If you spend any length of time off road, sooner or later either you or your mate will need to be recovered from a sticky situation! Whether you are hauling out the winch or about to hook up a snatch strap, a rated tow point is essential to implement a safe recovery.
There is much confusion amongst 4WD’ers regarding tow points. Unfortunately, this has been exacerbated because many modern vehicles are fitted with generic tow points. Generic tow points are not vehicle specific and while rated to 10,000lbs (4.5t) or similar, mounting them is often done by the vehicle owner, who is not in a position to ascertain whether the mounting location can handle the loads exerted during a recovery.
Depending upon how and where these points are mounted, generic style tow points can be unsuitable for recovery situations, and have been seen to fail during recovery operations.
A well designed set of tow points will have 5 key points that make them worth the investment during recovery situations. These being:
• They bolt straight on to specific existing chassis holes with no chassis modifications required.
• Manufactured in High Quality Australian Steel.
• Include High Quality stamped rated bolts (grade 8.8 or higher).
• NATA Approved Testing to determine working load limit – and stamp rated WLL.
• Batch coded for testing and traceability.
When it comes time to use the Tow Points, you need to be confident that they will withstand the straight line pull during the recovery without causing damage to the points, vehicle or bystanders. Roadsafe Automotive Products have a range of tow points for 4WD’s that tick all of these boxes.
Roadsafe Tow Points undergo considerable research and development, involving the actual vehicle chassis. The Roadsafe RP-PAT04 GU4 point was designed in Australia, by Roadsafe, based on the actual vehicle, with CAD drawings and 3D printing for test fitting prototypes. This local design and sample development allowed for any bugs to be ironed out prior to any actual manufactured prototype for vehicle fitment, followed by destruction testing, and finally on-vehicle testing in ‘real life’ recovery situations.
Roadsafe use only high quality Australian steel in their tow point production, in addition to high quality (grade 8.8 or higher) bolts in the relevant hardware kits per point. Roadsafe also only use NATA accredited testing facilities on the tow points to determine the Working Load Limit, and are stamp rated accordingly. All points are batch coded for testing and traceability purposes.
Roadsafe’s wide range has recently been expanded to include tow points for the PJ/PK Ranger/BT50 Gen 1, PX Ranger/BT50 Gen 2 and RG Colorado/Dmax 12-on.
For additional information contact Roadsafe on 1300 651 551 or email sales@roadsafe.com.au or check out the website www.roadsafe.com.au
