Whilst seemingly innocuous, and despite your better half’s reactions when you tackle a big wheel lift or steep section of track, a 4WD recovery whilst offroad can be one of the most dangerous things you can do in your 4WD.

Let me be clear with you, we are not saying, don’t recovery your 4WD, it is just extremely important to remember that no matter what kind of 4WD recovery you are undertaking that you take special care to ensure that safety is your first priority.

When a recovery is taking place you must remember that all recoveries are a series of “kinetic chains” that means that your recovery is like a chain with many links involved and they all store and release kinetic energy, to help free your 4WD. With the math’s involved win

With tremendous amounts of force involved, if one of the links in the chain are compromised then your whole recovery is subsequently compromised, however, it is not just your recovery that is compromised, in many occasions it is your safety that is compromised too!

Let’s think about this for a moment, when you have a fully loaded 4WD with a weight ranging from 2500KG all the way up to 4500KG, noting that with mud suction pulling on the base of your 4WD can increase the pulling force required to free your 4WD to an incredible 200-300% of the GVM meaning that your 2500KG 4WD now effectively weighs in between 5000KG and 7500KG and your 4500KG 4WD now effectively weighs in between 9000KG and 13500KG.

Whilst you may have the best intentions just whipping out your recovery gear, you should give yourself better odds of both getting out and not overloading your recovery gear, by digging your 4WD mostly free from trouble with a good quality shovel and clearing every possible path out from in front of your tyres to allow your recovery to go seamlessly. By removing the obstacles, and by clearing the mud out from under your 4WD you allow your vehicle to be pulled free with minimal effort.

This is one way to reduce the risk of your recovery failing. Another way to reduce the risks is by making sure you regularly update your recovery gear with properly rated equipment as well as keeping it clean and maintained so every-time you head out and risk getting stuck you can rely on your gear to get you free!

For this reason we highly recommend upgrading your Recovery gear with either the Hercules Complete Recovery Kit or the Hercules Essential Recovery Kit.

Both of these kits include both equipment required for both Snatch strap recoveries and for safely using your Domin8r X Winch without gear failure and at their price you would be mad to not update your recovery gear regularly.

One of the greatest things to note when undertaking a 4WD recovery is to use rated recovery points, as well as making sure you use a bridle setup using something like your tree trunk protector to connect the left and right side  where possible to equalize the load across your 4WD to prevent uneven pulling on the chassis and the potential for damage to your vehicle. The next thing to note is if your vehicle has a hitch style trailer receiver, that you are not using the tow ball to pull your 4WD free – with the immense forces involved in recovering your 4WD can result in the tow ball becoming a cannon ball really quickly. As you can imagine a cannonball is hazardous to your health and in some circumstances can end up resulting in death!

To get the best in offroad recovery setups call us on 1800 88 39 64 or drop into our store for the latest  bargains, or jump online to https://www.4wdsupacentre.com.au/products/recovery-gear.html to see the full range of recovery gear!