Fire extinguisher

It is huge.They were donated with wall-mounted hooks for them- not much chop in a car. The last one came in very handy in remote pilbara so im not too keen to go down to the little car ones and a full height barrier stops me getting to the recovery gear in the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx. The _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx stop everything else coming loose.

Nice rig mate.

Having it standing up is too tall ontop of the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx- Im chasing something for it laying down. Ill check some of those joints out tomorrow though.

Cheers

Everything else is well secured in the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx or wedged in tight. It seems like the popular solution though.

I understand it's horses for courses. A friend of mine was injured in a collision. Basically stuff in the back came forward, and she was still in pain 10 years later.
I've always had a cargo barrier since then. Yes they can be a pain, but stuff flying around in an accident can be a bigger pain.

too right.
I was passenger in a mates rollover and a full toolbox landed next to my head- That prompted me to get the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx. I like the extra surface to mount things on with the cargo barrier, but its a last resort.

That's what I did with mine, I built a carpeted storage box that goes half way up between the headrest and the roof, that way you could always get someone to sqeese through if your back tailgate got jammed and you couldn't get to your gear. It also contains all the loose recovery gear/tools/spares etc so that they are not floating around and allows access from the front by just folding one of the back seats forward. None of my camping storage boxs or fridge/cooler can fit between the gap. So if your not after a cargo barrier there are other options, also I found cargo barriers very expensive.

I dont have a barrier - Only the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx.

The only times I have seen baskets being used (dozers etc) they rely on gravity, which put me off them. This unit you speak of sounds like it would be ideal- I am checking out a few fire mobs today on my lunch break.
Thanks

Dunc-
Headed to a fair few industrial suppliers and not one could help us. Managed to go buy the genuine article from Chubb Fire Safety, and it looks the same as you described. $65 and the thing weighs almost as much as the extinguisher. It certainly looks like its durable enough to cope with my abuse (made of steel bar about 10mm thick). might have to get bigger springs with the extra weight though!

cargo barrier eh...?

Buying 2 smaller ones is a good plan, and certainly what I will do after I have used this one, but since I have it im trying to save some cash for now.

With the back of the car hard up against a sand wall or something similar where you cant open the back doors to open the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx (has happened before in my last troopy) the only way to get at the gear is the come in from the top. A Cargo barrier, especially the ones bolted in from the behind the barrier stop you dead in your tracks. All your useful recovery gear is securely locked inside a little cell that no one can get into short of smashing a window.

Under the seats- Chokkas full of crap. Torch, Amp, inverter, CD stacker, maps, laptop.... not much room for a snatch strap.

This get a cargo barrier thing is getting on my nerves!
Cargo barriers may be fine if you have barn doors but if you have a system like the 4-runner/surf/100 series etc You open the tailgate from the inside. If the load falls/shifts and jams the handle on the inside you cannot open the tailgate unless you can shift the gear from the other side. Also with the surf/4runner the back window is electric. If it fails, you cannot wind the window down, you cannot get your hand to the handle you cannot open the tail gate.
Personally I don't want to be in the middle of nowhere to find that the cargo barrier is stopping me getting to my water tap, fridge/beer and food.

dear god! I totally neglected the beer! All i was concerned about was the recovery gear.
I obviously have much to learn

Yup, even I got that all mixed up.... Priorities it's so hard to get them in order sometimes. I should have put Fridge/Beer THEN water and food. ;-)

Jeff M (WA) wrote
"This get a cargo barrier thing is getting on my nerves!"

Well matey.... wait till everything else in the rear of ya truck is geting on ya nerves! Your Spinal Nerves!!!!!!! I kid you not!
:-)

Case #1 A friend of mine who is also a "fridgie" like me slammed his Hi-Ace into a tree..... tools and spare parts, oxy bottles, refrigerant bottles, etc etc... strewn down the road for 30 odd metres! Nothing hit him in the back of the scone though..... cargo barrier stopped it all.... I saw the pics and IMMEDIATELY had one installed in my "Misty Express"

Case #2. Our Nissan had a cargo barrier in it when we bought it. We contemplated taking it out, but basically I was too lazy, and we left it in. When SWMBO put the truck on it's roof, the cargo barrier left an imprint in the lining, proof that it had acted as a "roll cage" to stop the roof collapsing more.

