Cooper Discoverer Sure Trac (S/T) - Driver Report

Stuart & Jeane Russell

G’Day Bob,

I’m sure you’ll be interested in our experience with Cooper Tyres. Based on your advice, we purchased six of the then newly released Cooper Sure Trac tyres for our Jackaroo as part of our preparation for our trip to Cape York with Duncan’s Off Road in September 2001.

The S/T’s were actually cheaper than replacing the original equipment tyres. At Cape York we were often amazed by the amount of grip the S/T’s had on a variety of surfaces. Our first day included some relatively smooth but loose gravel. Driving by ‘feel’ rather than the speedo, I was surprised when I saw how quickly I was going through sweeping corners still feeling like the Jackaroo was glued to the road. As you know the trip includes the ’fun bits’ such as the Telegraph Track, Frenchman’s Track, Maytown Track etc. But also many kilometre’s on the horrendous corrugations, sharp rocks, blind corners & dust of the main developmental road. At major steep and/or slippery obstacles other vehicles often ran out of grip so needed to resort to momentum whereas the Jackaroo with the Cooper S/T’s usually ‘walked through’ with a minimum of throttle.

We were so impressed with the Cooper Sure Trac’s that we took them off the Jackaroo when we traded it in. We then fitted the Coopers to our new Toyota Prado Turbo-Diesel for our six-month round Australia trip in 2002.

We did almost 38,000 km in the six months towing a heavy-duty off-road camper trailer. About 10,000 km of this was on gravel. Major tracks included: Gulf of Carpentaria ‘Top Road’, MacDonnell Ranges around Alice Springs, Gibb River and Kalumburu Roads in the Kimberlies, Oodnadatta Track, Flinders Ranges, Grampians & Victorian High Country.

Duncan’s taught us about running appropriate tyre pressures and ‘reading the road’ to avoid sharp objects. At Cape York we ran 26 psi in the lightly laden Jackaroo. In the Prado towing the trailer we ran 28 psi when on gravel and 38 psi on the bitumen.

In all of this we have not had any punctures!

Allowing for rotation, each of the tyres has now done about 40,000 km over a lot of rough terrain. They still have between 40 – 50% tread remaining, so there are plenty more adventures left in them yet!

The Cooper S/T’s also have good grip on wet bitumen (often this is a problem with other off road tyres).

Perhaps the only drawback is more tyre noise on smooth bitumen when compared to ‘highway’ tyres. Given the outstanding performance and durability of the Cooper S/T’s, this is a small price to pay.

Stuart & Jeane Russell
Moffat Beach