Punctures
 

I've been dragging 2 spare wheels round on my series landrover for the last 5 years (including Cape Town to Ethiopia and trips from the UK to Libya/Algeria etc). I've never had a puncture so I am now thinking of just taking one spare on future trips. There has been nothing special about the tyres I've used (e.g. freeway crossply from Cape Town - Ethiopia). Would it be a dumb move to leave the additional spare behind? Have I just been lucky in the past with regards to punctures? How many punctures do you guys get on average during a month trip to the Sahara?

Richard,
When you discover that Murphy's law is no longer valid, I'd like to be the first one to know.

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Roman (UK)
www.polandrover.com

Murphy's Law of the Open Road:
When there is a very long road upon which there is a one-way bridge placed at random, and there are only two cars on that road, it follows that: (1) the two cars are going in opposite directions, and (2) they will always meet at the bridge.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.

Murphy's Law of Research
Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Murphy's Law of Copiers
The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.

The Murphy Philosophy
Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.
Quantization Revision of Murphy's Laws
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Roman's Law
Murphy was wildly optimistic

[This message has been edited by Richard Washington (edited 30 July 2001).]

Richard,

We seem to agree on most aspects of the matter (maybe with the exception of one precept: "All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door. " I know a better definition from my old army service days, but there are ladies in this forum, so I'd better not quote it).

So, continuing in the vein of scientific reasoning, you can safely assume that the following probability exists:

a) Two spare tyres > Not a single puncture
b) One spare tyre > One good tyre destroyed
c) No spare tyres > Two good tyres destroyed

The validity of Condition a)has been proven by numerous experiments. Condition c) occurs as a direct consequence of condition b), usually withing the space of 24 hrs.

QED!




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Roman (UK)
www.polandrover.com

Smith's Law: Murphy was an optimist!

Two more points:
1) so how many punctures do you guys get on average during a month in the Sahara?
2) I'll test Murphy out, take one spare this time, and let you know what happened after Christmas...

Some personal experience:

November 2000 - 2400 kms off road in the eastern Libyan Desert with three HZJ 75 Landcruisers:
one spare tyre per car, plus 2 spare outer and 6 inner tubes - result: 3 completely destroyed tyres, total 13 punctures, and yes, lots of fixing. (this with proper inflating on hard ground (except for one puncture when we were lazy), deflating on soft)

March 2001 - same trip with exactly the same cars (and save for the ruined ones, the same tyres), same spares but 10 inner tubes this time, total one ruined tyre, three punctures in all.

Moral: have more spares than you think you need http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/smile.gif

(It was a definitely unnerving feeling to put our last repairable inner tube into a tyre still 700kms out in the middle of nowhere)

Good luck & happy traveling

Hi Richard
To help you resolve your origin

Hi Richard
To help you resolve your origin...
Would you like the rest of my message?
(Don't know where the other bit went...)
To help you resolve your original query re spare tyres, here is my "Puncture History:"
Land Rover Ser 111 to Iraq, Afghanistan, India etc, 24,500 miles and NO punctures.
Land Rover Ser 111 to Mauritania, 4,500 miles and ONE puncture.
Range Rover to Hoggar and all parts of Algerian Sahara, 9,000 miles and NO punctures.
Was I lucky?
Perhaps, but I shall still carry around my usual two made-up spare tyres and spare tubes and valves on my next trip (November 01) to Libya with a Land Rover Discovery .
Happy travels Kitmax

I left Holland april 1999 for mongolia
and drove back tru kazachstan ,kyrgistan,
uzbekistan,russia,georgie,turkey,greece,italy back to holland with four new spare tires
no flats at all .
a month later i left for africa,with only two
no flats ,i sold the truck in gambia,and a month later i droved the truck back for the new owner who lived in norway,with only one spare tire.
two flat tires and one tire exploded.
note; driving with low presure and using inner tires,the inner tires get thin.