What's your dune climbing technique?

[Cuppa]

Great question Cuppa and jealous as you're both out there amongst our great big land mate! Being a Mexican mountain man myself with a heavy ute too intrigues me this thread. Our weights in sand versus arse end safe/trouble free PSi must have some consideration I imagine. As ET kindly mentioned of student deflation footprint displays at varying PSi's I'm thinking heavy rigs versus tall tyres and safe rim sizes could matter too? Would be cool to have a rough guided percentage of footprint over tyre versus varying load PSi I guess, even sounds difficult typing that wacky theory, lol :-)

The weight of a laden ute does affect the footprint, & recommended pressures are, I suspect mainly for wagons & possibly less weight. Even for road/dirt road driving I am yet to pick perfect pressures. Since leaving home I have gradually reduced pressures from what I started out with. I know the 'rule of thumb' for pressures in LT tyres is a 6 psi increase from cold to hot, but have been unable to achieve this in the temperatures we've been driving in. Mainly I get a pressure increase of around 10 psi regardless of the cold pressure, we have been driving slow though. Rarely above 80kph & often less on bitumen, & 40 to 60 on dirt. 40 psi rear & 30psi front seems ok on dirt. (cold) 4 or 5 psi higher for long sretches of bitumen. Bridgestone D697's 16" 265's.

Have to be a bit careful not to create too much sidewall bulge on the sharp quartz gravel used in these parts, already have one cut sidewall - not punctured & still holding. Was lucky. Copper in Boulia reckoned not to deflate at all.

For dunes the concensus of 18 psi or less all round - I would tend to translate as 18 front & maybe 22 to 24 rear (as per Old Wal's post) for our touring ute depending upon how full our tanks
are. But 'reading the sand' & adjusting to achieve a 'rolling stop' seems like excellent advice. I certainly failed to achieve a rolling stop & as ET suggested it felt hard on the transmission. I'll try the front diff lock another time too.

Off to Innaminka & then the Coongie Lakes - I gather there are dunes to cross there, albeit not 'Simpson sized" so will get a chance to experiment further.