Wheels & Tyres
We use standard, genuine D4 wheels, powder coated in Gun metal grey, fitted with standard sized tyres 255/55 R19 - GoodYear Wrangler Duratrac and we can’t fault them. We´ve been using them over 4 years now, and they’ve never let us down. We carry two spare wheels as insurance for some very remote areas but we are glad we´ve never needed them. There was only one puncture from screw, and it happened in our village, not on trail.
Some people complain about weak sidewalls, wrong size for offroad, and noise. We are happy to say we haven’t experienced any of those problems. Yes, you need to be more mindful on some very challenging rock sections, but you should be with any other tyres anyway.
Our car weighs around 3 tons when fully loaded, but the Duratracs managed to carry that load without any issues or overheating even when aired down for gravel & rock trails and even lower for soft Saharan sand. (Yep, down low to 15psi with standard sized tyres). Also, when going to those amazing destinations we can’t avoid driving on motorways and tarmac roads, and we haven’t experienced any noise.
What helps?
1) Being sensible 2) Adjusting your driving style to conditions 3) Adjusting tyre pressures when necessary, don’t wait for too long 4) We are not using wheel spacers - so on trails, we don´t rub tyre sidewalls on the sides of ruts,. For example, in Morocco, most commonly used 4x4 is LC Prado - which has already narrower wheel track than standard Discovery 3/4 (around 3.5cm ), if you use 3cm wheel spacers, your track will be 9.5cm wider (than Prado), therefore, you will be scraping sides of any tracks created by commonly used vehicles, and you can expect more sidewalls damages.
Will we switch to 18” wheels? Potentially, may be for more challenging roads in Africa or South America but without spacers.
As we said many times, Land Rover’s air suspension is great on its own. Preventing vehicle from sagging when loaded plus ability to change the ride height depending on conditions and needs. Standard height for long motorway journeys getting abroad and higher ride height for rough terrain. But why not to use air suspension to its full potential. That’s why we installed aftermarket suspension controller - XLifter. (had it before on previous Discovery too)
Now we can raise or lower the vehicle beyond factory limits (-80mm/+125mm), without driving speed limit, and most importantly - we can easily level the car for comfortable sleeping with press of button without stacking rocks or maxtrax under the wheels. As a bonus we can monitor temperature of suspension’s air compressor and use other handy features.
Unmodified suspension, but better !
To protect our engine we installed front sump guard/skid plate with access hole to the front recovery point. It protects bottom of the engine from rocks and mud and also helps slide through the deep fesh fesh. Other skid plates and covers for transmision etc. we kept standard to save some weight.
We are not saying that rock sliders are “must haves”, but we all know how flimsy standard Discovery side steps are and how quickly they rust. So instead of replacing them with new ones, we swapped them with rock & tree sliders from Shire fabrications, which works great as steps too plus they protects our door sills and doors on sketchy trails. Sometimes we use them to break some bigger branches for fire wood when camping :-).
Another part we installed is RAI/snorchel. This type is normally only raised air intake but we completely sealed it so it is working as snorchel now. To be honest, we are not seeking deep river crossings or mudholes just for fun, but it is nice to know that if we will have to cross them, we are safe. Meanwhile it also dramaticaly reduces the amount of fine dust entering the air box with air filter - so it is not getting clogged even in desert sand storms.
On both front & rear lights we have genuine light guards. Yes, they are plastic, but they do help to move smaller branches and bushes away before scratching or breaking the lights and they also look good.
More detailed pictures here.
Vehicle protection - rocks, water, branches…
