Offroad-Express

I took my vitara out on its first beach trip last weekend on the new Kumho KL71's, and without a compressor i had to leave the tyres fully inflated. Overall no complaints other than those babys want to DIG.

What im thinking of doing is taking my 15 x 7 wheels with 235/75/15's off and leaving those for the mud and putting a cheap set of tyres on the factory 16's which i can use for day to day but also go well in the sand.

So having spent a fair bit on the KL71's im wanting to get something pretty cheap..... my question is.... are snow tyres pretty good in the sand ? They tend to be quite cheap compared to other types and I was just wondering what people think is a good option for the sand ?

proper snow tires are dangerous on hot tarseal if your driving on the road to the beach.
better of with road tread or AT's.

Essentially on sand the balder the better, bigger flatter surface areas are harder to push into the ground than something that is designed to rip and pull (mud/snow tires etc). As poster above said, snow tahs are dangerous on the road as they tend to heat up too much in our climate. A set of road leaning A/Ts might give you the best all round performace.

Why not just buy a half decent compressor. Seems the most cost effective solution to me...

Theres a reason snow tyres are cheap... say no to snow! pick a common size (cheaper) AT, it may be worth weighing up another set of 15in rims if the tyres are cheaper than a comparable 16in one in the same profile

Also I think snow tyres are cheap second hand because for a WOF they need to be 4mm min?

Just get a cheap set of AT's or ATR's. I have cooper ATR's on my zuk and they go really well on road, on sand etc. and have worn bloody well. Bit pricey though.

Get a compressor and let those KL71's down to 15 psi....
They go great in the sand all bagged out...

As said, "the balder the better". My bro in law used to pull a trailer with bins of fish (in the tonnes) off the beach north of Brisbane in the 70's.He had a F150 351 V8 with aircraft tyres! he said anything else would just dig holes.
Al

thanks , all good comments and i think the first thing ill look at getting as suggested is a good compressor so i can let the muds down, theres a few on trade me unless anyone can recommend something.

Just let the Muds down
As long as you take it easy on the road 15 psi on the road to the nearest servo will be fine