Recovery That Almost Kills A Dude!

[chaosjake]

Farms are dangerous. My dad said half the farmers he knew growing up were missing fingers?

When I was maybe 10, one of my neighbors managed to run over himself with a tractor. Broke his pelvis, spine, fractured his skull, took over a year to start walking. He was 15 at most.

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[Rusty PW]

Years ago. I watched a Jeep CJ7 trying to winch a stuck F150 out of a mud hole. 1st try, the Jeep was being pulled. So they repositioned the Jeep behind 2 trees with the front bumper up against the 2 trees. On the 2nd try. They pulled the grill guard and front bumper off the F150. 3rd try, the hook came off the F150. It went through the driver's side windshield, headrest, and back window on the Jeep. The owner was lucky that he was standing next to the tree when it happened.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Had a grain truck sink into the ground (had been dry for a week) once it was loaded, hooked a 130hp and a 95hp tractor to it with 9/16" chains. I threw my Carhart over the chain on the big tractor and someone did the same on the smaller one. Well, the big tractor snapped the chain. Sounded like a shot going off but the coat was just enough to keep things from flying.
Borrowed some 6" straps from a local tow shop and got the truck out.
I have synthetic line on my winch and soft shackles. Still throw a coat over it just because.

I had a large IH articulating 4x4 tractor stuck on a side-hill. I'll never forget my then father in law warning about the chains and stuff flying. It took some serious doing but we got it out. That thing was deep, all but up to the axles.
We never got one of the trucks stuck but tried to keep them on packed ground and where possible ran the combine to the trucks or wagons.
Augers, PTO shafts, stuck tractors, climbing up onto the bins and climbing down inside to get stirator augers unstuck when the corn was a bit too wet for the motors to handle up there, climbing up 30 feet to replace an electric drive motor on one of the stirring augers, stuff getting stuck in the corn head - including deer......... yeah, dangerous as heck for sure.

 

[AmishMike]

@ShadowsPapa this was a fairly packed hay field. We used to be park our buses on it in the summer. Always loaded there because it was packed hard. No rain for over a week, there is no reason that truck sunk, but it did.
This situation with the Bronco in snow, is just a dumb situation. We don’t know why he drove off the side of the trail, we don’t know why he couldn’t rock himself out, we don’t know when is angry grille is getting installed…..

Something to think about, with mud, it can act non-Newtonian. If you go to yank on a vehicle stuck in the mud, the mud can act like a solid. A slow steady pull is always best. I have seen two 150 ton cranes struggle pulling an 80k truck and trailer out of the mud.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

@ShadowsPapa this was a fairly packed hay field. We used to be park our buses on it in the summer. Always loaded there because it was packed hard. No rain for over a week, there is no reason that truck sunk, but it did.
This situation with the Bronco in snow, is just a dumb situation. We don’t know why he drove off the side of the trail, we don’t know why he couldn’t rock himself out, we don’t know when is angry grille is getting installed…..

Something to think about, with mud, it can act non-Newtonian. If you go to yank on a vehicle stuck in the mud, the mud can act like a solid. A slow steady pull is always best. I have seen two 150 ton cranes struggle pulling an 80k truck and trailer out of the mud.

It's like walking out of your boots - vs. slowly lifting out your foot, with the boot still on it.......... there's a lot of suction there as well. The mud will give way if given time, rush it, and it's like you said.

The spring around here is usually the worst because the frost and freezing/thawing cycles have loosened up the top soil a whole lot. it's soft. Spring rains, when/if we get them these days (2 years into drought) pack it back down so you can walk or drive on it.
Then come the cool rains of the fall - and that top couple of inches makes it like trying to walk or drive on ice - the whole surface moves, it's what we call "greasy" in the fall around harvest time while the soil an inch or so down is still solid from the summer rains (again, if we get them)

You know the drill....... things aren't always as they look and the season matters - at least here and places like here.

In the case of a stuck tractor - yes, a slow steady pull. We never ever did any "yanking" trying to get equipment out. If slow and stead didn't do it, you got more equipment, heavier chains and more of them. It was a rule -slowly take the slack out, ensure everything is hooked in place, nothing is going to slip, then continue the slow steady pull.

You said it - mud has personality, and that can vary with the seasons in some places.
I've laughed as people got their feet/boots stuck in the muck around here, struggling trying to yank their foot out in a panic - hey, slow down, calmly and slowly lift your foot out, give time for the air to get in and release the suction and for the mud to move.

 

[smlobx]

“Both vehicles did not have OEM recovery points.”

