me the tyres were crap. That was at road pressures on the rocks and the cuts between the treads were much worse than the photos but with none of the big cuts that were on those photos.


Since then, after advice on this forum, I have tried lower pressures but similar outcomes. I have no idea how many km I get out of a tyre but not that many when they spend half their life on rough roads.


I've never had a problem with punctures, despite the canvas showing and big cuts as shown in the photos. It's not the fault of the tyres that sharp rocks create cuts between the treads. My son's brand new mud tyres also had the same damage between the treads on his D1 travelling with us on the same trip. Even the BFG tyres on the KK had some cuts between the treads but in typical BFG fashion, it is mainly the treads that are extremely badly chipped on them.

Originally Posted by Ozzy119

I did the same road (from Cairns, so going south not west) with same tyres. Mine look hardly dented, with 30k on them. Towing a KK, family, 2 kids and dog on board.

Bob, as previously said, your setup looks very heavy ? And you didn't exactly hang about either, so they probably have done you well. My previous set of Coopers left me with no confidence compared to these tyres.

I don't think my setup is heavy, although I did have a Kimberley MyCube roof top tent on board to sleep in on the way to Brisbane. For only a two week trip and picking up a new to me caravan we travelled pretty light and we had two cars as well for 4 people.


I don't know how much the Kimberley Karavan weighed but the AGM is 2200kg and we were travelling with full water tanks.


I don't call 100kph on good parts of the road and 70 to 80 on more average bits fast. We do long distances in short time frames on our trips so we need to cover some distance but not at the expense of driving to the conditions. I think we had lunch at Windorah and got to Birdsville in the late afternoon when everyone was arriving from the desert.


I bought my car in Sydney in late 2012 at 50,000km and drove it back to Perth via Esperance in three days. It is now at 210,000 so we have done some travelling and in one month it will be my fourth trip in the D4 across the Great Central Road plus two across the Nullarbor.