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Flat Tyre Comparison Between Tyres
for Extended Off-Track Travel

    This is just a quick look at the results of our expeditions over the years in relation to tyres and how things seem to work while travelling off-track. The raw data at the end of this article is shown as flat tyres per tyre construction and the number of vehicles who had those tyres plus the amount of trouble had with tubes. This information is taken from my notes from each day during an expedition. In the very early days I didn’t note a great deal apart from the numbers of flats. In time I took much more notice because it was obvious very quickly that I had to get on top of this "problem" and so I set about learning why things happened, not just the end result and the process to repair it.

    A tube problem adds to the overall flat tyre tally but has nothing to do with the tyre construction so the graph below excludes flats due solely to a tube problem. As I have tried to explain multiple times on our website, tubes are a difficult thing to manage well when running at low pressures for extended periods. The quality of rubber in tubes these days is woeful for this sort of work. We do our best and have learnt a great deal but we still have tube issues that even after all this time we don’t have an answer for, but we are learning. Another tube problem is customer lack of maintenance between yearly trips (we have quite a number of folk who regularly participate in our expeditions). Split rims & tubes need regular maintenance, dismounting, cleaning, fresh talc and refitting with silicone in the lock ring gap and valve slot to keep the sand & grit out of the tyre.

    Anyway, if you are one of the very few that are looking to poke around without any sort of road or track then have a look and see what you think about what tyres to use for off-track work. At the very least don’t use bloody Steel Belted Radials!

    My biggest trouble with all this data is how to show it in a format that is easy to read at a glance. Took me a while to figure it out as I’m not the most literate fella on a computer, a word document and some basic image edits are about as technical as I get so see what you think.

    The graph below simply explains the difference we have found between Radials of either construction & Bias during extended off-track travel. The height of the column is the number of flats in total. The red is how many Radial flats and the blue represents Bias flats. The horizontal axis has the year of each commercial expedition. At a glance it is easy to see which construction handles off-track better, which was the idea. There is a lot more red than blue as far as I can see.

    Some results and points to add to the mix which you might be able to see in the raw data at the very bottom;

• These 18 commercial expeditions covered 11,378 kms off-track
• That’s one flat tyre every 31.7 kms
• From 2006 Connie & I always used Bias tyres for our expeditions. The lead vehicle will normally cop the worst of the conditions. There has to be a front vehicle but for an honest comparison, both tyre types should be breaking ground independent of each other. Hard to do and a bit unrealistic unless you were doing a full specific test.
• In our early years often there were only one or two vehicles with Bias fitted. Towards the latter years it is obvious all the vehicles were on Bias. Big difference in numbers.
• The different deserts also act in different ways in regards to causing flats. No matter how hard you try spinifex will not puncture a tyre!
• The preceding seasons also play a huge role in puncture potential. Previous wet seasons will mean growth & then fire. That is bad for tyres. Several dry seasons are better.
• Rain during your trip is also a factor. We have found over the years if it rains while off-track then punctures seem to cease until the country dries just a little. Then it’s back to normal, yippee!
• On the initial trips we were learning about how to pass through the desert country to avoid the worst bits on tyres. This is a very hard dynamic to analyse.

Raw Data from Commercial expeditions

2004 - Callawa Track Retrace

72 flat tyres approx - 640 kms off-track

• 58 x Steel Belted Radials (some leaking tyre plugs) – 6 vehicles
• 14 x All Steel Radials – 2 vehicles

2005 - Callawa Track - following faint set of wheel tracks

14 flat tyres approx - 640 kms off-track

• 6 x Steel Belted Radials – 2 vehicles
• 4 x All Steel Radials – 2 vehicles
• 2 x Bias – 1 vehicle

2005 - Last of the Nomads

9 flat tyres - 326 kms off-track

• 9 x Steel Belted Radials – 6 vehicles
• 0 x All Steel Radials – 2 vehicles
• 0 x Bias – 1 vehicle

2006 - Giles 130 Years

18 flat tyres - 790 kms off-track

• 14 x All Steel Radial punctures – 5 vehicles
• 1 x Bias puncture – 1 vehicle
• 3 x tube problems amongst all

