Whilst out 4WDing there is a fair to good chance that you will end up bogged in the sloppy stuff. There are a few different ways to get out, but the weapon of choice for most 4WDers is a heavy duty winch bolted to the front of their vehicle.

For decades a winch has been touted to be the pinnacle of offroad recoveries, and you probably believe this reputation to be correct, but do you know how much pull your 4WD will need to get free? Do you also know how much pull your 4WD is rated to take!

First things first, you want to tackle the tracks with more pull than anyone you know, so the first step isn’t to go out and buy the first winch you see, but to make sure you have somewhere to mount it. Whilst there are many winch compatible bull bars on the market, using the standard 10” x 4.5” bolt spacing, not all are tough enough to handle the 12,000lb of pull from something like the Domin8r X  can output, if you aren’t sure, contact your Bull bar manufacture for confirmation on the rating of your bull bar, as you wouldn’t want to find out the hard way what it takes to pull your bull bar clean from the front of your 4WD!

Now you have that sorted out, its time to go shopping for something that will do the job right! So lets do some quick math on the kind of pull you are going to need to get your 4WD free from a tricky situation.

Some of the factors you need to consider are those required for inclined surfaces eg. A Toyota 79 series has 3400kg GVM and applying some simple formulas of apparent weight factors pulling up a steep 30° slope could add an additional 50% of GVM to the winch requiring a massive 5100kg of pulling force which equals approximately 11,244lb this means that a Domin8r X is perfect for this situation!

When considering getting stuck in a deep section of mud the load factors increase dramatically, when getting your truck stuck in mud as deep as the wheel hub you will have to double the required pulling force, resulting in a required pull of 6800kg (14992 lb) which would require a double line pull for maximum safety and if you were crazy enough to be bogged to the chassis you would be looking at a load of 10,200kg or 22,500lb of pull which with a double line pull is no problem for the Domin8r X  12,000lb, but as you can see anything less than 12,000lb, you might have to pack it in and call for reinforcements.

With a quality and high-powered winch fitted to your 4WD, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is enough to get you out of trouble, but no winch can do the whole story on its own, without a rated recovery kit you won’t be getting far, whilst the winch does the hard work without a recovery kit you have no real way of anchoring your vehicle to a solid foundation to get the pull you need.

When shopping for a recovery kit, you need to consider all the same forces we just mentioned, as the weakest link is the part of the system that will fail first when you are counting on it first.

The Hercules Essential recovery kit includes the following;

1 x Snatch Block, 8,000kg

1 x Snatch Strap, 8,000kg

1 x Tree Trunk Protector, 10,000kg

1 x Extension Strap, 5,000kg

2 x Bow Shackles 4.7T each

1 x Winch Dampener

Which are all rated high enough to handle the toughest recoveries you will encounter offroad, with all components independently tested for absolute durability and unparalleled value.

To get your 4WD out of trouble offroad, you need to consider more factors than just looking at the overall pulling power of your winch and whether it’s up to the challenge of towing your vehicle, but also whether it is up to the task of getting your 4WD out of the real trouble, takes some quick math to figure out just how much you’ll really need to get your 4WD free in a recovery!