The question begs, do you kick yourself in the ass and(or) kill the ford truck owner for breaking your shit?
How many things can you point out that is just plain wrong? 10? 20? See for yourself.
Take care folks,
So what caused the front end to separate like that?
Where should they have hooked up the tow strap?
To any other vehicle than that particular Jeep?
One has to wonder about the quality of fabrication on the Jeep, as to the angles, and the methods used to extract, the equipment and the skills of the combined group of, ahem, people who were assisting.
I think it was amazing that no one was injured or killed, the number of safety problems I noted were many.
I think it was less an issue of where to mount the tow strap and more an issue of which direction they pulled. The wheel was stuck in some loose gravel, not mud. No way it was going to be forced sideways.
That was a Cherokee which has the same suspension arm setup as a Wrangler in front and spring over mounts on the rear axle. It also has a unibody construction which makes mounting tow hooks/points pretty dicey. If there are no hooks mounted, a lot of folks will hook the tow strap to the front axle or suspension mount, you can tear it right out of the rig. But that usually pulls the axle FORWARD, in this case it went backward. It didn't look like the tow strap mount was the problem.
But the pull angle was the worst I've seen: The first try almost flips the Cherokee over on it's side. That says the pull force was higher up than the wheel (the Jeep was at a 30 degree angle to the side). They needed to somehow pull UP on the Jeep or roll it forward or back. Nope, they just kept pulling it sideways with the front tire mired in that loose gravel.
Once the first pull tried to flip it over, I would have tried one of 4 things: put a hi lift jack on the front corner and lift it up a couple of feet to get the Jeep level and the wheel free of it's pit. Pull it forward by getting on the other side of the wash. Pull it backward by going to the top of the hill. A last resort is to lift it up by putting an 8' log vertically under the tow strap, right next to the Jeep. That would lift the Jeep up, then slide it sideways a couple of feet, let the log just fall down and out of the way.
Jo Baggs wrote:
Roy, Thanks for the detailed review. I appreciate the analysis as opposed to "wow, I must have seen 10 or 20 safety violations and 10 idiotic do not ever do offroading moves". Now I don't have to guess. Thanks
From the looks of it, that log would have been a tad hard to come by in that terrain but, like you, I couldn't help but wonder at the direction they chose to pull from. Best advice I ever got was to pull it out the way it went in. Maybe the cowboy in the white Ford didn't want to get his pretty truck dirty crossing the ditch?
One amazing thing to me was that none of the straps parted. Good thing, too. With a rubber band that long the lash would have been spectacular. Even good tow straps (as opposed to snatch straps) have enough stretch to make cause problems and that many daisy chained could have been a beautiful sling shot.
A lot of times it's best to use a bit of thought. Will's comment about pulling it out the way it went in applies to slivers in the hand as well as Jeeps in the mud. Getting all the wheels free has a lot of merit also. (Duh!!)
But on a lighter note: Yesterday I was headed to my favorite haunt to give my dog a bit of a stroll. I have a secluded parking lot that is guarded by 15" of snow, some guy in a Land Rover was parked in the entrance, hung up on the plow debris. Oops, he is busy digging it out. I gave him a quick pull to get him clear, drove around him and down the unplowed road. Poser!!!
It looks like they tried to pull it out the way it went in but I'm not sure why they stopped. A bit of cribbing or a T post would have changed the pull from straight to up-and-straight.
Anyone wonder why no one had something called a shovel?
Or why they were down in that muck in the first place?
Get the feeling they went unprepared. ;)
High lift, large piced of 3/4 Ply with a foot for the highlift. Planks or steel mat.
Heck, I had to make due by using the tailgate of my truck one time. Put a few marks on it, but it worked. Supid mud had filled in a ditch and the back wheel of my truck sank till dirt hit frame! Jacked it up, bridged the ditch with the tailgate and lowered the wheel back down.
It was either that or walk 40 miles to civilization. :/
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