Thread: Meet my 90, and share the adventure.

There are also some commercial available ones on the market which are rated. - Gator Jaw - Soft Shackle - Snake Racing However it appears they are out of another type of rope - Plasma rope. This seems to be a competitor to Dyneema

For those wanting a long read - this is an article on the technical differences between the two -http://www.plasmarope.com.au/plasma-vs-dyneema.html

There is also an older thread Dyneema soft shackles on this topic that has some links and discussion on ratings.

I bought 5metres of 10mm diameter, 12 strand dyneema off ebay. Total cost about 35 clams.
Cut to 2m length:


Fold in half to find your centre, then calculate the size of the loop you want to splice into the end. This is recommended to be approx diameter of 2 strands of the rope. Mark where the rope needs to be spliced thru the other rope, and make a hole with a fid. I used a combination of a knitting needle from the missus' sewing kit, and a taper punch from the man-cave.



Tie the button knot. BAM!




I tensioned the knot with the knitting needle fid, and the taper punch, working the knot around until it was tight.
Extra tension was put on the knot with the jack:



With the two 'legs' of the knot, you need to taper the dyneema, and then feed it inside the main section of the loop. This acts like a chinese finger trap, and keeps the loose end contained, and adds to the strength of the whole arrangement. Here is a pic of picking out a strand to cut it, and taper it down.



I've made 3 so far. 2 out of 10mm dyneema, and a small one out of 2mm dyneema.
The first one took about 2 hours to do, but this was while following a few different online instructions and taking my time, scratching my head when tying the knot etc. The second one was much quicker at about an hour. I reckon with some practice I'd get one out every half hour.

This soft shackle design is a more resource hungry design, using a lot of rope, and using some funky and time consuming knots and splicing, but has a great level of strength over other designs.

Overall, for a modest price and a few hours work, not a bad result.

Stay tuned for some testing / recovery work using them in the future!

It would be good for everyone to have a good read of these articles.
These fibres are becoming more and more common in the Maritime world.
For Mooring lines, which are paid out, sleeved at the Fair Lead, loaded and set, the favourite seems to be Dyneema.
For Tug lines, which are fed to the Ship through often gnarly, rusty Fair Leads. The favourite is Plasma. These lines are made up as Strops and attached to heavy winch lines with a Cow Hitch, then the sides of the Strop are whipped together at intervals along its length (about 10-15 Meters). They cop a fair old flogging and are sacrificial. They serve a set number of tows and are then discarded.
Plasma and Dyneema, although essentially the same material, are manufactured in entirely different ways which gives them different properties. So it's good to read as much as you can before you decide which will be the one which best suits your needs.

So this is the ghetto way of seeing what tyres will fit.
I asked the masses about tyre fitment here, but results were inconclusive.
One thing about being a web-wheeler is you often spend more time looking for answers online than it would take to actually get out there and suss it out yourself.
So I flexed it up as best I could within a 10min drive from home, and came up with this. For science.





The bent track rod debacle caused quite a lot of tyre wear before I noticed it. As a result, the Goodyear wrangler MT's in 235/85/R16 are below the Tread Wear Indicators on the inside edges. They are approx 35,000km old. So new rubber is on the cards.

I ideally want to run a larger diameter wheel for additional clearance to the diff. I've pretty muich settled on a 255/85/R16, which is a 33"x10" wide wheel in the old money. This is not a common size, but will be a good tyre until any lift or more serious suspension mods are done. All being said, these will be 20mm wider than the stock rubber, and about 40mm or so larger diameter. Divide this by 2 and you get the additional clearnace requirements for around the tyre and in the wheel well.

If anything, this serves as a good chance to showcase the look of the car as it stands, as I've noticed I'm not one to take full car shots that often.
Bonus points to the person that spots the most recent battle scar on the vehicle!

Mudflap?
Scraped something on the passenger side of the bullbar?

Sent from my HTC One using AULRO mobile app

Originally Posted by Disco Muppet

Mudflap?

BINGO! You get the prize!
It didn't last too long. Came off up in the forest a while back. Must have got snagged on something and got plucked off.
Mud flap death count is 3 now.

Took a picture today.