2 spare tires?

[lugueto]

You can't make a strategy based solely on one particular past experience, especially in this case.. Counting how many flats you've had in any given time is not really a justification per se, you probably wouldn't bring a spare tire if you did. Bad luck strikes when you least expect it, be it having one spare or two spares, or none like modern "please take it to a dealer" cars.

I have had a few tire sets that have been changed bald without a single flat. I've also had a brand new tire that was punctured irreparably in its first 500kms (about 150km from civilization using crappy roads). This doesn't I needed to go from no strategy at all to a completely overkill solution.

Also, I agree. I only buy tires on sizes and brands that are common where I drive. Makes them easier (And cheaper) to replace if you have an irreparable flat.

 

[DCGibbs]

@DCGibbs where you at street pressure or did you air down, when you got those two flats?

I will add to my comment, if you are traveling outside of the US or your rig is using a very uncommon sized tire that is not likely to find any (not just like brand/model) in stock at a tire store, there is more likely a need to two spares.

Aired down 5 to 7 pounds, Was on a Forest Service dirt road with very sharp rocks. DG

 

[ExpoMike]

Aired down 5 to 7 pounds, Was on a Forest Service dirt road with very sharp rocks. DG

I am assuming you mean 5-7 pound lower than street pressure. If so, that is likely still too high. My Cherokee, which I run at 32 psi street, I air down to 18 psi dirt. My old Ram/FWC, I ran 60 psi street and 40 psi dirt.

 

[krick3tt]

I would imagine that if one is traveling outside the US where tires might be difficult to get if you are an odd size, you (in your planning stage) would have enough forethought to research sizes there and obtain rims and tires for your rig that are used where you are going. Sacrificing the 'cool' look of here to adapt to there with a relatively uniform size. It just makes sense.
After spending untold amounts of money to outfit your rig to off road international spaces it flies in the face of common sense to also fit your rig with comparable tires.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Here in North America I just carry one spare with a tire plug kit and compressor. I have yet to need any of it.

Overseas especially in a rig not as limited for weight (if there is such a thing) I would run two if I could.

 

[roving1]

Unnecessary I think for North and South America.

Buying a quality tire preferably with more plys and a stronger sidewall, like an E rated tire on a lighter vehicle, will go a long way to providing protection. Probably an amount even exceeding what two spares would. It is extremely difficult to puncture these tires with anything but a metal object.

 

[Wilbah]

I think a lot has to do with road conditions and driving styles. I like 2 spares for the peace of mind it brings. And 2 won't necessarily prevent getting stranded. In spring when roads are graded or opened it turns up a lot of sharp rocks. Key to travelling then is to keep your speed down (45 or less). Went through 3 tires 1 year in Maine due to those freshly upturned rocks (5 between 2 vehicles). All load range E tires in good shape. All the flats I've had off road were on tires in good shape (making sure tires are in good shape before going is always a must) but were cut by freshly turned rocks.

I'm not sure if airing down would help or hinder in that situation. I understand the premise that it adds flexibility to the tires and smooths the ride, but if you are on sharp rocks not sure it might just increase the risk due to exposing more of the sidewall to those sharp edges. Maybe as long as speeds are lowered airing down would help too but it just seems a little counter intuitive to me.

And to clarify I'm referring to FS/logging roads. In sand I air down to broaden the footprint, but there I'm not worried abt sharp rocks and want the extra flotation a wider footprint provides. I dont do any rock crawling but I can see a benefit there also but the speed then is obviously way down too.

 

[Martinjmpr]

Story time: Back in 2013 I was on a trip with a group (from this board) and we did have one guy get 2 flats on the same trip. Actually, he didn't just get 2 "flats", on two separate occasions 4 days apart, the tires actually ripped to shreds on the sidewall while driving at a moderate pace (25 - 30 MPH) on a graded dirt road. I can't remember if he was running LT or P rated tires but it was a real eye opener. BTW the tires were Hankook Dynapros which is why I will never consider that tire again (I actually had a set on an old 4runner years ago.)

The biggest problem he had was that we were in a very remote part of Nevada. Three days after the first blowout, we got to Tonopah, NV. He went to a local tire shop to see if he could get a replacement tire and they wanted something like $300 or $400 for one tire - something crazy. So he elected to wait and then the next day another tire shredded itself. So now he had no spare. Fortunately someone else on the trip had the same model of truck and loaned him a spare tire and he took off to the nearest town (Bishop, CA) which was a couple of hours away and had 4 new tires put on there.

Anyway - somebody here mentioned carrying a spare TIRE but not a spare WHEEL. Had this guy had a spare TIRE he likely could have had a local tire shop change the tire out for $50 - $75 while he waited. But if they have to SELL you a tire, you're going to pay top dollar if they even have your size, and if they don't it will likely be at least a day or two before they can get one from a warehouse. So in that circumstance, it might actually be prudent to carry a second spare tire only.

