[QUOTE=bbyer;1403263]A 101, that is kind of special. I doubt that there are any here in Canada at all. We do occassionally see ex MOD Defenders in rather distorted shapes however. The Royal Army has a tank training facility here in Southern Alberta and some Defenders tend to get slightly run over. As such, those units make it to the auction and are snapped up - for the serial number plate I suppose.
There is a 101 in the Alberta Land Rover Enthusiasts club.
Check us out at www.alre.ca and come out to a meeting. Web site gives details.
Your tow hooks idea looks OK but will you have a sleeve through the frame to prevent the frame from crushing/tearing? Jate rings on a 110 have the bolt inside a sleeve to help take the load but also to avoid destroying the frame.
Other than being quicker to hook up, the hooks are a weak point. I would use a side plate with a lug to take a shackle. This is a personal reference from experience gained from pulling oilfield trucks to job sites.
So now I have a 101 to watch for - and just when I thought I had spotted most of the Land Rovers in the Edmonton area.
The sleeve is a good idea and I will figure out how to incorporate that. I had thought about it, but discarded the idea as I assumed the two lower 1/2" bolts would tend to carry the twisting forces.
The 7/8" bolt can be downsized to 3/4" or maybe even 5/8" with no decrease in safety so I will give the addition of a sleeve some thought.
Hook vs clevis, or lug for clevis, has also been on my mind. The bow shackle is clearly a better attachment method, but all I could figure out was a design where the bow tended to hang down, (unless tied up), or had to be carried loose and then attached when needed - hence the fixed hook.
Thanks and yes, I have been watching the www.alre.ca site for the last few months. Last fall, I drove past the pub where the meetings are held - lived about two blocks from there when I was younger - like five years old. And yes, you may see me some Wednesday evening the the first of the month.
I have been admiring the club grill badge and wondering how to mount it on an LR3.
The 101 lives in Medicine Hat, so you are not likely to see it often. The owner sometimes trailers it up to Edmonton for driving events with the club.
The shackle does present a problem of storage or left hanging low when not needed.
If you don't expect to pull or be pulled very much the hooks will likely be more than enough. With oilfield trucks a very strong pulling point is mandatory and used often.
I mounted my badge to a plate that I could fasten to the grill guard. I don't have much faith in a plastic grill.
Yes, if anything is bothering me, it is just that, the belt and suspenders sort of thing and is this really necessary, or worse, it the whole concept a bad idea.
If there is a reason for the dual pull points, it is just that - dual.
Here we tend to slide off perfectly good roads into ditches full of snow. If we are lucky, only our egos are bruised, and with the 3's skid plates, the engine and rad tend to remain where Solihull first put them.
If I were pulling someone out of aforementioned ditch, I would use the centre tow loop, however if I were the one in the ditch, it just seemed to me that being pulled via a bridle off the two hooks would better distribute the strain on the frame and also reduce the tendency for the vehicle to flip on its side - something that happens here as the vehicles rarely stop nice and level like, nor is the path back up the slope necessarily all flat and smooth. And yes, the idea is that the pulls will hopefully never be used.
Your comment re catching on something is a concern I am still looking at.
I am actually impressed at how clean it is under the rear, (and also the front), of the 3 and the idea of actually putting something under there that catchs on whatever does bother me.
In other words, the removable trailer hitch to me makes good sense so any design that fouls the underneath is by definition, far from ideal.
I do have a variation of the design where I have put 45 degree slopes on the leading surfaces of most of the metal bits that hang below the frame in an attempt to get stuff to not catch - but the hook is still a hook, even it it is horizontal and the thin spring metal guard is not much help really.
Also in the alternate design, for lashing down, I have deleted the dual shackle attachment tab and substituted a kind of longtitudinal "JATE" ring that swings left or right up against the bottom of the assembly to provide better clearance and flexability.
I certainly appreciate your comments as that is why I put the post up. I also have concerns as to the design, so the more comments I see, the more thought I can put into the design.
As I said in a previous post, recovery procedures and equipment are not as simple as they may first look to be.
Now you have got me looking at every 4x4 or oilfield truck I see and trying to judge good/bad features of each tow point.
On the whole I would think you want to be towed out using a low point so that the tow will partly lift the weight of the vehicle out of the deep snow/mud to reduce drag. Some vehicles have high tow points (jacked up utes) so in effect you would be pulling them down as you try to tow.
With this in mind you might want to consider only using the tow hooks and eliminate the lower lashing eyes. True you will reduce the catch point by very little but are the lashing eyes going to be of any use if deformed?
I enjoyed your post. Looking at every truck that goes by as regard to tow hook location is about what I have been doing as well.
About the best setup I have seen on the heavy trucks is where they run two lengths of about 1", (25mm), wire rope from front to back and clamp the cable to all the axles. Then when the truck is stuck and they hook on to a Cat D10, that the axles bring the truck along with the cable. I guess this is a reaction to the more common situation where the axles remain mired in the mud and the truck turns into a skid unit.
Not only on Oilfied, but I have also noted the wire rope cable setup to be fairly common in the City here on transit mix trucks. I think it has something to do with the media making a fuss when dynamite is used in the City to unstick the undercarriage from the mud.
I agree with your comments re the lashing down arrangement and have per attached, revised the lashing attachment to be a swinging forged metal loop rated at 11,000 lbs, but the idea is that the loops are for tieing the 3 down, not for towing.
Regarding clearance, the intent is that the lashing loop be tied up sideways and not hang down except for lashing. The lashing requirement is a result of me watching how our local tow truck operators tie down sick BMW's to their flat bed haul away trucks. Chains between the spokes of the wheels seems to be favored over chains from the deck to the wheel A arms or whatever Beamers have. I expect some variation of that is used on the LR Sports as well. There do not seem to be enough 3's around that I have seen any being dragged away but I assume much the same "technique" would be used.
Getting the tow hooks as low as practical is a trade off between creating something that hangs up on whatever and having the hooks so high up that the body is lifted off the frame, or as you said, sucked further down into the mud or snow.
An initial design of mine had the tow hooks bolted under the frame where the lashing loops now are. That had the advantage of reduced twisting action on the frame, but really created a hang up concern - as in dangerous.
I would not say that what I have designed is yet "the solution" in either regard by the way. My concern began is a result of watching the local tow truck operators. They have these big "fish hooks", (J shaped hooks), that they like to throw over anything that a J hook will catch on. If not the wheel rims between the spokes, then whatever parts of the rear wheel / axle / A frame bits they can find, seems to be an accepted procedure. I am trying to provide a dual alternative - not easy it seems.
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