...Dave, where you the guy with the shackle hanging off the front tow point and the rear recovery hitch shackle?
-Sam
As has been said, you can't put any kind of recovery points on the front of a DII without cutting the bumper. The one shown is a bit drastic, and it might be interesting to see what can be achieved by just removing the grille at the bottom (mine went to mount a discrete winch).
My winch is my recovery point for now, but I'm interested in alternatives.
Ike, I totally agree. I run a bridle to a similar effect. That shouldn't be the limiting factor.
The location is the issue for me. For you NorCal guys the mud isn't as big a deal as it is over here.
This place has the best prices that i have found : Jate Rings
-Sam
Attach your bridle and then hang it up over the bumper in front, so when you get stuck, you don't have to crawl underneath to hook up. You can do this with the whole recovery strap as well. You see them wrapped around the bumpers of 4x4's sometimes for quick use.
Yep...that sounds like me, but I think there was one guy in a very similar D2 with the tow point painted yellow (that wasn't me)...mine is a dark blue '99 D2 with a 'rack to nowhere' on the back, it had an orange snatch strap draped over the hood into the passenger side window, and crappy street tires. Needless to say, I didn't do much offroading this year, but I had good intentions...
I showed up expecting to buy a Fr Diff Guard and JATE rings from L8, then use the rings as my front recovery point. Sadly the L8 guys had truck problems and didn't show until late, then when Justin and I started looking around there wasn't anywhere to put them. In the end I ended up mostly riding with one of the other FPLRG guys in his SIII ex-Mod.
Next year things will be different...:smiley_drive:
I would not recommend the stock tow point, especially not offroad or when using a snatch strap.
Before the Rover crowd told me that somebody was going to get killed, I had the local Jeepers hooking up tow straps to my factory tow point and doing huge kinetic recoveries.
Nobody died. YMMV.
I'm having a personal shackle vs. DB debate myself. Other than the quickness of use, I don't see the the big advantage to the DB. Well, the 5T looks good, but I have serious questions about the 3.5T, and more importantly how some people are mounting them. It has a narrow base, 2-bolt mount. When doing a pull perpendicular to the mounting base, you're doing everything your Mama told you not to do to those bolts.
The 3.5T is only rated for a 250kg Svalue, that being the load perpendicular to the mount. That will be easily exceeded by any winch pull with a vertical component.
I think the whole thing survives only because the bolts are of decent size, M16's.
But worse than that, some poeple are mounting them to thin bumpers metal, 1/8-3/16" thick, with no backing plates. Or at best, with a thin backing plate of the same small dimensions of the mount itself. When used like this... I think they're pure fashion statement more than anything.
Indeed, properly mounted swivels are THE be-all-end-all solution.
D-ring shackles in tabs are the cheap bastart solution, but they work too. Millions of Jeepers can't be wrong.![]()