 

[Martinjmpr]

As a side note: What tools do you need to mount a tire in the wild? Assuming the blown tire is trashed I suppose you could just cut it off the rim but then how do you mount the new tire to the rim?

 

[Joe917]

Or carry tire irons (and learn how to use them) and the spare

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Story time: Back in 2013 I was on a trip with a group (from this board) and we did have one guy get 2 flats on the same trip. Actually, he didn't just get 2 "flats", on two separate occasions 4 days apart, the tires actually ripped to shreds on the sidewall while driving at a moderate pace (25 - 30 MPH) on a graded dirt road. I can't remember if he was running LT or P rated tires but it was a real eye opener. BTW the tires were Hankook Dynapros which is why I will never consider that tire again (I actually had a set on an old 4runner years ago.)

The biggest problem he had was that we were in a very remote part of Nevada. Three days after the first blowout, we got to Tonopah, NV. He went to a local tire shop to see if he could get a replacement tire and they wanted something like $300 or $400 for one tire - something crazy. So he elected to wait and then the next day another tire shredded itself. So now he had no spare. Fortunately someone else on the trip had the same model of truck and loaned him a spare tire and he took off to the nearest town (Bishop, CA) which was a couple of hours away and had 4 new tires put on there.

Anyway - somebody here mentioned carrying a spare TIRE but not a spare WHEEL. Had this guy had a spare TIRE he likely could have had a local tire shop change the tire out for $50 - $75 while he waited. But if they have to SELL you a tire, you're going to pay top dollar if they even have your size, and if they don't it will likely be at least a day or two before they can get one from a warehouse. So in that circumstance, it might actually be prudent to carry a second spare tire only.

A friend of mine had a flat on a gravel road. This was on his '89 F-150 so it probably had 235/75-15 tires or something similar to that. Nothing big, typical farm truck stuff. It was 10:30 at night so he just changes it to get home. Goes to the tire shop the next day to get it fixed and pulls it out of the back... he had hit a chunk of a truck spring u-bolt which not only killed his tire but it knocked a hole in the rim.

He was grumping because he was only half a mile from home, if he had known the tire and rim were trashed he would have just limped it home on the rim.

So at least having a compete spare tire/rim would be good plus a loose tire like you say.

I remember motor trend or some other mag was doing a truck comparison in the late 90's, this was when Ford was just coming out with 17's for the "Off-Road" package. The F-150 ended up popping two tires, they limped it into town with their clothes stuffed in the tire. The only 17" tire they could find out there (it was like Utah/Arizona) was a street tire for something like for a Mustang... so the F-150 finished the contest with one low profile street tire and got dinged severely for its "weird" sized tires and for the above and beyond headache they caused the staff.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

It's not a bad idea to bring a spare tire instead of a whole wheel, but I wouldn't think that would be for "trailside repairs" (at least not reliably). It can be really hard to change a tire on a motorbike wheel with irons on the side of the road, even for someone who knows what they're doing. I imagine a car tire would be a lot harder, potentially. For bikes, a lot of it depends on the tire compound -- I've had a TKC-70 that I couldn't get on if my life depended on it with irons, but I regularly swap out my K-60s by hand. Similar tires in terms of function, on the same rims with the same tools and technique by the person doing the work, but for whatever reason the K-60s are much easier to change.

We never bring two tires except for our trip to Alaska, and I think our reasoning reflects that there is a third part to the equation of "two tires or one" that I've not seen mentioned yet -- lots of folks have talked about whether or not you need a second spare in North America, and the consensus so far in the thread seems to be "probably not". But I would say that the third factor is time -- what kind of a trip are you having? Do you have time to wait around for replacements that might be a few days away?

For example, on our Alaska trip, we had to hit an average of 600 kms per day, every day, in order to make the trip happen with our timeline. That's hard mileage when camping, especially on a bike (My wife and brother were in the 4x4, we convoyed up together because I really like riding). If we had to park up in Deadhorse and wait a few days for a spare tire to be shipped in, it would have thrown off our plan in a big way. However, with a second spare, we had options -- let's say we shredded a tire on the way to Prudhoe. With one spare, we'd be forced by pragmatic thinking to stick it out in Deadhorse until the spare was replaced/repaired. However, with a second spare we would be able to return south to Fairbanks with some peace of mind that if we shredded another tire, we still had another spare. And we could get any tires we needed fixed in Fairbanks within a couple of hours (as opposed to waiting a few days in Deadhorse) and thus that would be less impactful on our overall schedule/trip. We also brought a tire repair kit but sometimes, tires can't be repaired so we liked this extra redundancy.

As it happened, we didn't get a single flat in either vehicle on that trip. In fact, I've only ever had one flat tire, and it was in a parking lot in a major city. But, if I were to do the Alaska trip again, with the same time crunch (or a similar remote trip with a time crunch), I would probably bring a second spare just in case assuming I had the payload and storage to do so.