Nowadays I wouldn't entertain the idea of NOT having one in a vehicle.... life's far too precious to risk serious injury for the sake of saving $400 on a barrier. You could always find a way of having access through the barrier in the event of window failure/door jamming.

BenSpoon is very lucky that the 9KG extinguisher didn't extinguish him!

Remember, this is just my opinion. I am NOT trying to stir the debate up here.
:-)

All fair points, but my question is to you that that some companies (my wifes company for instance) put cargo barriers in as a security measure so that gear in the back cannot be access from the front. If this is so, how the heck do you plan on getting through there? When it's loaded up??

Secondly, I was in a rollover in a 4wd many years ago. It was a little Early eighties Jackeroo with a Ply Tuckerbox and a large Willow Esky in the back. The car has 4 occupents, we were travelling at about 80km/hr when it happened.

Yes the car rolled 2.5 times
No the roof did not collapse.
Yes I got hit in the head. By the CB microphone. And it hurt.
No the cargo barrier wouldn't have stopped it.
Yes the esky and tucker box put big dents in the roof of the car.

I'm not saying there not a good idea, I'm just saying that this whole "GET A CARGO BARRIER BECAUSE THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE" attitude is a wearing a bit thin that's all.

I see what you are saying..... and it is a fair point. But BenSpoons 9kg fire extinguisher is a tad more lethal than a CB mic.

When SWMBO tipped the Patrol, it went drivers side, then kinda "lurched" over onto the roof.... The strength of the roof undoubtadly saved her, (she got out without a scratch) but the barrier definitely stopped any further damage!

I also agree that the barrier should be only used as a barrier to stop projectiles..... not as a security cage!

They actually have a custome made steel lockable draw system. It would make any of you guys using draw system jealous, it's pretty awsome, extremley bloody heavy though, they sag the BA falcons even with the heavy duty leaf spring pack. However the cargo barrier stops people smashing those little quarter windows in the back (the most expensive bloody window in the whole car) to get to the back of the wagon. They would serve as a pretty good security device if you can't access the vehicle through the rear windws (due to the storage box) as you can only unbolt the cargo barrier from the storage side. Hence the problem I could see if my window ever packed it in as life would be made pretty hard. With the box I've got now I'd probally have to get one of the kids to slide through into the back as my six pack is located a little lower than it should be and I wouldn't be able to get through there, but at least I could reach over and move some of the crap around if the gear was to jam the door handle.
When the Jack rolled the steel bullbar was the only thing that stopped us going end on end, the car rolled right up onto the front as it spun around and the bullbar curled and bent around the bonnet and the car kind of levered back onto it's side for the next roll. Hard to explain, but yeah it's a freaky thing... We were half way between Marble Bar and Port Headland, took about 2 hours for someone to find us. There was a pot whole about the same width as the Jack in the middle of the road and it was full of bulldust (disguesed). When the jack hit it it peeled one of the back tyres off and launched the car into the air, when it landed it skidded all over the road until it finally rolled up the side of the road and into the bush.

Guys interesting debate on the cargo barrier.
Consider this.

"How many times is it likely that your back doors or windows malfunction and you are unable to open them".

"How many times have you found yourself against a sand wall or tree or other object and unable to open the rear doors".

In each I would believe that the likely hood of these things happening on a regular basis as very unlikely.

I do believe that you have a regular likely hood of some object being projected from the rear of the vehicle forward and perhaps making contact with your children or yourself as you tend to use your brakes on most vehicles fairly regularly. (Sometimes even quite hard)

This means that the risk of injury is certainly higher than being unable to open or access the rear of the vehicle.

We as 4 wheel drivers tend to stack more stuff higher in the rear (even on top of our drawer systems) and so increase the risk of something coming forward more than most others.

This thread speaks of 16.5 kg fire extinguishers and tool boxes coming forward and you still don't think you need a barrier after such first hand experience.

Buy a cargo barrier the preventative protection outweighs the minor inconvenience.

Q."How many times is it likely that your back doors or windows malfunction and you are unable to open them".

A. On a 4wd, an electric window failing is a very common occurance, with vibrations, dust etc etc etc.

No I don't stack things on top of my storage box (pillows excepted) as there is not enough space. The box is very tall and mounted to the chasis and the sides of the vehicle. As stated, there are other alternatives.

If the 16.5kg fire extinguisher was securly mounted, it would have come flying in the first place. I belive the question asked in the post was how to secure the fire extingusher, not how to reck a cargo barier by having somthing that heavy fly into it.