The manual literally states emergency use only, for the “factory” recovery points on our vehicles. Quite honestly, I have seen enough snapped front ears/hooks- I don’t know why anyone would ever trust the “factory” recovery points on a jeep. They were bad on the JK’s and I don’t think they have improved at all on the JL/JT’s

Don’t agree at all. I have never seen or heard of a Jeep OEM recovery point fail. Of course the manual states for emergency purposes only … that;s what we are talking about here ?

 

[mx5red]

here is one test of winch dampener bags:
4x4 Winch Dampeners | Do They Work? (youtube.com)

That weighted bag worked really well. Kind of disappointed my trebuchet idea wouldn’t work.
Maybe if it were a steel cable?

 

[T-Rock]

Haven't watched the vid yet.

Safety is written in Blood. Dudes out there promoting Safety 2nd/3rd in YT videos, that mentality gets people injured or killed. Sometimes Darwin Prevails.

Someone should develop and market a Kevlar/Nomex cloth Windscreen overlay for recovery situations that would prevent intrusion into the cabin.

Simply open the hood. If something breaks and shoots back at the windshield it will hit the hood rather than the drivers face. No need for an expensive windshield blanket.

 

[salvino]

important details are scattered through an hour long video. I couldn't find what actually failed on the pull side? Pin in a hard shackle? Recovery point pulled off the bumper? What is it that came through the windshield?

There’s an other video with this guy and an Aussie who is pretty good. It seems to me what failed was the loop that retains the ball on a cheap soft shackle. But in the other video it shows that the jeep yanked him so hard it bent the Bronco bumper severely. Which makes me think they were pulling way too hard. Bottom line they were hurrying and not thinking and talking things through.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

I have 2 main takeaways from this. One on equipment and the other on technique:

1. There’s really no consumer protections when a retailer sells counterfeit, knockoff or inferior products. In this kind of environment and when the retailer is unscrupulous or ignorant you’re taking a huge risk buying anything. 5 minutes perusing the wares on Amazon makes it abundantly clear that a huge portion maybe even the majority of the products sold there are of unknown origin and dubious quality. Bezos is flying around in space because he’s making billions letting these product mills from China sell junk. They make millions selling business analysis services that allow these companies to target popular name brand products. The Chinese industrial sector is designed around rapidly ramping up production on products, or allowing legit manufacturers to open ghost operations selling knockoffs. Amazon even does this themselves. It’s called Amazon Basics. There’s never been such a sophisticated confluence of rapid manufacturing, business analytics, algorithmic manipulation and organized fraud in history. I don’t see this ending well for us consumers, which is another topic.

I can’t fathom buying recovery gear on Amazon. It’s like buying prescription medications from some random dude in an alleyway. Even name brand stuff is suspect because the site is full of counterfeit products and even storefronts which Amazon explicitly allows because they profit off of it. They even sell business services to legit sellers to help them combat the fraudsters they allow on the site. The whole business model and structure should illegal.

It strikes me that people will spend $75k on an “American Made” truck and then try and save a few bucks on this gear. 20% of the bed of my JTRD is a huge recovery bag and most of that bag is this Factor55 Kinect rope.
https://www.factor55.com/p-extreme-duty-kinetic-energy-rope-00068. It looks similar to what he was using. But then he skimped on the shackle. Why?

All my hard shackles are Crosby. Don’t use generic hard shackles. I don’t leave them on the truck where they will rust, get stolen, etc. They’re tools, not decorations. All my soft shackles are Factor55 or other reputable brands, like ARB, et al.. I keep everything out of the sun. Everything was purchased direct or from a reputable known retailer. I’ve spent a fortune on a relatively small amount of recovery gear so this doesn’t happen to me. I take care of that gear, inspect it before going out and toss it when it’s old, fraying or UV exposed. When in doubt, throw it away.

2. In my experience people don’t know how to use recovery straps, ropes or winch lines. When I first opened the video I thought they were trying to snatch the truck with the winch line. Thankfully they weren’t doing that. But people attempt to do snatches all the time with those static flat recovery straps. Don’t do that. They’re barely useful for light static towing because they tend to shear. Only a marked Kinetic line should be used for a snatch. Also, as the video demonstrates, people think that a kinetic line gets jerked as hard as you can. That’s not how these work either. The pull should be smooth, obviously faster than a static line, but not a violent jerk.