2006 - Callawa Track - following set of wheel tracks

9 flat tyres - 640 kms off-track

• 5 x All Steel Radial punctures – 1 vehicle
• 1 x Bias puncture – 1 vehicle
• 3 x tube problems amongst all

2007 - Carnegie 1897

29 flat tyres - 848 kms off-track

• 22 x All Steel Radial punctures – 5 vehicles
• 2 x Bias punctures – 1 vehicle
• 5 x tube problems amongst all

2007 - Rudall 1897

9 flat tyres approx - 327 kms off-track

• 5 x All Steel Radial punctures – 2 vehicles
• 1 x Bias – 2 vehicles
• 3 x tube problems amongst all

2008 - Calvert Expedition 1896

25 flat tyres - 760 kms off-track

• 17 x All Steel Radial punctures – 3 vehicles
• 8 x Bias punctures – 4 vehicles

2009 - Unknown Ranges

23 flat tyres - 670 kms off-track

• 14 x All Steel Radial punctures – 4 vehicles
• 3 x Bias punctures – 2 vehicles
• 4 x tube problems amongst all

2010 - Great Sandy Explorer

19 flat tyres - 734 kms off-track

• 11 x Bias – 5 vehicles
• 2 x All Steel Radials - 1 vehicle
• 6 x tube problems amongst all

2011 - South West Explorer

13 flat tyres - 504 kms off-track

• 11 x All Steel Radial punctures – 4 vehicles
• 2 x tube problems amongst all

2012 - C96 Great Sandy Desert

21 flat tyres - 771 kms off-track

• 8 x Tubeless All Steel Radial punctures – 1 x OKA vehicle 19.5" tyres
• 10 x All Steel Radial punctures - 3 vehicles
• 1 x Bias – 3 vehicles
• 2 x tube problems ASR only

2013 - Unknown Hills & Lakes

21 flat tyres - 656 kms off-track

• 16 x All Steel Radial punctures – 4 vehicles
• 4 x Bias – 4 vehicles
• 1 x tube problem ASR only

2014 - Forrest, Carnegie & Hill

14 flat tyres - 639 kms off-track

• 7 x All Steel Radial punctures – 2 vehicles
• 3 x Bias punctures – 2 vehicles
• 4 x tube problems amongst all

2015 - Lost Waters of the South West

23 flat tyres - 596 kms off-track

• 19 x Tubeless All Steel Radials – 1 vehicle
• 4 x Bias – 3 vehicles

2016 - C96 Two Soaks

20 ½ flat tyres - 560 kms off-track - all vehicles had Bias tyres fitted

• 4 ½ x Bias punctures – staked with wood
• 16 x various tube problems (mainly on two vehicles with cheap tubes)
• (this trip spawned a great deal of testing and research over the next few years, haven’t finished even now in 2021 due to a few interruptions)

2017 - Carnegie, Wells & Hann

14 ½ flat tyres - 682 kms off-track - all vehicles had Bias tyres fitted

• 10 x Bias punctures – staked with wood
• 4.5 tube problems

2018 - Secrets of the South West

5 flat tyres - 622 kms off-track - all vehicles fitted with Bias tyres

• 5 x Bias punctures & a carcass break

The wash-up

• 359 flat tyres
• 18 off-track tag-a-longs

    Connie & I no longer run commercial off-track trips, with the slow spread of Native Title decisions and therefore the reduction of Crown Land we have simply run out of places to go. As the Crown Land shrunk we concentrated our trips. There are sections of the desert that we have scoured for things of interest and now know very well. Even with that sort of restriction we were still able to follow explorers and investigate areas of interest with our customers from when we started commercial expeditions in 2005 to when we stopped in 2018. Very few get to experience exploring in its real sense.

Much the same as Len Beadell’s book "End of an Era", Connie & I have reached that same point in regard to off-track work. For us the desert will never be the same if we and others can’t wander about where ever we fancied. The desert country was open to anybody that was willing to go there. That was freedom, now we have progress.

Safe Travels
Mick Hutton
Copyright: June 2021

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