 

[alanymarce]

Yes; I’ll go ahead and put my rig on 11R22.5s; dually in rear, almost overloaded singles in front. Of course my exceedingly useful CTIS will be useless.
Pray tell what should I be using, instead of the stock size?
Please forgive sarcasm.

Please forgive my poorly worded comment (and I deserve your implicit rebuke).
The point was (as is noted in a number of posts) that it's a good idea to avoid tyre sizes (and rim sizes) which will be difficult to source if needed. We're running standard tyres on our Montero.

Got it, bad Overlander®. So am I to wait for road side assistance? Never thought my life would be in peril walking a couple of miles to find 4 bars of cell signal. But then again I forget, we're thinking about being stuck in Botswana with a sat phone at hand not about driving trails in southern California.

Another apology for my frame of reference. I guess I wouldn't have a problem walking a few Km to seek assistance in some parts of the world, however as you correctly assume, I tend to think in terms of being somewhere like Botswana. Interestingly (perhaps) now that I reflect, we've never had a flat tyre in Botswana, nor indeed anywhere in Africa south of the Sahara, on our own vehicles.

I would imagine that if one is traveling outside the US where tires might be difficult to get if you are an odd size, you (in your planning stage) would have enough forethought to research sizes there and obtain rims and tires for your rig that are used where you are going. Sacrificing the 'cool' look of here to adapt to there with a relatively uniform size. It just makes sense.
After spending untold amounts of money to outfit your rig to off road international spaces it flies in the face of common sense to also fit your rig with comparable tires.

I agree completely - it's part of planning; it's also worth researching pricing - on one trip if we'd been smarter we'd have replaced our set of tyres in Argentina instead of doing so in Brazil a couple of months later. Brazil protects its tyre manufacturing industry, which makes street tyres and mud tyres - ATs have to be imported and suffer massive import duty - very expensive.

We never bring two tires except for our trip to Alaska, and I think our reasoning reflects that there is a third part to the equation of "two tires or one" that I've not seen mentioned yet -- lots of folks have talked about whether or not you need a second spare in North America, and the consensus so far in the thread seems to be "probably not". But I would say that the third factor is time -- what kind of a trip are you having? Do you have time to wait around for replacements that might be a few days away?

For example, on our Alaska trip, we had to hit an average of 600 kms per day, every day, in order to make the trip happen with our timeline. That's hard mileage when camping, especially on a bike (My wife and brother were in the 4x4, we convoyed up together because I really like riding). If we had to park up in Deadhorse and wait a few days for a spare tire to be shipped in, it would have thrown off our plan in a big way. However, with a second spare, we had options -- let's say we shredded a tire on the way to Prudhoe. With one spare, we'd be forced by pragmatic thinking to stick it out in Deadhorse until the spare was replaced/repaired. However, with a second spare we would be able to return south to Fairbanks with some peace of mind that if we shredded another tire, we still had another spare. And we could get any tires we needed fixed in Fairbanks within a couple of hours (as opposed to waiting a few days in Deadhorse) and thus that would be less impactful on our overall schedule/trip. We also brought a tire repair kit but sometimes, tires can't be repaired so we liked this extra redundancy.

As it happened, we didn't get a single flat in either vehicle on that trip. In fact, I've only ever had one flat tire, and it was in a parking lot in a major city. But, if I were to do the Alaska trip again, with the same time crunch (or a similar remote trip with a time crunch), I would probably bring a second spare just in case assuming I had the payload and storage to do so.

Great point - in Bolivia we had two tyre failures in 13 Km - one we repaired, the other destroyed the sidewall. We reached the next city, with care, and to get appropriate tyres had to wait 3 days (they had to come from La Paz, and on the first attempt were reportedly offloaded from the 'bus to make room for more passengers). No problem for us - we were happy to spend 3 days in Sucre.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Great point - in Bolivia we had two tyre failures in 13 Km - one we repaired, the other destroyed the sidewall. We reached the next city, with care, and to get appropriate tyres had to wait 3 days (they had to come from La Paz, and on the first attempt were reportedly offloaded from the 'bus to make room for more passengers). No problem for us - we were happy to spend 3 days in Sucre.

Interesting you say that Alanymarce as that resonates with me deeply - our Alaska experience has convinced us that we would rather travel without a calendar limit specifically because of what you described. Those curveballs that adventure can throw at us, like getting stuck somewhere for a few days, are often some of the best parts of the experience. When the schedule is too tight, and we have to make allowances to keep on schedule, it also takes us away from having the opportunity to just sit somewhere and take in a space. That's not always possible for folks depending on their work/life commitments, but it's the goal for us.

So for our next trip -- less tires, more time

 

[Joe917]

3 extra days in Sucre, great! 3 days in Uyuni, not so much.