Recovery points
Submitted: Wednesday, Apr 21, 2004 at 11:28
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Hilly
When I had my 80 series, in order to fit the rated recovery hooks that can be bought in the "toy shops", I had to buy a couple of 60 or so mm angle brakets for a ridiculous amount of money. These were pre-drilled to fit the existing captive nuts that held the shipping tie down loops in place.
My questions are these.
Is the hook at the front of my GU a recovery point or simply a shipping tie down?
Is
the loop at the rear a recovery point? I can't see the sense of it not being one.
What have people put on their vehicles to replace the hook if it isn't rated?
Cheers in antipation of your responses,
Hilly
Reply By: Member - Roachie (SA) - Wednesday, Apr 21, 2004 at 12:09
Wednesday, Apr 21, 2004 at 12:09
Hilly,
I think you'll find that no manufacturer will swear by their hooks and guarantee them for recovery purposes. The reason is that they (manufacturer) can't govern what conditions you might be trying to recover from. As an extreme example, I saw a picture in the back inside cover of 4x4 Australia mag of a Rodeo on a beach (or rather "in" a beach). It was literally buried up to the window sills in sand; no joke. Now if the owner dug down at the front, a smallish hole, just enough to get a huge chain onto his so=called "ratedfactory recovery point" and got a D9 to pull on that chain, it'd be a fair bet that the recovery hook wouldn't be up to the job, eh?
However, in reality, I trust the recovery hook on the front on my GU, no worries. I have added another to the other side chassis rail in case I have a difficult recovery to perform and want to spread the load.
I used my hook at
easter when we were at
Coffin Bay and I had to winch Pesty's old 60 series out of the sand. Don't worry, it was only for demo purposes. I wanted to show some of our newer club members how a winch and snatch block worked and give them some tips on recovery points etc. Actually, Pesty had a lot of trouble getting his 60 bogged in the sand in the first place. Like some people I know; it just didn't want to go down (ie: into the sand!!!).
We then did a snatch recovery demo, this time using the back of my vehicle. I have replaced the Nissan rear plakky bumper with an Opp Lock H/Duty steel dual wheel carrier. Even if I hadn't, I don't think I'd like to use the "recovery" loop.....preferring to use the box section tow bar (with strap placed inside the box section and secured with the main pin).
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Roachie
AnswerID:
55292
Reply By: chrisfrd - Wednesday, Apr 21, 2004 at 12:47
Wednesday, Apr 21, 2004 at 12:47
I think you are getting into the area of "deminishing returns" when it comes to recovery points!!!
Take the GU Patrol. I always avoid forceful recoveries (that is I'm stuck badly or try to recover someone from a badly-stuck senario) using the front "recovery" point, as it is simply not up to my standards of safety!
I use the tow-bar of the truck, as it is bolted to no-less than 12 points on two chassis rails and the chassis-support bar above the fuel tank. Distribution of the load is the key factor in all of this...
If you hoik on a single chassis point, you could damage the chassis, crack the mounting point or have the mount break off, potentially killing somebody! I would rather use a combination of mounting points to the chassis and preferably a fault-tolerant mounting mechanism for the cable/strap interface, to prevent breakaways.
An example of that would be when winching up a
hill, to make things safer, you would use a diversified connection to the front of the truck, allowing for one mount to break and not have the truck roll uncontrollably back down the
hill!
When I have time for this, I will get an engineer to manufacture a mount, our of 10mm high-tensile steel with rated eyes and have it installed on the end of the chassis rails at a point where there are spare bolt holes in the bar. This would allow for it to be tucked up and out of the way and accessable when needed.
AnswerID:
55297