I've been considering buying new AT tires for this trip. With the cost of new tires I decided to take another look at my normal everyday tires that I've had on the hybrid for the past 7~8 years. The BFG MT's still have plenty of life in them, with a tread depth of over 11mm on each tire. They have been great tires so far and their road manners is predicable but in the rain they are less impressive. Searching the internet I've found that many have had high praise for sipping the MT's so I bought a tire grooving tool on which you could flip the cutting blade so that it sipes the rubber. In all it took approx an hour per tire to sipe every thread block at a depth of approx 6mm.

I've driven with the sipped tires for 4 weeks and I have noticed an improvement in grip, especially in the rain. The landy feels more planted and with the tires recently balanced it tracks perfectly.

With a cooler in the back of the landy which will be running 24/7 I've been looking at solar panels to help keep a charge when we are camping wild or gone from the landy for the day hiking. I've settles on a 80 watt panel that will be connected to a 30 Amp Solar Charge Controller. It'll be placed just behind the front hoop from the roll cage securely mounted at each corner. The solar panel is lower that the roll cage pipe so I'm hoping that there will be no increase wind noise. The charge controller will be mounted as close as possible to the battery as per recommendations that I've read.