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Tyre Pressures and driving speed when off-road


RussnSue

Van Tyre Pressures  

41 members have voted

  1. 1. When on paved roads, at what pressure do you run your van tyres?

    • 50+ psi
      3
    • 45 - 50 psi
      11
    • 40 - 45 psi
      20
    • 35 - 40 psi
      6
    • 30 - 35 psi
      1
    • 25 - 30 psi
      0
    • 20 - 25 psi
      0
    • 15 - 20 psi
      0
    • Less than 15 psi
      0
  2. 2. When on well-made gravel roads, at what pressure do you run your van tyres?

    • 50+ psi
      0
    • 45 - 50 psi
      5
    • 40 - 45 psi
      20
    • 35 - 40 psi
      10
    • 30 - 35 psi
      5
    • 25 - 30 psi
      1
    • 20 - 25 psi
      0
    • 15 - 20 psi
      0
    • Less than 15 psi
      0
  3. 3. When on very corrugated or rough, stoney roads, at what pressure do you run your van tyres?

    • 50+ psi
      0
    • 45 - 50 psi
      0
    • 40 - 45 psi
      3
    • 35 - 40 psi
      3
    • 30 - 35 psi
      14
    • 25 - 30 psi
      15
    • 20 - 25 psi
      6
    • 15 - 20 psi
      0
    • Less than 15 psi
      0
  4. 4. How many tyres have you had to replace due to damage (not repair) on your van in the past 3 years?

    • None
      34
    • 1
      6
    • 2
      1
    • 3
      0
    • 4
      0
    • 5
      0
    • More than 5
      0
  5. 5. Has your van incurred vibration damage to the interior fitments? You may choose more than one answer.

    • All the time
      0
    • Never
      20
    • No, not even with the tyres hard
      5
    • Yes, when the tyres were hard
      8
    • No, my tyre pressures are low
      3
    • Yes, even when my tyre pressures are low
      5
    • Yes, I was driving too fast
      4
    • No, even if I drive fast
      2
    • No, I always drive slowly
      2
    • Yes, even though I drove slowly
      7


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G'day

In recent times there have been posts related to driving on corrugated or rough roads, damage to van interior fitments and so on. As road conditions, speed and tyre pressures can be pivotal to both rough road driving as well as vibration damage to the van fitments, I thought it would be interesting to conduct a poll to see how Kedron users tackle these issues. Obviously this is not exhaustive, but it may give us all some food for thought. The poll itself is anonymous, but feel free to add a post with any comments that you may have.

Cheers

Russ

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Well what do you know?.....the thing works. I guess my answers won't be anonymous until someone else responds to the poll....lol.....

Cheers

Russ

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Hi all , We have travelled the Plenty/ Donohue H'way, The Gibb River Road,The Great Central H'way,The Oodnadatta Track & Birdsville Track & have never changed our tyre pressures we run about 38PSI in Van & L/Cruiser & on the gravel, speed can vary but around 80 KMPH depending on conditions. We have a 17ft 6 inch Top ENDER Van & have never shook anything to bits. Neville.

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I can't recall what Kedrons recommendation was for tyre pressures, tarmac 45psi and gravel 35psi? Someone else might be able to help.

Chers

Merv

Those are what I recall and use with no tyre problems on the van

Cheers

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Well what do you know?.....the thing works. I guess my answers won't be anonymous until someone else responds to the poll....lol.....

Cheers

Russ

Perhaps a poll on problem differences between front kitchens and rear might be interesting.

I recall seeing comments on a web site somewhere that rear kitchens suffer from more bounce at the back than the front.

Mine is front and we have few problems compared to what others are posting.

Cheers

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Perhaps a poll on problem differences between front kitchens and rear might be interesting.

I recall seeing comments on a web site somewhere that rear kitchens suffer from more bounce at the back than the front.

Mine is front and we have few problems compared to what others are posting.