FYI Most cargo barriers I've seen have a load rating of 150kg. How much force does a 9.5kg fire extinguisher have when it flying through your vehicle at speed?

Member - John (Vic).... firstly, FWIW, I agree with you, however, Jeff isn't saying NOT to have a cargo barrier, he is saying "is there another way?"

Obviously a barrier won't suit his needs, and perhaps some other peoples needs, so why not try to come up with another method? And you know the old saying.... necessity is the mother of invention.

Cheers

Thanks Brian, well said. Actually your right too, as I designed a very bizzare storage box that work brilliantly on so many levels because of the problem I was faced. John, I will take some photo's for you and post them so you can see what I'm talking about.

Of course I understand that there may always be a circumstance were a cargo barrier may not be an option for some, But I would think that would be a very small percentage of situations / vehicles.
Jeff yours may well be one of those but most 4 wd's don't have electric rear windows.

I hummed and thought long and hard about fitting one to my Troopy for all the reasons you guys mention, in the end the preventative measure outweighed any inconvenience.

I could not live with myself if one of my kids was hurt by a flying object that was preventable by the fitting of a barrier.

In the end I hope none of us finds out whether we needed one or not.

Here you are, take a look at this. I'm really sorry about the crappy photo's, I use my Video Camera for Digi Photo's and it has no flash, it was dark by the time I got home.

Surf Storage Box

You can see the water tank under the box, you can see how all the recovery gear is stored in the box with tools, first aid etc etc. As anyone knows whos ever owned a car with a tailgate, unless you have go-go-gadget arms you can't reach the front of the wagon space with the tailgate down, so all of the gear is accessed by folding one or the other of the rear seats forward and lifting the flap. It also give you a nice flush flat surface to stack the pcitured blue plastic tubs, which fit in snug in the back against the roof (preventing the lids from comming off) and they CANNOT physically fit between the gap so they can't fly forward into the passenger area. I hope it all makes sense, as I said the photo's are very bad. Ok it may not be a cargo barrier, but it works and works well for normal rough off road driving, hopfully I will never have to test it for anything more than that but it is mounted very securly at the bottom and at the sides.

Good call!
I thought it wouldnt be strong enough but I've just found some high pressure long haul poly out back of work that seems ideal. Just gotta find an angle grinder to cut the stuff. What clamp have you got? what material/ how is it fixed?

So true re cheap plastic brackets. We had cause to discharge our campertrailer 1kg extuingisher recently and I'm having a devil of a time trying to buy a replacement extinguisher to fit the existing metal bracket and yet I don't want to replace this good, proven bracket with one of the crappy plastic ones. The old extinguisher could have been refilled but at higher cost than a new one and I couldn't get it done locally so this option involved a lot of stuffing around. I thought it better to just replace it and threw the discharged extinguisher out. Big mistake!

:o) Melissa

Prior to getting the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx thats how I had it- tied upright with a quick release knot on it. Now that the _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx are in it is too tall to store upright and still be able to remove it quickly.

As for the motorbike jumps, I get bored driving up and down the standard washouts and hills- the Eastern Goldfields is flat country.

With your padlock- watch it after it ages a bit. Combo locks are pretty easy to crack when all the unused keys jam up and only the correct combination keys are free.
I've got the spare wheels on the back, so theres not a hell of a lot of room left there now.

You're not looking and mounting pram hooks on there, are you?

Cheers flappa
Not quite strong enough im afraid- even the genuine snap-lock stuff that will hold an elephant to a wall.
Theres a little sticker on the unit that says it weighs 16.85kg when charged... a bit too heavy for velcro, and even if i did get industrial stuff strong enough, getting it out when needed would be a pig.

The stuff certainly has come in useful everywhere else in the car though: RF mics, gps cradle, handsfree phone mic, tweeters, cable management and of course the lucky buddah on the dash.

Didn't know they were THAT heavy . . . fair enough.

Gotta admit , I just assumed 9kg , meant 9kg , not 9 kg of fire stuff PLUS extinguisher.

Brilliant!
It sure would be strong enough.
im regretting buying that big bracket now- An old seatbelt would have solved it for a fraction of the price. Add maybe a piece of angle at the base to stop it sliding out...
Gotta find a new cumbersome object for the boot now so I can use this idea somewhere.
Cheers