How To Choose 4x4 Tyres for Your 4x4?

Welcome to my fresh blogpost to everyone. Today we are going to discuss the installment of 4x4 tyres Faringdon Australia's how-to off-road driving and today we're going to talk about tyre pressures. If you're not adjusting your tyre pressures as you drive on different surfaces you're not doing the right thing by you, your family, and your vehicle. Let me explain.

What is Tyre Pressure?

How do you know what is the right tyre pressure for different surfaces? A lot of tyre manufacturers and distributors will never tell you to put your tyres pressures below what's on the placard of your vehicle, but that's not going to work when you're out in the bush.

When you get onto gravel roads, I'd recommend if you're running 35 on the road, you think about dropping your pressures down to anywhere around 26 psi. But having said that, that's if you're running light truck construction tyres with a tougher sidewall, a tougher tread pattern not a passenger car construction tyre like these things on this vehicle at the moment.

But if you're going to upgrade your tyres to all terrains or mud terrains, make sure you get a light truck construction tyre for dirt road or off-road driving.

The advantage of lowering your tyre pressures not only gives the tyre more compliance hence improving the ride of the vehicle but it also lengthens the footprint of the tyre. So if you're driving on slippery gravel roads, it gives you more purchase and more traction.

If the tyre is able to conform to the road surface, it'll mold itself over those sharp edges and you won't have any damage to the tyre.

More traction means you'll have better handling, better braking and that's very important. Especially if you're driving and there's wildlife about you need to make a sudden stop.

If you hit a big edge or something like that at full road pressures and you're driving on the dirt, it can delaminate the tyre and that can end up with a catastrophic failure of that tyre.

Different Terrain

The other thing I want to talk about with pressure is driving on different off-road terrains: sand, mud, rocks, all that sort of stuff. So we'll start with sand, because that's the obvious one.

You'll want to lengthen that tyre's tread footprint—when you're on the sand so that it floats over the surface of the sand and doesn't dig in.

The best way to do that is to lower the pressures. And don't be afraid to go down to as low as 16 psi even a little bit lower and that will give you a lot more traction on sand.

And what about rocky terrain? Well again, you want to lower your pressures, maybe go down to about 22 psi or something like that. Again, it allows the tyre to mold itself over the rough terrain. It not only gives you more purchase on that terrain but also will help prevent tyre damage.

These tyre pressure guides that I've given you are exactly that: they're just a guide. Sand in one part of Australia might be a lot harder than sand in another part. There's all sorts of different kinds of rock, there's sandstone, there's shale, there's limestone. There's all sorts of gravel roads too, there's corrugated outback gravel roads, there's sandy gravel roads.

Your tyre pressures are something that you're going to have to adjust as you go along. And you will figure it out when you feel the ride quality in your vehicle improve as you adjust your tyre pressures.

Equipment

There's a fair bit of equipment you're going to need to be able to do all this tyre pressure adjusting. Obviously a quality air pressure gauge or tyre pressure gauge is the first one.

There's analog and digital as long as it's a quality unit. And it's not a bad idea to have a backup one that you can check it with too, because these gauges do go out of adjustment from time to time.

You're also going to need a tyre deflator. There's all sorts of different kinds of deflators on the market, everything from a stick that you find on the ground or the end of your car key or something like that or a dedicated tyre pressure deflator that will make it a lot quicker.

And when you've got four Car Tyres Faringdon, you don't want to be messing around with sticks and stuff like that, you want to get the job done as quickly as possible. The easier it is, the more likely you are to adjust your tyre pressures on a regular basis. It's good for you, it's good for your family, it's good for your vehicle.

Obviously the other thing you're going to need once you get off a gravel road like this and back onto the blacktop is a quality air compressor. Whether it's something installed under the bonnet or in your vehicle somewhere, or a portable compressor or both, because it's always good to have a backup make sure you have a quality air compressor.