What Tyres work in Namibia dunes

[Peter Connan]

JG is the other 10% the 4.8 engine?

[Mammoth]

I wonder if the other 10% is not an interface phenomenon...? It is speculated that the interface between the headrest and the steering wheel has a huge effect.

[ricster]

Ha ha...yeah... very true !!

Thanks Christo for the pic. Its been a bit wild at work... with e-mail and internet being down for 2 weeks....for a business.... VIVA TELKOM...

[ricster]

Ok... silly question.... What is the better option.

Get steel 15" or 16" rims for the KL71's..... or .... get alloy mags (15" or 16") for the KL71's.

What are the advantages/disadvantages. I have heard that the steels are better for 4x4ing as they flex better and can be repaired in the bush with a good hammering should they get bent.....

[Peter Connan]

Hi Cedric
This is a can of worms you have opened now...

I have had 4 steel rims crack where the web meets the rim. This was an acknowleded weak point on the rim design used for the Y60, to the point that Nissan will apparently still replace them free of charge, even though the cars are long out of warranty now. The design of the rim was comprehensively improved for the Y61, and these are probably fine. But the Smith's white wheels, which are the only non-agent steel rims available are of the same (bad) design as the factory Y60 wheels, although they are made of thicker steel. They have a lot off off-set though, which makes life difficult for your wheel bearings.

However steel rims still need periodic maintenance to prevent them rusting, and to do this properly means that the tires must be dismounted, which is bad for the beads.

Yes, they can be hammered back into some form of shape, but how often have you bent a rim on a large-section tire like the ones we are discussing here? And anyway, a bush-repaired rim will probably be badly out of balance, and if you have bent it you will probably have to throw it away when you get home, because there is virtually nobody left who can actually get it straight again, whereas mag wheel repairers are a dime a dozen in the cities.

Personally, I use mags, as I beleive they have less issues.

Cheers
Peter

[ricster]

.... can of worms are good i suppose....ha ha

Interesting reading !!! I had no idea there were "issues" with the steel rims. I hope there is some more replies to this, as it would be interesting to see the different viewpoints..... oh dear better bring the fishing rod, cause there are going to be plenty worms wriggling out of that can.

[ChristoSlang]

I bent two rims on the left-hand side of my old Sani roughly ten years ago. We hit a pothole on the narrow, dodgy tar road between Tofu and Inhambane and it bent the rims so badly that the tyres deflated.

Inhambane (despite being the capital city of the province) had no mag wheel repair places, but they did have a repair shop where a bloke with a large hammer and half an hour's patience d0nn3red the rim back into shape. He stood on the rim, swung the hammer overhead and brought it down between his legs, moving himself & the tyre a half a foot back every time. When the rim met up with the tyre again, he inflated it and poured water over it. Wherever he spotted bubbles, he hammered the rim some more. When there were no more bubbles to be seen, he did the same to the other rim...

It cost the equivalent of a case of beer, took about half an hour and did not result in any perceivable wobble/shake/shimmy. Maybe he just knew what he was doing? Any way, my brother in law bought the Sani from me and still drives it today (same rims, many kilometers later). He's never complained about a wobble either. Maybe high profile tyres hide rim deformities better than low profiles tyres do?

Flip side of the coin: I lost a bolt in the left rear brake caliper end of last year at Bosvark. It caused the caliper to scrape along the inside of Chuck's alloy rim, causing extensive damage. I kept losing pressure in the tyre after replacing the caliper, and eventually found that the rim had been pierced through and was leaking! Alloy rims may be light, but it seems that they're soft too... The repair bill came to R750 for welding, balancing & painting. Not to mention that it took five days and would have been impossible to perform anywhere in the bundu.

Leaky rim.jpg (93.8 KiB) Viewed 1684 times

I definitely know where my vote would go!

[ChristoSlang]

Oops... forgot the most important picture

can-of-worms.jpg (72.6 KiB) Viewed 1683 times

[JG Shields]

Indeed an interesting debate. One of the control tests I usually run for myself, taking into consideration my lack of theoretical knowledge is: WHAT DOES THE MILITARY AND THE FARMERS USE???? AND WHY???? What practical tests have they concluded over many years which we often do not even know of? This does not only apply for rims and tyres, but so many other components.

Africa....steel rims. Christo's example is a good one. Yes Christo, that was not the first time your Inhambane man repaired a damaged steel rim with very little equipment to his disposal. In 1997 I had to repair a manual gearbox gearlever in Inhambane at the only "sort of" workshop at the time. Eventually we ended up giving the owner/mechanic of the repair shop welding lessons. He had a welder but did not know how to use it.

[Peter Connan]

Janee

Just like steel rims, some mag designs are better than others, but it is not always easy to see which is which. I have hit some pretty severe potholes with the A-Line mags currently on my Patrol (the road to Secunda after the rains) and the balancing machine says they are still straight. And I once lost a steel rim when studs broke. The web broke out entirely, and there was no chance to repair that wheel either. that was on the road, in a 1969 Lotus Europa I used to own.

Keep the worm coming...