Vehicle recovery gear and tips

Transient · Oct 4, 2023

vezePilot said:
Yes, Steve in AZ did that ... and I was surprised the tow hook bent. Our trucks are absolutely the lightest of factory-offroad full-size.
Low-cost Bottle Jacks can be useful, even Scissor jacks.

When a Hi-Lift starts to tilt over (see pic) you are really asking for trouble. Rory explains later, in the video of this screen grab, that he just touched that jack and it popped out from under that SUV. It was a good thing that the SUV also had a bottle jack supporting it.

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Are you talking about Rory from Fab Rats, or one of those YouTubers from southern Utah?

Speaking of Utah, I miss home. It's been a long time since I've been out there. Just moved to Pensacola, FL due to my wife getting orders.

SBE 2 · Oct 5, 2023

PHXPHOTOG said:
There are a couple of good threads going regarding winch builds. So I thought I would see if anyone is willing to contribute tips, tricks and tools for stuck vehicle recovery here. Having a winch on your vehicle is far from a get out of jail free card. I currently do not have one on my Trail Boss, I had one on an old CJ5 Jeep long ago. They are awesome but not always necessary. Many recoveries start with a shovel, I don’t leave home without one. I plan on adding a winch but have not done it yet.

I push this truck pretty hard off road and I am often alone when I do it. So I carry a lot of other recovery gear. This list is what I carry every time I leave the hardtop:

Hi-Lift Jack with winch kit. Hope like hell I never need the winch kit. It will only work in select situations and would be an ugly recovery. Poor substitute for the real thing.

Traction boards

Shovel

RhinoUSA 3” x 30’ static recovery strap

RhinoUSA 1” x 30’ Kinetic recovery rope

RhinoUSA receiver hitch shackle

RhinoUSA soft shackles and multiple hard shackles

3/8” by 25’ chain

(2) Harbor Freight 25’ tow straps, so cheap and dangerous that’s why I upgraded to RhinoUSA good stuff

Smitty Built high volume air compressor

Tire repair kit

Tool box

Out of all that stuff if I am doing a self-recovery the shovel and the traction boards are the most important. If there is another vehicle to assist the kinetic energy rope is the priority.

I have over 1,000 miles off road in the Trail Boss so far. I have not been stuck yet, this is my insurance package. This is my 5th 4wd vehicle. I have been stuck in other vehicles. Most often I find other people stuck and lend a hand.

Oh, what’s in the backpack? Fifty pounds of survival gear and a trauma kit. For those times when a self-recovery doesn’t work and I’m stuck in the wilderness.

Please share your own tips and gear. I would love to see what everyone is using.

Steve

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Man. PHX. What a set-up !! Will call you long distance to get me out of trouble !!

PHXPHOTOG · Oct 5, 2023

Transient said:
Are you talking about Rory from Fab Rats, or one of those YouTubers from southern Utah?

Speaking of Utah, I miss home. It's been a long time since I've been out there. Just moved to Pensacola, FL due to my wife getting orders.

Yes, the front tow hook bent dramatically when I put a hi-lift under it.

Transient, what part of Utah? I spent a lot of years there. Mostly in Park City.

SBE 2, The difference between my recovery gear in those pictures and now is much of it has been used. And it's better organized.

Gangly · Oct 5, 2023

vezePilot said:
(2) winch rings

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I've considered winch rings for double line pulls, but I have yet to commit to the purchase of one. Do you find yourself using them often, and if so, do you find one brand to be more serviceable than another?

PHXPHOTOG · Oct 5, 2023

JP20TB said:
Nice set up with that farm jack … I’ve wanted to purchase one just don’t know where would be a safe damage free area on our trucks as a lift point … maybe the rear hitch but up front ?

Here are 2 previous posts of mine with pictures using the high-lift. Some damage occurred both times.

Vehicle recovery gear and tips

There's only about 50 variations of Goodyear Wrangler tires out there. Half of them are garbage and others, not too bad to fairly good. It's interesting that now TB's can be optioned with the Goodyear TrailRunner A/Ts in place of the Duratracs. I guess there were too many complaints of noise...

www.trailboss.org

DuraTrac sidewall fail and bent recovery hook

So....you have heard the Duratracs have weak sidewalls....I didn't know that. I got 400 miles out of one of mine. New Trail Boss with 400 miles on it. Off road on easy trail outside of Sedona, AZ. There was some rocks but no big deal, it was not a rock garden. Right front went down so fast I...

www.trailboss.org

I run a receiver mounted skid plate when off road. It is worth its weight in gold to protect my departure angle. The curve in the middle is what happened when I used the hi lift to get the truck off the sand dune. I would do it again. Much better place for the jack then under the receiver hitch.

Steve

vezePilot · Oct 8, 2023

Transient said:
Are you talking about Rory from Fab Rats, or one of those YouTubers from southern Utah?

Speaking of Utah, I miss home. It's been a long time since I've been out there. Just moved to Pensacola, FL due to my wife getting orders.

Uh ... so Fab Rats isn't also just another YouTuber? Like, Paul is a serious ... uh ... something or other?
I guess I might need Paul's help sometime, maybe ... if I hadn't now learned to weld, rounding out my own fabrication skills.

