Recovery Gear: Ongoing Discussion and Reviews

Dave said:
Would you use this to recover your vehicle?

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No.

Looking at the rust, those are two different metals (is the hook stainless?) - I don't think the weld penetrated sufficiently, and will be brittle and weak. Really unsafe in a snatch type pull.

Also, the surface rust is a little disconcerting.

And, the bolts attaching the plate to the bumper(?) are way undersized.

It's not even pretty....
 
Dave said:
Would you use this to recover your vehicle?

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Do I know where the hook came from and it's rating?
Do I know the welder and what's their skill level? Could they tell me if the base plate material and hook could/should be welded? Could they weld Inconel and have it pass x-ray scans or is the grinder their best friend?
Do I know the shear strength of the bolts holding it to the plate on the bumper?
What's underneath it? Does it tie into the frame somehow or is there just air and hope?
 
Greg said:
Do I know where the hook came from and it's rating?
Do I know the welder and what's their skill level? Could they tell me if the base plate material and hook could/should be welded? Could they weld Inconel and have it pass x-ray scans or is the grinder their best friend?
Do I know the shear strength of the bolts holding it to the plate on the bumper?
What's underneath it? Does it tie into the frame somehow or is there just air and hope?
Click to expand...

Rating: Hopes and Dreams.
Welder: Yes.
Metal type: Yes.
Frame attachment: Yes, including a hope and a dream.

In all seriousness, that looks sketchy af. Although as a last ditch effort, yeah I might maybe probably will think about starting to think about using it.
 
Fun fact....
a 60K WLL dynamic rope can break the sound barrier when the soft shackles fail (2x 15K ones)... sounds like an giant sized India jones whip..

Snatching large tree stumps out of a creek with a medium sized skid steer and aforementioned Dynamic rope squarely falls under the "Do not try this at home" warning label...
 
rlynch356 said:
Fun fact....
a 60K WLL dynamic rope can break the sound barrier when the soft shackles fail (2x 15K ones)... sounds like an giant sized India jones whip..

Snatching large tree stumps out of a creek with a medium sized skid steer and aforementioned Dynamic rope squarely falls under the "Do not try this at home" warning label...
Click to expand...

:pics
 
haha.. yeah didn't get any of the action.. was actively trying not to umm.. die..
<insert don't do this at home!!! Comment....>

pics...
the skid steer, putting logs on our bonfire..
what 2 soft shackles look like after one catches an edge on it and fails, and kills the other one under load.. basically everything was rigged to avoid that but.... apparently not what happened under load.

A bit of a lesson there..

I do have a short vid of the setup with 2 winches to get the stump in position to snatch it out, but way too big for the forum.
We effectively rolled it out of the creek via dynamic action, once we had it in position which took a while, inching this massive stump out of the mud suction and digging out a ramp to roll it up. It was way too water logged to drag it out even with 2x 9,000lbs winches...

Took a couple of tries to snatch it and using some under-rated bow shackles after the soft ones failed.. it got way sketchy..


For the first snatch, we were maybe 80' away at the 90 degree side of the action.... one of the broken soft shackles fell behind me after they let go, thats how far they flew to the side.

Then we had to move to hard shackles, which were just the normal Green Pins.. we moved further back and behind the trucks.

The C4RS dynamic held up fine.. but both Green pins were toast, the eyes on both were visibility stretched.

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The past few years training has been hard on my Maxtrax. The traction teeth have melted off two of the 4. Maxtrax makes replacement teeth for the extreme boards and figured these were no longer under warranty so I would try to get a little more life out of them.

I first cut the melted plastic off with a oscillating tool, then filed flat, center punched and drilled a pilot hole, then drilled a 9/16" hole. Next I pushed the extreme traction tooth in and threaded them in with a torx bit.

This is not an approved repair by Maxtrax, used car buyer beware your mileage may vary! I will report back as to how durable this repair is. If you'd like to see videos go over to my social media, Instagram backroad4wdtraining


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I debated with using nylocks and bolts because as you know I am a cheap ass. But tires will suffer rather than the boards.

Ill be following the popper fix.
 
java230 said:
I debated with using nylocks and bolts because as you know I am a cheap ass. But tires will suffer rather than the boards.

Ill be following the popper fix.
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The bolts were the concern for tires. At least these are aluminum and hope they fail before damaging tires.
 
WashingtonTaco said:
Kaon's video was the one that gave me the idea to try this. The teeth they use are not Maxtrax teeth.
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No. They're not (Maxtrax teeth). They look like they'd have the same issue as nylocks and bolts tearing into the tire when the wheel spins. Just more expensive.
 
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