Why does this thread even exist
Well what an amusing thing to read while I was on the throne this afternoon... it makes my brain hurt when I see things like this.
First off, that's a seatbelt restraint point, with seat belt webbing attached. To put it in perspective, the same thing held my baby seat in the car, 21 years ago. These days I get held in to a racing seat by 5 of them! They'd be ok to tow a car, in the same way that I can pull a car on flat ground with a length of telstra rope.
Clubagreenie has very nicely covered the technical side of it... (I wish I could use CAD that well, learning SolidWorks at the moment...), here's what I've found out through experience.
These are a set of recovery points I made to fit my Range Rover a few years ago, very similar to Philco ones, these are 12mm x 50 flat bar with a 25mm hole made on the mill which is a snug fit on the pin of my bow shackles, I had two on the car, and would use a long bridle to pull on both. I've never actually had to recover it off them though... only ever as a return on double line winch pulls.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...015/04/376.jpg
This is the rear recovery point, it's made of 30mmx90mm bar, with a 25mm hole again, and welded into the 100x50x5 rear bar/tow bar. Fully welded on the outside and plug welded on the inner (holes can be seen in photo).
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...015/04/377.jpg
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...015/04/378.jpg
I orientated this with the pin horizontally, the logic being that in a recovery you are always trying to pull straight... and with the design of a cars suspension, the greatest force will be up and down, not sideways. This is when the tow vehicle is higher up than the towed vehicle, and it pulls the tow vehicle down, compressing the suspension, and adding greater traction >>> increased force. Of course on the front it may be a different story, if the car is in ruts, but lets face it, the chassis will fail first.
So far I've bounced off it many times with a 10t snatch strap on everything up to a 5t tractor, and had no issue. Certainly never bent or sheared a shackle pin...
I've gone on to find that single shear recovery points are flawed, because the chassis is not strong enough! (see snap shots from the video of my bull bar failure when the car fell down a step with the rope slightly slack).
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...015/04/379.jpg
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...015/04/380.jpg
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...015/04/381.jpg
The bar is a temporary thing I made up out of two old bars I had laying around, just for a high country 'tough trip'; a D1 non-winch brush bar, and a D1 factory winch cradle, all with appropriate bracing to the bar, which is still perfect. EXCEPT, in my rush to get the car ready for easter I decided not to bother boxing in the chassis rails, as a result, when the above happened, the bar was in single shear, the high tensile 1/2" bolts at the top ripped straight out of the outside of the chassis rails (inside remained intact), and the bar has hung forward like this since... (haven't been arsed to fix it yet, as that would involve me finishing off the actual bullbar). The problem is due to me mounting the cradle higher than the chassis rails and the previously mentioned single shear, it would also have been beneficial to make a third mount, further back.
To think that a single one of these points would be used to recover off is absurd, it's not just the seat belt loop and tab, but also the chassis material, which is not at all beefy.
You're also adding another point of failure, instead of connecting a point to a chassis, a bow shackle to the point, and a strap to the shackle, you are adding another strap, and what for?!?!
The whole strap thing is silly... we need to design a better recovery point to begin with! And thats where the RUD rings come in. The ring should be mounted to a bracket that boxes in the chassis rail on both sides, and adds a point further back. This is not to make the recovery point stronger, (the Philco [Tombie] point and bow shackle is perfectly strong enough) but to pick up more of what is a material that is somewhat under rated for repetitious use as a recovery point, the chassis!
I'd happily design a different style of point, and have it rated and produced if there was the demand, but I don't think there's really anything wrong with the Philco/Tombie ones unless they're used stupidly, after all, the lower mount hole is further back in the chassis.
