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I have mixed feelings about this..... On the tow ball test video that is often sighted. The amount of abuse the original tow hitch and ball takes is AMAZING. I'd love to see a similar 'approved' recovery point take similar abuse without failing. My gut feeling is that if you abuse ANY...

I'll also concur with this, I think people are WAY to worried about this stuff with synthetic line and we are getting into urban myth territory. I have line on my old flatty that is 10 years old now. I've purposely abused it to try and find the limits, and I have still haven't had a failure...

The best thing about the Jeep body style is the modular panels. Hard or soft, you can replace the top, windshield frame, etc if you happen to bonk something or flop it. For me, this gives it a clear advantage over to the 1-piece SUV style body tubs.

If I had to start over, I would go with a JLU Sport with the Diesel package. You get the heavy duty automatic, a normal ratio t-case ( which I think works better with the 8-spd automatic ), and the larger Dana 44 front and rear axles. That gets you most of the way to the Rubicon package for...

I am pondering if we are fundamentally over-rigging vehicle recoveries because of bleed over from overly stringent overhead lifting requirements. What makes a "4.75 ton" shackle the correct answer? The 'problems' being solved are weight, cost, storage volume, complexity, fatigue on the...

This is where it feels we are heading..... When was the last time you saw a catastrophic failure of a hard shackle....of any normal or even under-size unit? For me, the amount of heavy steel gear people are throwing around is worrisome. I think using larger recovery gear is giving people a...

At what point are we over-rigging things? I can't see needing a 3/4-7/8 shackle on anything in my 3k-7k vehicle stable. I've been taking a hard look at if overhead lifting FoS factors are creating more issues than they are solving in the off-road recovery market. I haven't seen a single recovery...

Looks like my soft shackles are 10-20 less than the Warn Epic units. I'm not a fan of the hard inner corners on the Warn units. I think they missed the mark there.

I would recommend something on the lighter side since it is a portable winch that will likely be stored inside and moved around when the vehicle is already stuck. Don't hurt yourself trying to get the vehicle out. I would honestly consider something like a 5K UTV, or a short drum 6-8K, winch...

I've always liked this idea in theory, but hated it in practice. Moving the winch, especially when the vehicle is stuck on the side of mountain on an icy road, has a real risk of mechanical injury. I suggest the lightest winch that you can practically use. The winch will never be on the end of...

I'd argue that there is no extra 'forces' on a little winch mounted on a large vehicle. The winch can only generate it's rated force....all the mounts and parts are rated for that. If you where going to try and use a small winch to lower yourself off something, the brake could not be strong...

options are nice no matter what winch you have. I don't think anyone is going to go with JUST a winch and no additional rigging.... The winch can't generally generate more 'force' on the mounts by rigging with mechanical advantage. In some ways, it could actually help spread out the load to...

If you have a lighter winch, don't forget about being able to rig a 4:1 advantage with 2 snatch blocks/rings and a winch extension. It's commonly called a 'Spanish Burton' With the ease of handling, and light weight, of synthetic rigging, I think it very well may be time we can rethink...

Getting the knot as tight as practical really seems to help. I think this pretty much needs to be done in fixture to properly set the knot inline, not unevenly at an angle. It does add some expense. I do think that it happens pretty naturally over time as long as your not going to MBS in the...

I'm curious, what style soft shackle are you testing where the knot is failing?

I can say I have done more than one back to back full pulls with 8274 trying to get a ring to even the warm. I couldn't. Maybe if you are running a super comp PTO dual motor wiz bang comp winch you might be able to go fast enough to warm the ring up. (but probably not) I think 99.99% of...

Story time......the day that changed my view on snow 'wheeling forever.... We have to go back to the late 90s when lot of the 'new' technology was coming out....when 35s where 'big' tires, airing down was new, double transfer cases just happened, etc. A lot of this was coming out of Iceland...

Keep trying to lower the bar (y) Yes, bigger tires work better in DEEP snow....especially when properly aired down. If you aren't airing the tire down, you are missing out on so much performance. Deep snow is the point where you can no longer push off the bottom, or it becomes in-efficient to...

Deep snow wheeling in Russia......BC Canada.....Greenland.... Can you detect the common theme?

That is not 'deep' snow. That is just over a foot of dry fluff. Pushing that around is easy, and normal tires work just fine for that....especially when aired down. Deep snow 'wheeling is where you have ZERO chance of pushing off the bottom. Go watch some of these guys up in the PNW do some...