Herbie
Rendezvous Conspirator
Hey all - I've got a particular load handling situation that could benefit from a better strap. I'm looking for something like the Frontrunner Stratchits, in that I need a real cargo strap (cam lock, etc.) but would benefit from a small amount of stretch to take up the slack when tightened. The only difference is that I need it to be shorter than the Front Runner's 22" minimum length. Anybody got ideas?
I want to rework how I secure the cargo in the rear of my van - occasionally I need to carry heavy gear in the bed area behind the rear seat. My rule is that anything I wouldn't throw at my daughter's head needs to get tied down, so I've got a Safari-Straps cargo net for that rear area. This works well, but it secures by looping short cam-lock straps from the corners of the net, so I have to loop through an eye-bolt and then back to a tab on the net. Getting this threaded through and adequately tightened down every time is a little bit of a hassle. I tried looping the cam-lock strap to a carabiner to at least eliminate the re-threading part of the issue (so I can just clip it and tighten the strap), but getting things perfectly tight is tough since I can only yank on the strap so hard and the cam-lock doesn't tighten up on its own. If there were a little bit of elasticity there, I could get the strap tight enough to safely contain the gear in case of an accident, and the "bungee" effect would take up a little bit of slack to just keep the gear secure against shifting, etc. I don't want to use a short "pure-bungee" in this situation because I need it to not over-stretch or fail in an accident.
I looked at trying to use the Stratchits for this purpose, but even at their shortest, I'd have trouble finding a way to rig from the corners of the cargo net to my tie-down points that didn't offer too much slack.
Worst case, I suppose I could buy some heavy-duty elastic and sew it down to a strap myself, but I thought I'd see if someone knew of another option. Thanks!
EDIT: Apparently Front Runner also makes Stratchit "Shorties". 18.5" minimum length, which is still longer than I can use, but maybe helpful to someone else.
I want to rework how I secure the cargo in the rear of my van - occasionally I need to carry heavy gear in the bed area behind the rear seat. My rule is that anything I wouldn't throw at my daughter's head needs to get tied down, so I've got a Safari-Straps cargo net for that rear area. This works well, but it secures by looping short cam-lock straps from the corners of the net, so I have to loop through an eye-bolt and then back to a tab on the net. Getting this threaded through and adequately tightened down every time is a little bit of a hassle. I tried looping the cam-lock strap to a carabiner to at least eliminate the re-threading part of the issue (so I can just clip it and tighten the strap), but getting things perfectly tight is tough since I can only yank on the strap so hard and the cam-lock doesn't tighten up on its own. If there were a little bit of elasticity there, I could get the strap tight enough to safely contain the gear in case of an accident, and the "bungee" effect would take up a little bit of slack to just keep the gear secure against shifting, etc. I don't want to use a short "pure-bungee" in this situation because I need it to not over-stretch or fail in an accident.
I looked at trying to use the Stratchits for this purpose, but even at their shortest, I'd have trouble finding a way to rig from the corners of the cargo net to my tie-down points that didn't offer too much slack.
Worst case, I suppose I could buy some heavy-duty elastic and sew it down to a strap myself, but I thought I'd see if someone knew of another option. Thanks!
EDIT: Apparently Front Runner also makes Stratchit "Shorties". 18.5" minimum length, which is still longer than I can use, but maybe helpful to someone else.
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