Cheers

Hi, our Van is rear Kitchen & only problem we ever had was when I removed 2 spares off back of Van & put them in back of cruiser to shift weighy off Van but soon put them back on Van as going from Mareeba/ Chillagoe/ Normanton we broke 2 plates & the cutterly draw was turned up side down because the rear of the Van was pitching on gravel road without the 85 Kgs of spare wheels on the rear of Van.Neville.

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I can't recall what Kedrons recommendation was for tyre pressures, tarmac 45psi and gravel 35psi? Someone else might be able to help.

In the paperwork we were given when we collected our van there was a sheet which had those pressures stipulated on them, it's attached below.

Pre-TravelCheckList.pdf

A year or two there was much discussion about tyre pressures on this form. At that time consensus seemed to be that there is no universal tyre pressure. Rather, the tyre(s) has it's own technical specification and the pressure it is inflated to depends on the load applied. The table I used for both the vehicle and van is attached in a spreadsheet, it can easily be adapted to the specification of another setup by changing the values in the yellow cells.

Tyre-PressureCalc.zip

Cheers

John

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G'day John

Thanks for those attachments. I will be using the calculator as a reference from now on. The idea of the poll was to see what happens in real-life use and is producing some interesting results. I know, for instance, that I get a little lazy at times and if the rough road is only short I will often try and get away with not airing down my rubber - sometimes I have come to regret that! I'm sure that we all have had similar experiences.

I also know that the one and only time that we suffered damage (kitchen drawer latch in a centre-kitchen) was on the Plenty Highway when I had the tyres down, but hit a patch of very bad corrugations while going a tad too fast.

Cheers

Russ

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Hi Russ,

I thought the poll was a brilliant idea! Good to see there are so few that have sustained tyre damage and that generally speaking there doesn't seem to be a lot of van damage being incurred. Just need to get a bit more input, there seems to have been plenty of lookers if you use the download counter on attachments as a guide.

I too have been very guilty of not airing down on those pesky short diversions from the tarmac. On at least one occasion the regret set on quite quickly, it was a shocker road in Kakadu and I had no choice but to stop and air down, even then it was so bad that the winch control box on the forever shacking 200 series bullbar destroyed itself, funny that, we were to see a few of these boxes strapped to these airbag compatible bars on Prado's and Landcruisers, apparently they eat UHF antenna's as well if you've selected the wrong type.

It's not the airing down that's irksome I use an ARB deflater that pulls the valve out of the stem for full flow, it's the re-inflation that takes the time, my compressor is big enough and does the job quite quickly, but, it is not continuously rated and had a thermal protection device that stops it periodically, it's always a case of have a cuppa and just take your time.

When on the Gibb River Road last year I ran 28psi vehicle front, 32psi vehicle rear and 28psi on the van, a bit of trial and error was used to get to those settings, but, they seemed to be the most universal for the conditions we encountered. Speed is the demon in all of this, sometimes even a crawl can be a painful journey. We did see many that opted for the skip across the top technique, heaven knows the pressures they were running but we did see the price a few of them paid, tyres and wrecked suspension systems.

Cheers

John

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G'Day John,

I pretty much agree with your tyre pressures. We did the Gibb River Road in 2011 with 28Lbs front and 35Lbs rear and 28Lbs for the van that weighed at or just above 3,500Kg. Our Landcruiser 200 had the original Dunlop Grand Treks with about 35,000Km on them and we had no tyre problems. Like it seems most, we have also been caught out by not reducing tyre pressure on relatively short trips over severe corrugations. In 2010 while visiting Kakadu we didn't reduce the van tyre pressures from 45Lbs for a quick trip into Gunlom Falls. On arrival the top drawer and cutlery were spread over the floor. Amazing the difference tyre pressure makes.

Regards

John

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In 2010 while visiting Kakadu we didn't reduce the van tyre pressures from 45Lbs for a quick trip into Gunlom Falls.

