Getting stuck is a fact of life when you’re off-road. Whether you’re the kind of 4WDer to actively seek out the biggest hills and bog-holes, or you mis-judge a washout on the way to your favourite campsite, it’s gonna happen at some stage. No sweat, we almost always travel with mates right? No need to call for a Chinook as long as you’ve got the right 4×4 recovery gear to perform a snatch recovery. Thing is, snatch recoveries are only effective if the gear you’re using is correct, in good nick and being used in the right way. Otherwise, that ‘rubber band’ effect that occurs in a snatch recovery isn’t going to happen. Here’s the ways we’ve seen snatch recoveries go wrong countless times over the years, and how you can avoid these scenarios.

The number one cause of snatch recovery failure is old, over-used 4WD recovery gear. Recovery straps are wearing items – they only have a limited number of recoveries in them before they get old and start to fray. We’ve proven in the past that a worn, muddy bit of 4WD recovery gear like a snatch strap has its strength reduced by up to 50% – that’s scary when you think about it. Straps aren’t that expensive, especially when you consider the other option is being stuck in a boghole because your only one just snapped in half. You can look after your 4×4 snatch strap by soaking it in a bucket of clean, fresh water when you get home from a muddy trip, afterwards leaving it to dry in the shade, out of the sun’s harmful UV rays

If the first thing you reach for when you get stuck is your 11tonne snatch strap, then we’ve got a trick up our sleeves for you. There are huge forces involved in a snatch recovery – forces that get placed upon the recovery points. The idea is to minimize these forces wherever possible, and the simplest way of doing that is sweating it out on a shovel for five minutes first. Clear a path in front of the tyres and the diff, as much as possible. If you can clear out a ramp it will make the recovery gear process so much easier, and maximize the chance of success the first time.

Once you’ve hooked the 4WD recovery gear up then lay it out on the ground in A S-shape. This does two things – first, it ensures that there are no knots in the rope that have accidentally been formed when it was in storage, and the second is that it prevents any knots or tangles from forming during the recovery procedure. We’ve done testing in the past that showed up to a 35% reduction in strength from a single knot.

The trick to a proper 4WD snatch strap recovery is to get the towing vehicle’s speed right. Too much and you risk breaking components and putting completely un-necessary strain on both vehicles. Too little speed and it won’t be effective, making you think you need to back up and hit it much harder. A snatch strap recovery works when the rope stretches just enough to provide the recoil that plucks the bogged vehicle free, so second-gear low-range and about 2,000rpm take-off is usually the right gear selection and speed for a successful recovery. Communicate via UHF so each driver knows what’s happening, and the bogged vehicle should start driving at the same time the slack in the rope takes up.

Once the vehicles are moving, keep em moving until you’re completely free! We can’t tell you the amount of times we’ve seen the towing driver stop while the bogged vehicle was still spinning tyres. Then, the towing vehicle gets bogged too and it’s all chaos. So, keep going until the bogged vehicle’s driver calls over the UHF that he’s free, or blips the horn to signal the same.

WARNING! NEVER USE A TOWBAR AS A RECOVERY POINT

The single most vital bit of information that everyone should know, is that you should never, under any circumstance, use a towball as a recovery point in a snatch strap recovery. Towballs are designed to take a gradual load like when you tow a trailer, not the shock loading that a snatch recovery will impart on it. Please take this seriously, we can’t stress it enough. People have been killed when tow balls let go and get flung at high velocity through windscreens. Only ever use proper, rated recovery points and proper rated shackles stamped with a 4.75t rating. We’d rather leave a vehicle in a bog hole for another day than use a towball to snatch it out.

TREAT YOUR RECOVERY GEAR WITH RESPECT
The simple truth of the mattery is 4WD recovery gear needs to be treated with the respect it deserves. Incredible forces are placed upon all components in a snatch strap recovery, and if something goes wrong then it can go wrong in a big way, and bloody fast too. Keep all bystanders well away. Regularly inspect your 4×4 recovery gear for excess wear and damage, and do yourself a favour – if it’s looking like it is past its use-by date, then shout yourself some new recovery gear from Adventure Kings. It’s so incredibly cost-effective, especially when you consider the alternative is wearing a 4WD recovery strap to the face because you were standing too close to the recovery, and the 8 tonne snatch strap was five years old and worn out, and you’ve now got to explain to your boss why you can’t come into work and instead have to go visit the surgeons to see if they can sew your nose back on straight…