Because a kinetic line stores energy by design it’s absolutely critical that all the attachment points are strong and appropriate for their type, e.g. hardware that’s compatible with soft rigging, recovery-rated pins in receiver mounted hardpoints, etc. A break with a kinetic line is going to result in this kind of explosive reaction because they store energy by design. If he was using a receiver hitch mounted recovery point with some random towing pin and it broke, that chunk of metal would have come through the windshield and killed him. He’s lucky this was just rope. Personally I don’t think a winch line damper is going to be effective on kinetic rope but I’d have to do more research.

What I do know is there’s a simple precaution that works. Open the hood. This is one of the absolutely best things about Jeeps. The hood can be fully opened and rested against the windshield. Then secure it with bungees or straps. I also never perform a recovery with passengers in the vehicle. They can act as spotters, they’re out of hams way and they can render aid if something happens.

 

[T-Rock]

I have 2 main takeaways from this. One on equipment and the other on technique:

1. There’s really no consumer protections when a retailer sells counterfeit, knockoff or inferior products. In this kind of environment and when the retailer is unscrupulous or ignorant you’re taking a huge risk buying anything. 5 minutes perusing the wares on Amazon makes it abundantly clear that a huge portion maybe even the majority of the products sold there are of unknown origin and dubious quality. Bezos is flying around in space because he’s making billions letting these product mills from China sell junk. They make millions selling business analysis services that allow these companies to target popular name brand products. The Chinese industrial sector is designed around rapidly ramping up production on products, or allowing legit manufacturers to open ghost operations selling knockoffs. Amazon even does this themselves. It’s called Amazon Basics. There’s never been such a sophisticated confluence of rapid manufacturing, business analytics, algorithmic manipulation and organized fraud in history. I don’t see this ending well for us consumers, which is another topic.

I can’t fathom buying recovery gear on Amazon. It’s like buying prescription medications from some random dude in an alleyway. Even name brand stuff is suspect because the site is full of counterfeit products and even storefronts which Amazon explicitly allows because they profit off of it. They even sell business services to legit sellers to help them combat the fraudsters they allow on the site. The whole business model and structure should illegal.

It strikes me that people will spend $75k on an “American Made” truck and then try and save a few bucks on this gear. 20% of the bed of my JTRD is a huge recovery bag and most of that bag is this Factor55 Kinect rope.
https://www.factor55.com/p-extreme-duty-kinetic-energy-rope-00068. It looks similar to what he was using. But then he skimped on the shackle. Why?

All my hard shackles are Crosby. Don’t use generic hard shackles. I don’t leave them on the truck where they will rust, get stolen, etc. They’re tools, not decorations. All my soft shackles are Factor55 or other reputable brands, like ARB, et al.. I keep everything out of the sun. Everything was purchased direct or from a reputable known retailer. I’ve spent a fortune on a relatively small amount of recovery gear so this doesn’t happen to me. I take care of that gear, inspect it before going out and toss it when it’s old, fraying or UV exposed. When in doubt, throw it away.

2. In my experience people don’t know how to use recovery straps, ropes or winch lines. When I first opened the video I thought they were trying to snatch the truck with the winch line. Thankfully they weren’t doing that. But people attempt to do snatches all the time with those static flat recovery straps. Don’t do that. They’re barely useful for light static towing because they tend to shear. Only a marked Kinetic line should be used for a snatch. Also, as the video demonstrates, people think that a kinetic line gets jerked as hard as you can. That’s not how these work either. The pull should be smooth, obviously faster than a static line, but not a violent jerk.

Because a kinetic line stores energy by design it’s absolutely critical that all the attachment points are strong and appropriate for their type, e.g. hardware that’s compatible with soft rigging, recovery-rated pins in receiver mounted hardpoints, etc. A break with a kinetic line is going to result in this kind of explosive reaction because they store energy by design. If he was using a receiver hitch mounted recovery point with some random towing pin and it broke, that chunk of metal would have come through the windshield and killed him. He’s lucky this was just rope. Personally I don’t think a winch line damper is going to be effective on kinetic rope but I’d have to do more research.

What I do know is there’s a simple precaution that works. Open the hood. This is one of the absolutely best things about Jeeps. The hood can be fully opened and rested against the windshield. Then secure it with bungees or straps. I also never perform a recovery with passengers in the vehicle. They can act as spotters, they’re out of hams way and they can render aid if something happens.

Hey, my alley pharmacist has some good name brand stuff! LOL

 

[soupbill]

Hey, my alley pharmacist has some good name brand stuff! LOL

Wow some interesting reads, In the early 70's we used a truck tire in the middle & looped chains to our vehicles. I was just thinking how lucky we were. but we never really sent it 100% & most of the time the tire acting like a bungee would just yank em out. There was my big invention WHY didn't I think of it then?

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