dhackney
Expedition Leader
Tom,
I think every point you make is valid.
I would also add one a friend emailed me after seeing the photos: "Never get underneath a vehicle that is supported only by a jack." Especially when buses and trucks are blasting by a meter or less away.
The crawling underneath and driving in the dark are both manifestations of adaptation and comfort. After a lot of tire changes, I got too casual about my process, especially related to basic safety.
After a lot of travel down here, we know for a fact it is not as dangerous as most people assume, so we didn't and don't consider it insane to drive after dark. Having said that, I agree with your strategy that it is best to make camp at least an hour before dark. If, for no other reason, that it removes a lot of stress from your day and gives you a chance to unwind before dinner, etc.
In our case, we were used to driving after dark in rural areas, which we've found safer than urban areas in all parts of the world. The Panamericana is a different place, and our level of comfort was unwarranted there, especially when devoid of local knowledge about conditions in specific areas.
To answer some of your questions:
1. Remaining tread. I didn't measure it, but I would term it "not much." Our former spares that we were running on the front still had plenty of tread, but were apparently out of round. We balanced them twice but still had a bad shake between 90-100kph. The rears and the spares were simply chewed up. Whatever tread that was left was badly cut, gouged, and beat up by Patagonia and the Peruvian chicken bus roads. In the end I believe every one of those six tires had at least one patch.
2. Tire strategy. In terms of strategy, we were attempting to finish up this section of South America and make it back down to Chile to pick up the 6 new Yokohamas we had shipped in there. Obviously, we didn't make it.
The end to that strategy came when Steph was cooking one evening while we were camped and the sidewall blew out of the driver's side outer duallie. On examination, it looked like driver error. The outside sidewall was scraped vertically, with a small cut about .75" / 19mm long visible on the outside and a split ~2" / 5cm long on the inside. My assumption is I hit a sharp curb corner or scraped up against something and flexed the sidewall beyond its capacity. From that point on, we knew we could not run on chicken bus roads, but would instead be restricted to asphalt until we replaced the tires.
I like your strategy of 12k purchases for trucks with all the same tread pattern/tire. For the reasons stated earlier in the thread, I chose to try a different tread on the front. We'll see how that works out.
Outside the U.S.A. the 742 Yokohamas are VERY difficult to obtain. We were forced to purchase them in the US, pay to ship them in, pay customs duties, etc. Consequently, for overseas travel your strategy would require significant market research as to availability in given countries, along with non-trivial assumptions about distance traveled and wear rates. Domestically, I think it is a winner.
3. Tire life. Because we carry around a significant percentage of the universe's known and unknown weight (we are responsible for all the missing mass of the universe attributed to "dark matter"), our tire life is significantly affected by road quality and surface. Areas such as Patagonia and non-tourist-trail rural areas, where we prefer to be, and their network of chicken bus roads cause very high wear rates, even at our low speeds.
Consequently, I cannot accurately predict a minimum or maximum tire life for our chassis. Given our experience, I would rate the Yokohamas good for ~20k miles / 32.2km of a mix of paved and unpaved roads with our chassis. We will have to see how the Goodyears hold up before we have any idea about their wear rate(s). After the first 10 miles they still look great.
I completely agree with your assessment about squeezing out a few hundred more miles of tire life vs. the inconvenience and potential danger of used-up tires. That is the reason I shipped in the set of new Yokohamas before we left central Chile five months ago. Unfortunately, our resulting travel/route precluded installing those tires before these reached the end of their service life.
******
Bottom line, this tire experience is very similar to our buildup experience. Yet another example of "Do as I say, not as I did."
I think every point you make is valid.
I would also add one a friend emailed me after seeing the photos: "Never get underneath a vehicle that is supported only by a jack." Especially when buses and trucks are blasting by a meter or less away.
The crawling underneath and driving in the dark are both manifestations of adaptation and comfort. After a lot of tire changes, I got too casual about my process, especially related to basic safety.
After a lot of travel down here, we know for a fact it is not as dangerous as most people assume, so we didn't and don't consider it insane to drive after dark. Having said that, I agree with your strategy that it is best to make camp at least an hour before dark. If, for no other reason, that it removes a lot of stress from your day and gives you a chance to unwind before dinner, etc.
In our case, we were used to driving after dark in rural areas, which we've found safer than urban areas in all parts of the world. The Panamericana is a different place, and our level of comfort was unwarranted there, especially when devoid of local knowledge about conditions in specific areas.
To answer some of your questions:
1. Remaining tread. I didn't measure it, but I would term it "not much." Our former spares that we were running on the front still had plenty of tread, but were apparently out of round. We balanced them twice but still had a bad shake between 90-100kph. The rears and the spares were simply chewed up. Whatever tread that was left was badly cut, gouged, and beat up by Patagonia and the Peruvian chicken bus roads. In the end I believe every one of those six tires had at least one patch.
2. Tire strategy. In terms of strategy, we were attempting to finish up this section of South America and make it back down to Chile to pick up the 6 new Yokohamas we had shipped in there. Obviously, we didn't make it.
The end to that strategy came when Steph was cooking one evening while we were camped and the sidewall blew out of the driver's side outer duallie. On examination, it looked like driver error. The outside sidewall was scraped vertically, with a small cut about .75" / 19mm long visible on the outside and a split ~2" / 5cm long on the inside. My assumption is I hit a sharp curb corner or scraped up against something and flexed the sidewall beyond its capacity. From that point on, we knew we could not run on chicken bus roads, but would instead be restricted to asphalt until we replaced the tires.
I like your strategy of 12k purchases for trucks with all the same tread pattern/tire. For the reasons stated earlier in the thread, I chose to try a different tread on the front. We'll see how that works out.
Outside the U.S.A. the 742 Yokohamas are VERY difficult to obtain. We were forced to purchase them in the US, pay to ship them in, pay customs duties, etc. Consequently, for overseas travel your strategy would require significant market research as to availability in given countries, along with non-trivial assumptions about distance traveled and wear rates. Domestically, I think it is a winner.
3. Tire life. Because we carry around a significant percentage of the universe's known and unknown weight (we are responsible for all the missing mass of the universe attributed to "dark matter"), our tire life is significantly affected by road quality and surface. Areas such as Patagonia and non-tourist-trail rural areas, where we prefer to be, and their network of chicken bus roads cause very high wear rates, even at our low speeds.
Consequently, I cannot accurately predict a minimum or maximum tire life for our chassis. Given our experience, I would rate the Yokohamas good for ~20k miles / 32.2km of a mix of paved and unpaved roads with our chassis. We will have to see how the Goodyears hold up before we have any idea about their wear rate(s). After the first 10 miles they still look great.
I completely agree with your assessment about squeezing out a few hundred more miles of tire life vs. the inconvenience and potential danger of used-up tires. That is the reason I shipped in the set of new Yokohamas before we left central Chile five months ago. Unfortunately, our resulting travel/route precluded installing those tires before these reached the end of their service life.
******
Bottom line, this tire experience is very similar to our buildup experience. Yet another example of "Do as I say, not as I did."
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