Snatch Straps

Gday,
I wouldn't worry too much about brand, just load rating, and be sensible......

4wd monthly did some testing on a stress bed years ago. Bottom line, just because it is expensive doesn't make it better. The super cheap 'terrain tamer' beat all comers back then if I recall correctly? As long as you aren't too far under or over an acceptable rating you won't go too far wrong.

It's not the expense or the rating per se. It's how u use it.
Just remember they can kill if used incorrectly.

I would stay to the tried and tested brands like ARB, TJM, Warn, just Straps and a few others.

We use Just Straps for all our recovery gear but don't use the snatch strap that much.... learnt not to get stuck and when to stop and back out.

As for rating, the rating system is a bit different to all other types of strapping, sure the rating forms part of the rated weight for safety but it also corresponds to the weight of the vehicle. So in this case smaller is better to a point.

Use a 15000 kg snatch strap on a Suzuki and chances are you will cause big damage and place extra load on the vehicles involved and get no where.

I still have an ARB which is over 20 yrs old it got a lot of use in it's early days but last year I was at Bunnings and found they had snatch straps in the rope section. I bought a 10,000kg Grunt snatch strap for about $39 so I have a spare it looks ok to me.

I will not use a strap that is obviously old. If it does not have the correct Trade practices information on it I will not use it .

Will never recover a person with a snatch strap that is more than 2.5 or 3 times the weight of the lightest vehicle, so a Jimny a 4 tonne strap, a Cruiser an 8 tonne strap. So an 11 tonne strap will not be connected to my vehicle, why? A kinetic strap need to be able to stretch for it to work correctly. To stretch a 11 tonne strap, the lightest vehicle would need to be between 3.6 and 4.4 tonnes. My 100 is 3.26 GVM.

If the bogged vehicle it has a trailer, disconnect the trailer, recover the vehicle then the trailer.

My view is if the bogged person cannot be bothered to carry the correct equipment and know how to use it, why should I put myself in danger?

There are enough videos on youtube to see it done right (and wrong), 4WD Clubs will teach you, if you don't want to join a club there are plenty of qualified and certified training organisations out there.,

John, any strap that carries the appropriate standards and product information is fine.

Wow, I just read your link to the trade practices note you attached. What a load of crap that was. The GVM rule is nothing better than a thumbnail dipped in tar. Using correct recovery calculations, it is entirely probable that a little Suzuki bogged to 2/3 it's own wheel depth is going to "weigh" well in excess of the landcruiser that's coming to effect a recovery. It is also entirely possible that the correct strap to use is an 11 tonne strap - remembering that the stupid number on the strap is it's guaranteed minimum breaking strain and has nothing to do with the forces required to extricate a partially mired vehicle. This notion that a bigger strap is going to damage a vehicle which has a lesser gvm is completely ridiculous, and if anything gives a false sense of security to heavier vehicle drivers who assume that somehow the steel in their recovery point is somehow stronger than a Suzuki drivers?
Documents such as the army's vehicle recovery ops
http://archive.org/stream/Fm20-22VehicleRecoveryOperations/Fm20-22VehicleRecoveryOperations_djvu.txt
Will instruct a person on firstly taking an educated guess at just how much your bogged Suzuki on a small incline actually weighs, and how to extricate the poor bloody thing safely.
There is NO standard covering snatch straps, they use industry invented rating terms (MBS and RLL) which are confusing at best, and the government is taking retrograde steps to educate to great unwashed in their use.

There is an awfull lot of absolute crap said, believed and posted about snatch straps and snatch recoveries.....there is also a lot of yob thinking involved with snatch recoveries.

The 4wd industry has gone to some significant lengths to formulate some pretty solid information on rating and using snatch straps.

There IS a compulsory standard for snatch straps enacted in legesaltion.

start here
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2010L01931

People are killed and badly injured every year in australia due to incorrect use of snatch straps.
Please get you information from a reliable source....preferably get some formal and acredited training.

Fisrt the strap used must be correctly rated for the vehicles involved.

Second the snatch strap must be the weakest part in the recovery chain....if anything breaks you want it to be the strap and not any other recovery components or parts of the vehicle to break.

Third you must use some sort of damper on the strap...some prefeer 2 dampers.

A tow ball should never be used for snatch recoveries.

then we get into some contentious detail.

Most vehicles a single recovery point will not be sufficiently strong......even with an 8 tonne breaking strain strap, many common recovery points will be found to be rated less than the strap.....one of the very popular aftermarket recovery points is rated at 10 000 pounds failure....that makes it arround 4.5 tonne.

Thus most vehicles should be using two recovery points with an equaliser strap.

Avoid shackles if at all possible, and definitely DO NOT use shackles to join straps.

IF shackles are to be used they should be rated lifting industry items.....lifting industry shackles are rated as "S.W.L. safe working load or more modern W.L.L. working load limit.....those ratings are required by law to have a minimum 4:1 safety factor.
for an 8 tonne strap, that requires a shaclke rated higher than 2 tonnes.....most use 3.2 tonne shackles.


If you want to read some more, start with the "Gregories 4WD survival guide" it is the text used by many of the acredited 4wd training courses.

As for the brand of strap....personally I prefeer Just Straps, because they are a quality product with the actual manufacturers name on it. Many of the other brands you have no idea who actually made the strap...that includes most of the " trusted 4wd brands"

cheers

Agree with another OP, the Bunnings snatch straps for around $40 are fine.

There's a 10,000kg and a 5,000kg from memory.
Here ya go . . .
Grunt brand 10,000kg 5,000kg SWL
Zenith brand 10,000kg 5,000kg SWL

There's also a Grunt brand 14,000kg with 10,000kg SWL

I think it is the SWL ratings you should be looking at.

At the very least, 4WDrs could perhaps carry one of the Grunt $40 ones in the packaging in their vehicles, when someone doesn't have the gear, this one should be used and they should buy it off you.
Doesn't hurt to have a second one on hand anyway, for longer snatches.

I have an Ironman 8,000kg one too, and all other gear I have is generally the Supercheap stuff (winch extension strap, tree protector, equaliser strap, shackles, and a couple of dampers.

Snatching is often a gentle helping hand where someone has just lost traction in mud or sand, more or less a gentle tow with slight weight on the strap to just assist out a vehicle.

Full on snatches are fairly rare, and in most cases a winch would be far better if anyone has one in a group of vehicles (most often the case).