EDITED (got to be bad when you can't remember when your were somewhere)

G'Day John,

Sorry we both (Ann and I) had a bit of a giggle, that's the one, 2011 2012 for us, it was a shocker, although, not as bad as the track into Silent Grove in 2012 the same year that was extra bad.

Cheers

John

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  • 1 month later...

We have just driven the Strzelecki and Oodnadatta Tracks and had 38 psi in the van tyres. No tyre damage, no van damage. There was a huge variety of rocks, some of which were definitely out to get me.....but not this time ! :lol:

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  • 4 weeks later...

G'day Russ

Great topic & excellent poll.

We run pressures down to as low as 23psi on our Kedron when the road really rough. Last year on the Gibb River Road around Mt Barnett the road was just terrible & we were down to 10kms/hour with 23psi on the van & similar on the Touareg tow vehicle just trying to be comfortable, let alone for considerations of the Kedron.

We ended up breaking the hinge bracket on the fridge door, we were warned in Broome that this very weak hinge would break on the GRR. When it did I was amazed just how weak it is, just some spot welds holding it in place. we took the broken hinge to Drysdale River Station & the guy there had a lot of experience with this hinge & he welded it up. I'm not sure it wont ever break again. We have a back up also welded just in case.

also, as soon as our Kedron looks at any dirt road we have to put Ocky straps around the oven door & the cutlery drawer to stop the opening. The cutlery draw always used to break the Southco twist knob, but since we retain the drawer with an Ocky strap we haven't broken one!

However lower tyre pressures alone are not the answer, you have to slow down. And even if you are on a short dirt leg without lowering the pressures, reduced speed is the answer.

Cheers

Alan

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  • 2 years later...

Hi. A great summary of where I should start with tyre pressures. We are about to hit the Gibb River Rd for the next 10days. Question for me is tyre pressures for a single axle Cross Country Kedron. From what I can see most of the posts are from owners with larger dual axle Kedrons. My concern is load carrying capacity of the tyres being affected by dropping the pressures. We are running Toyo Open Country 265/75/16 rated at 1550kg.

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Hi. A great summary of where I should start with tyre pressures. We are about to hit the Gibb River Rd for the next 10days. Question for me is tyre pressures for a single axle Cross Country Kedron. From what I can see most of the posts are from owners with larger dual axle Kedrons. My concern is load carrying capacity of the tyres being affected by dropping the pressures. We are running Toyo Open Country 265/75/16 rated at 1550kg.

While load rating is very important, it is much more important to monitor tyre temperatures. When you let the tyres down significantly to improve ride, they will run hotter due to the increased rolling resistance and your load rating figure will go out the window. The only way to prevent heat damage to the tyre is to reduce your speed appropriately to avoid heating in the first place. We had Toyo Open Country tyres on the car for a short while and both of them failed due to overheating. The problem was due to the fact that the tyres have white-wall writing on them and the white layer delaminated, leaving very large bubbles under the outer, black, layer. I learnt a valuable (and expensive) lesson. I was only doing 60 KPH and did not know then, but do know now, that our rear axle weight was way over what it should have been (we were 350Kg overweight on the rear axles with the van hitched.)

With a single axle setup, all of your eggs are in one basket, so to speak, so keeping a check of tyre temperatures would be well advised.

Cheers

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RussnSue. Thanks for the fast response. I am driving to Derby tomorrow on bitumen and have an infared thermal

guage so I will take a reading [albeit on bitumen] to let me know what they are normally running at. When we hit the dirt I can at least know if they are way over the normal. I normally run 55psi on bitumen and will start at around 35 psi for dirt-fingers crossed.

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  • 1 month later...

RussnSue. Thanks for the fast response. I am driving to Derby tomorrow on bitumen and have an infared thermal

guage so I will take a reading [albeit on bitumen] to let me know what they are normally running at. When we hit the dirt I can at least know if they are way over the normal. I normally run 55psi on bitumen and will start at around 35 psi for dirt-fingers crossed.

Hello

How did the single axel cross country go with the 35 psi on the Gibb River Road?

Thanks in advance.

Terry

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