ASK ARB – recovery
strap breaking strengths

Gidday guys!

Love the new, sexy, high visibility colour scheme for your recovery straps. Orange, purple and lime green – very cool!

It’s great that your credibility can be restored so quickly after bogging your truck from the use of such stylish recovery gear!

Can you provide some guidelines on the application of the breaking strength of the straps (eg. for the winch extension strap are you taking into consideration just the weight of your truck and anything you’re towing?). Similarly, for a snatch strap, should the breaking strength factor in only the weight of your truck or include that of the vehicle extracting you? Some tips on the application of the various breaking strengths would be helpful.

Finally, what’s the advantage of buying ARB recovery gear in comparison to lesser known brands available on eBay and other online stores?

Kind regards,

Mike 

Hi Mike,

When we designed our new range of recovery gear, our main focus was safety. And that starts with making sure you pick the right kind of strap for the job, not just the correct rating. Therefore, our straps are different colours for different applications and of course, highly visible like the rest of our recovery range.

Choosing the correctly rated strap for use with your vehicle does mean you need to take a few factors into consideration. Firstly, the weight of your truck. This can obviously change depending on if it is loaded, unloaded or towing a trailer.

Next, you have to look at what is stopping the forward momentum of your vehicle. For example, a lightly stuck vehicle on a slippery slope may not need much of a pull to keep moving whereas if your vehicle is stuck in a deep bog hole, you have the weight of the truck, the suction effect of the mud, the weight of that mud, as well as the force required to overcome whatever it was that stopped you moving forward.

Thirdly, you need to ensure that the recovery point on your vehicle is capable of withstanding the force you are going to place on it. As you can see, the stresses on the vehicle can vary by a reasonably large amount, so you may in fact need a couple of differently rated straps.

When it comes to snatch straps, you need to keep in mind that for the strap to stretch and work effectively as a kinetic energy recovery device, it needs to have an appropriate load on it. So you can’t go out and buy the largest rated snatch strap and expect it to work well on an unladen vehicle. It may not stretch at all and result in damage.

However, for tree trunk protectors and winch extension straps, you can buy the strongest as they are only designed for static loads. Keep in mind though that the larger, higher rated straps take up more space in your vehicle. Knowing which strap to use will come down to assessing the situation at hand. If you are not sure that the snatch strap you have is capable of the recovery, choose to winch, as it will place less stress on vehicles and recovery gear.

And to finish, the advantage of buying ARB recovery gear: the knowledge that it is thoroughly designed and tested to meet the needs of 4wheelers around the world with quality advice and aftersales service, is something you just won’t get on Ebay.

Mark ‘Lowmount’ Lowry
(Manager – Product Development & Evaluation)