Rory Irish runs Trail Mater, and is just another YouTuber ... off road wrecker, rock crawling dirtbilly superstar. In Moab. DBA Moab Motorsports.
I was out in Grand Junction this week, and drove over to Moab to visit the Trail Mater crew. But I should have called, as they were on vacation.

vezePilot · Oct 10, 2023

mrcolieman said:
This thread got me thinking... So of course I consulted the University of YouTube and got a few ideas.

Today I made a 12" extension, that slides over the nose of my farm jack, out of a scrap piece of 2"x3" square tube 3/16" thick that attaches with a hitch pin. I added a cleat at the end allowing the jack to be used on the pinch seam of the body, on the edge of a bumper, bumper tube or rock slider etc... ... More to follow!

Yup, gonna have to make one of these jack Adapters for myself. Have I ever mentioned how great it is to know how to weld?

vezePilot · Oct 10, 2023

Gangly said:
I've considered winch rings for double line pulls, but I have yet to commit to the purchase of one. Do you find yourself using them often, and if so, do you find one brand to be more serviceable than another?

I've used the Winch Rings, but not as often as I should have. While gaining experience in recoveries, we have used single-line pulls when we should have rigged Double-line pulls, or even Triple-Line. So far I have not noticed any difference in brands. The Factor 55 rope-retention ones are neat ... but expensive.

vezePilot · Oct 11, 2023

I have some catching up to do. This is a small project that I did a coupla months ago, and I searched to be sure I had not posted these pics previously. I call it simply a Rope Lock, and it is my rendition of the Safe-Xtract X-Lock device. This thing is used for several riggings, primarily to take up slack rope when we have pulled most of the rope off a winch in order to get maximum pull force from the winch.

Safe-Xtract ® | Defining Vehicle Recovery Standards

Safe-Xtract ® is an industry leader in Vehicle Recovery education and innovation, based in New Mexico, USA. Their vehicle experience ranges broadly from two wheels up to regular size SUVs and pick-ups, to larger military and civilian vehicles. They have extensive expertise in the engineering and...

www.safe-xtract.com

I made it out of the original Anti-sway Torsion bars from my Corvette, after replacing with the Z51 bars. It is actually steel tubing, with an OD of about an inch and wall thickness of nearly 1/4 inch. Here is the device loaded with something like 10,000 - 12,000 lbs. when I did a Double-Line pull with my winch. All of the materials and items for this test pull were rated at 20,000 lbs Min. Breaking Strength or greater. This means gnarly 3/4 inch Soft Shackles.

and later I painted it red.

.

vezePilot · Oct 13, 2023

Reorganizing Recovery Gear to free up the Bed is working out great. I am able to discard TWO of the tubs I was using, and the remaining are still not too heavy.
Also, I found that it's not "either-or" for the Storage Straps on the Pax side: I can fit both the Hi-Lift Jack and the Big Kinetic rope there.

(it's likely I will find that I need to double-up on those Quick Fist gear Straps supporting the Jack and the Rope. Offroad can get rough.)

Other items that were in tubs are now also tied to the sides.

The boards still fit over the Jack:

And I only need Two tubs for everything else. Well, besides the four individual tubs for the full set of Chains.
And this doesn't include the chain saw. Or the extra fuel and water jugs. Or the exterior job-site lights. Or the survival gear pack ...

Good thing it's a truck.

Transient · Oct 22, 2023

PHXPHOTOG said:
Yes, the front tow hook bent dramatically when I put a hi-lift under it.

Transient, what part of Utah? I spent a lot of years there. Mostly in Park City.

SBE 2, The difference between my recovery gear in those pictures and now is much of it has been used. And it's better organized.

I'm from Salt Lake, specifically the Holladay and Cottonwood Heights area. Last job I had out there was Park City Public Works.

vezePilot · Jan 10, 2024

I finally got around to finding a calculation for the Force a truck might apply when using a Kinetic Rope.
Kinetic Energy is equal to (Mass divided by Two) times (Velocity Squared). So, (m/2)*(v^2). I'm using pounds, foot-pounds and Feet per Second.

The recommended speed to pull away with a Kinetic Rope is between 2 and 5 MPH, which is 3 to 7.5 feet per second.
My truck weighs about 5,500 lbs when loaded for Recovery work. And we'll use 4 MPH for this example.

Therefore, (5,500lbs/2) * (5.5fps^2) = 83,187 ft-lbs of kinetic energy (force). EIGHTY-THREE THOUSAND POUNDS !!

It's a good thing that the rope absorbs some of this energy, and does not apply the rest rapidly.
Because NONE of the other components (soft shackles, D-rings) can withstand that level of force.

(edited)
AND, typical Kinetic Ropes will Stretch as much as 4 feet. So ... we would divide the force by that much ... cuz it's lbs over some number of feet?
(not just one foot ... ?) Resulting in an overall force of perhaps 20,000 lbs over the distance the rope stretches ... ?

Am I doing this calculation correctly?

footnote: The amount that a kinetic rope might stretch in use was taken from the Project Farm episode where this was tested.