Remote Travel & Spares

MiddleAgeSubie

Forum Member
Joined
Dec 15, 2013
Messages
990
Location
AZ
Car Year
2018 / 2008
Car Model
4Runner / Tribeca
Transmission
5EAT
Ratbag said:
MAS, I think that you still fail to grasp the isolated death trap that inland Australia is!

One reason for my camper trailer was that it gave me 4 spares in an emergency situation. One in the car, three on the trailer. In an emergency, take all food, fuel and water, wheels, then just ditch the trailer. Doing otherwise could very easily cost one's life.

Many people carry more than one spare in the bush - it's really mostly desert.
Click to expand...


I get it, don't forget that I live in a desert as harsh as any and while our distances may not be the same, we have been solo to places we could have never walked out of.

But I doubt you will lose even 1xKO2 or equivalent tire, let alone lose 2, let alone lose 2 to un-repairable punctures, such as sidewall bursts, on a Subaru, no matter how loaded. It is not a Patrol with added enormous extra weight.

It seems to me a bit strange considering the many types of tires that came out over the last decade.

I use P metric tires and ending up in a dumb situation in the desert is a distinct possibility now that two of them are not far from done (7/32nds, I would not use them under 6/32 offroad). I have had both a puncture at speed and a sidewall burst aired down at low speed the last one year. But on the Outback, I used LTD KO2 to avoid the need for an identical spare and never had an issue.

Also, one of the tires pictured in this thread as a spare would be worthless in the Arizona desert. I am not sure it can last more than a few miles unless one is going v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and equally carefully.

So, again, I would rather have 5 proper desert tires than 6 whatever tires.
 
Mate, you really do not understand. Sorry.

Any given tyre type can be wrong on almost any inland trip in Australia. Our deserts are really just one desert about 2,000 by 2,000 miles. They vary from rocky to sand to gibber plains to mud (unpredictable) to awful corrugations, the latter not helped by 2 or 3 trailer road trains travelling at high speeds.

Australia is (by far) the driest inhabited continent in the world.

There is really nothing comparable anywhere else in the world.
 
As size, ok. As terrain? Let's not get into exceptionalism here. I don't think AZ and Mexico sharp rocks are second to any :) I have watched many of the Australian offroad show episodes so let's not pretend that every mile of a 2,000 mile trip involves 1/ crawling over sharp rocks and fallen branches on tight trails, which is where sidewalls burst OR 2/high speed driving over sharp rocks, which is where tread punctures happen. Yes, the folks on those shows and Ronny Dahl lose tires on occasion, but they are driving full size vehicles with tremendous amounts of added weight on underinflated tires for a long time. I understand why they carry 2 spares. I don't understand why a Subaru does. Nor can a Subaru go everywhere a Land Cruiser can.

More importantly, it is absolutely wrong to say that "any given tyre can be wrong." There is no comparison at all between the awful stock tire on the Outback pictured above and a MT or AT tire with robust tread design and a 3-ply sidewall. The only thing in common is that they are round and black.

If you want to say that there is a poor choice of tires for a Subaru, that's a different story, but even so there should be a proper tire available in a size that works.

I want to hear examples of Subarus that destroyed 2 offroad tires with a three-ply sidewall in the outback, not counting tires with little remaining tread.
 
It's the distances, remoteness & lack of water that are the deal breakers in OZ.
If you are in the middle of nowhere the last thing you want to die from is flat tyres.
Flat tyres, poor vehicle maintenance & no water takes a few people out every year, tourists and locals alike.
The other thing that takes people out up here in the northern tropics, perversely, is getting bogged in the middle of nowhere due to too much water. Then they get eaten by the crocodiles.
 
Exactly [MENTION=15623]Ben Up North[/MENTION] .

And just say I want to scoot up to Brisbane to visit my brother. Up via the Newell Highway (1,800 kms), then back via western Queensland and New South Wales (3,000 kms). Mostly bad dirt roads all the way back to Melbourne. At which point do I switch from excellent road tyres to off road tyres? Simple answer is that I don't. It would double the cost of the trip. But I may well carry another spare (or two ... ) on my roof basket, along with 20L each of fuel and water.

Decent road tyres will mostly stand up to our conditions here. Of course, the USA may well be different, even though the tyre companies are much the same.

[EDIT] I too have watched some of our resident wankers in off road TV shows. In no way should they be taken to be typical of either the "normal" conditions faced by ordinary outback driving, or the normal sane person's approach to potentially life threatening situations.

You are dead right (pun intended) about the steady stream of deaths that occur in the bush. Often a car load at a time. Always from ignoring the basic rules of safety in the outback, which the Western Australian Police Academy published in their "Aids to Survival" manual, which I addressed here, many years ago now:

https://offroadsubarus.com/showthread.php?t=3214

[end edit]
 
I do understand the tire dilemma. I spend far too much time monitoring new tire releases and thinking about tires. I am resisting a return to a dual setup, as I had on my Outback even though it would make a lot of sense for what I have and where I go. But I have no room for it. Cost will even out on the tires, Toyota takeoff wheels can be had for 200 all 4. But the space, the hassle...

There is no perfect solution.

Ben, man, that water+crocodiles stuff!
 
MAS, we lost a couple of German (?) tourists to saltwater crocodiles in north Queensland a few years back. They went swimming between two big signs in many languages warning about them. Our salties can grow to 6-7m long. Relatively unchanged by evolution in hundreds of millions of years. Why improve on perfection in a top predator?

Your alligator is a similar creature (along with the Nile crocodile) - bloody fearsome!

The best tyres here are the mind of the driver choosing to drive sensibly in the circumstances. No tyre will save a reckless person, and most things are doable with decent tyres and a good dose of sense.

