I'm gonna be putting my stock rear bumper back on my truck this week after a little surface rust repair. I was wondering if anyone has tried putting a D-ring shackle through the hole in the bumper as a means of hooking up a recovery strap. If so, what size shackle were you able to put through there?

I dont have a hitch so thats out of the question. Eventually I'll buy a Marlin Crawler bumper but in the meantime I have no way too hook a strap to the back of the vehicle. I thought the shackle through the bumper would be a good idea.

I read somewhere that someone thought it was a bad idea to use the bumper for recovery but I believe he was talking about a 4runner and I know those are tied to the body and not the frame like on the pickups.

 

i'm going to say that its NOT a good idea. the stock bumper will not be strong enough.

 

Don't do it! I have been yanked from my stock bumper and it bent it all to hell. Also did a number on the the frame mounts, made putting my new bumper on ALOT harder.

If you must yank from your stock bumper, wrap each end of the strap around each end of your bumper till its touching the mounting bracket. That should provide the most strenght.

 

SDORI has a nice little piece that bolts in for a d ring (works great till i get a new bumper)

 

The stock bumper is made out of metal a little thicker then that of your body. Its not strong enough. Don't even bother trying it, unless you want a reason to get a new bumper.

 

Okay, so it looks like I wont be doing any recovery with the stock bumper. If i just need to pull someone out of a snow bank or something it shouldnt be a big deal, right? I'm not talking about "snatching" them out, just pulling them out with a chain or something. I know the bumper is rated for towing up to 3500 pounds so it should hold up. If I'm off on this one also, let me know.



Looks pretty stout, I'm assuming that it bolts in place of the stock hook? I wonder if it'd be safe to somehow attatch one of these to the frame on the rear of the truck and hang a shackle for rear recovery.

 

THERE ARE TOW POINT ON THE BACK UNDER THE REAR BUMPER.. also a tow hook on the front and the other side has a tow point too i belive...

i have been dragged outta the bush 4 km on a tow strap with no clutch and towed fords outta ditches with them

 

Bad idea. Even though the bumper may be made to tow as much weight as you say, it is reinforced correctly where the ball bolts to the bumper. That load limit does not apply to cutting 2 holes in the sheet metal (basically) part of the bumper and running a D-ring shackle through it. if you welded a bunch of 1/4 plate behind it and put stiffeners in the bumper you'd be fine, but the face of the bumper is not designed to take that much energy in such a small spot, the material is just too thin. Whoever you were helping would likely end up with a shackle/chain through the windshield if you tried to tug too hard.

 

I say it will be fine. As long as your not yanking anything, it shouldn't bend the bumper. Hell, I tow cars+trucks with mine, it doesn't bend the bumper at all.

OR, just get another bumper

 

does the p/u have the 'loops' on the underside of the rear frame like the 4runner? im not sure if those were just for transport tie down or legitimate tow points.

lee

 

I dont think the pickups had those unless the PO removed them for some reason. Crap, I need to figure out a way to get something to hook something up with back there. At the moment I dont have the funds for an aftermarket bumper and I already took my hitch off and got rid of it. Lame.

 

Are you talking about like this?



http://www.4x4now.com/sf0100.htm

That seems like it would work fine. The only problem would be the thickness of the step itself, not sure a shackle will fit over it. But if you can fit it, seems safe enough to me. My stock rear bumper had reinforcement under the chrome sheet metal and it seemed reasonably well built.

Personally I would consider installing a frame-mounted 2" receiver or get a Smittybilt, Marlin or some other aftermarket bumper with a 2" receiver built in. I would definitely NOT bolt an adapter to the sheet metal of the bumper, that's not strong enough IMO. But generally hooking up to rated tow points is safe, although not necessarily perfect since the bumper or mounts may eventually bend.

 

I'd pass on that idea.
I yanked out a small fence post that wasn't more than 18 inches deep one time with my Tacoma and the bumper was twisted like a pretzel.
I was totally shocked and not at all impressed with the bumper.
I don't think my '93 bumper is any better.

 

Yeah, thats exatly what I was referring to. My bumper seems pretty stout for light recovery but from what I've gathered from others it seems like a bad idea.

 

That will work as long as you stay within the specs for towing which translates to - NO SNATCHING! Snatching is what gets people hurt anyway....I found myself doing it because it's just easier sometimes but as I got older I got less aggressive with snatching & smarter with pulling.

 

So if someone got stuck in a ditch or something during a snow storm, it would be okay to pull them out as long as i'm taking it easy? Would the snatck strap be useful in this situation or would I be better off with something else?

I guess if someones really stuck I could snatch them out by hooking the strap to my front tow points and reverse.

 

Snatch straps work best when used for snatching because they stretch, that stretching makes dead pulls harder. A chain or cable & a D-ring shackle hooked up like you see in the picture will work fine for easy pulls like snow banks or ditches. I've pulled hundreds if not thousands of times like that; using pintle hitches, balls, shackles etc. The only time I have ever seen it fail was when a bucket truck tried to pull out another, heavier bucket truck from too steep an angle & he began snatching on it & it ripped the pintle hitch right out of the bolt holes!

Do not snatch & you'll be fine. If the pull fails, try something else. As the old saying goes; work smarter, not harder.

 

Thanks for the responses guys.

And yeah, I dont really get into any hairy situations in wisconsin because there is nowhere to wheel except maybe up north in some mud pits or something. If I decide to move back to AZ and really start using my truck again, I will be buying a MC bumper and sliders along with an aussie locker right off the bat.

Does anyone know where I could acquire a shackle large enough to get through the hole in the bumper? Any idea on size?

 

I'm down in Chicago and have seen shackles at Ace Hardware.

Man, I'm from AZ too, boy do I miss it... There is nowhere to go wheeln' here.

 

That's true, but is also something to think about for any tow point used for recovery. They are rated to a few thousand pounds of towed weight and a snatch strap stores quite a bit of energy. Hard to know exactly what a tow point can handle doing a snatch until you reach it. But I'd guess most tow points are capable of a couple of multiples of their rating safely. That's not to say a bumper wouldn't bend, just not likely to fail (i.e., turn into a flying bumper) until you exceed the tow rating by some factor of safety they built in. That could be 1.5x, 2x, 4x, I dunno. A stock bumper might bend at or above its rating, but probably won't tear off until you go significantly above the rating. But yeah, a loaded snatch strap can store tens of thousands lbf, so you should always be careful.