In Australia, having a backup plan can often mean the difference between life and death. Being reckless is a sure invitation to the grim reaper. Nature takes no prisoners ... :iconwink:
 
I guess that by now it is not hard to have a two-way satellite communicator, not a phone, but a text-message device. I have had one for a couple years. In case of real emergency, you can use the SOS button and get pro help. In some states that may cost you a fortune, especially if you are deemed to have been reckless, but it is not the same as being stuck and no one knowing.


As for the fauna, I know. It is why my spouse refuses to consider a trip to Australia. I would love to tour the Outback. Maybe one day.
 
I have a Spot Messenger Gen3.

In Australia, all personal rescues are 'free', including monitoring of EPIRBs.

Vehicle recovery can cost big money. If the vehicle is on a public road (not in any kind of reserve), one can get very cheap temporary cover from one's Automobile Association that will get it to the nearest repair facility. Not necessarily to where it can be repaired. There's sometimes a very big and costly difference between these two places. Sometimes thousands of dollars in transport costs.
 
^ yeah, Kevin. That was horrendous. Fortunate that you were travelling in convoy, or it could have ended badly.
 
I can relate to this. I've toured many different places already in my younger years, even SE Asia. You can be as remote as you can but the Outback is just a different beast. The vastness is just mind-boggling. And the flies in the desert...

Having multiple spares is just adequate, for me. It's more like a having a backup of a backup for our PCs. The limiting factor, for us, is that Subarus are relatively small and we can only carry so much.
 
Ratbag said:
@MiddleAgeSubie

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/nt/2019/08/22/french-tourist-found-kakadu/

Just a few examples of people who failed to take the outback seriously.

Keep in mind that all these occurred in frequented destinations, not at the end of some unmarked bush track ...
Click to expand...

Back to where we started.

I am saying that to take the vastness of the Outback seriously means to run 5 proper tires. You are saying that it means to run 6 whatever tires. What I am proposing is much safer.

If you think that an offroad tire such as the KO2 is as likely to suffer a puncture as a stock Subaru tire, you need to send a few emails to tire companies you trust. You may be right for the situation a long time ago, but nowadays there is no comparison between tires.

Or you need to do like [MENTION=44]Rally[/MENTION] and run high performance V and W rated tires with lower profiles. They have an extra ply in the tread and extremely stiff sidewalls. They are surprisingly puncture resistant which explains what Rally has been saying for a long time.

All these options also involve the pleasure of either running a tire that performs great over 1,000 miles of dirt or a tire that performs great over the remaining 1,000 miles of pavement. Choosing to run generic street tires gives you a mediocre tire everywhere plus the need to bother with a 6th tire.

This is not my favorite test, but it will help you understand:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kz8mmLkeks"]Cooper Puncture Test - YouTube[/ame]
 
You are misinterpreting what I am saying.

I am finding it difficult to find any part of your interpretation with which I agree ...
 
Ratbag said:
Any given tyre type can be wrong on almost any inland trip in Australia.
Click to expand...

Ratbag said:
Exactly @benupnorth;.

At which point do I switch from excellent road tyres to off road tyres? Simple answer is that I don't. It would double the cost of the trip. But I may well carry another spare (or two ... ) on my roof basket, along with 20L each of fuel and water.

]
Click to expand...


Well, that's what you said. All along you mentioned multiple times how I do not understand the Australian conditions even though I have been on this forum for like 6 years and even though I live in one of the hottest and driest places on the planet where tourists and locals die due to either underestimating nature or navigational mistakes every year.

You said anything can get a puncture (that's why you have a spare plus a plug kit) implying that a stronger tire changes nothing and that a 6th tire is the way to go.

Then you tabled that argument and came up with the idea that having a strong tire is an inconvenience.

Then I moved on because at that point everything depends on context.

And then you came up with examples of what happens when people do not take the Outback seriously. Now, maybe you did not mean to imply anything and just wanted to provide examples, but in the context of what you had said earlier, it did not come across as merely informational.

:bananatoast:
 
Everything I have said is informational.

Basically, anyone who treats the Australian outback with anything but the utmost respect is very likely to die for their error of judgement.

This can even happen on what are laughingly called 'major highways' such as the Eyre Highway.

Have you cast an eye over the Western Australian police academy's "Aids to Survival"? They take it seriously ...
 
Yet another example ...

https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Driving_in_Australia

Do you really think people write this stuff for fun?

Every decent road atlas available in Australia usually has the first chapter setting out the requirements for basic outback safety. In just one of my touring Atlases, this runs to about 6 A4 pages. This is for general, on major road touring, not particularly aiming at outback driving, even using relatively major outback roads like the Oodnadatta track.
 
MAS I enjoy reading your posts, but maybe if you look at it this way. The US has 327 million people and Oz has 25 million. So we are about 7% of the US population in roughly the same size land mass. So if something goes wrong the chances are you may not see anyone or get help. Hence I always carry two spares. A mate of mine who drives a Jeep did the Gibb River Rd and kissed the bitumen when he got to the end, why? Because he had used both spares.
In the 1970's I was stranded in the outback due to a vehicle mishap on a track that if you are lucky you'd see one car every two weeks. We were fortunate enough to be rescued. Charles who I was travelling with, on a subsequent trip nearly died when he was stranded for over a week and was hospitalised due to severe dehydration. Every year people die in the outback. It is varst and unpopulated in many areas.
Anyway that's my two bobs worth.
 
australia sure ir harsh still all those overlanders with their videos on youtube showing their trips lighter and harder and some not having any puncture for long time , others just have less luck maybe. But noone driving with normal tires there. and KO2 is run-flat tire as are some other AT/MT tires out there. with same luck i can easily puncture tire 20 min drive outside down in forest in all those rocks, roots ,sharp short branches.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top