See why a cheap tow hook can be risky

914Driver said:

When I had the Samurai I joined a local 4X4 club.  Every spring they have an "Offroad 101" day where you go on trail and get refreshed on towing, pulling yourself out etc.  Tow strap good, tow HOOKS are banned, they fail way before the strap would and who wants a half pound projectile headed their way?  

Also drape a towel over the strap, if it breaks this will slow down its flight considerably.

Do they distinguish between loops and hooks? What's considered unacceptable and acceptable? This is what I have on my Rover, would it be accepted? Obviously, it's not going anywhere.

I usually have the strap inside the receiver for the hitch with the pin going through it, and use big D shackles with real working load ratings at the ends. I have seen a strong move to "soft shackles" from my recovery trainer friend. But that's for much higher loads than dragging a little racecar out of a level gravel trap.

I've got a screw-in tow loop that looks like the one hammered here sitting on my workbench, I'm going to take a look at it. One thing to realize about Aliexpress  (the headwaters for Amazon/eBay crap) stuff is that there can be a big variation in actual quality across sources even if everything looks the same.

drock25too said:

350z247 said:

My shins certainly prefer the straps.

Years ago I bought an old Buick from a guy who had welded a homebuilt trailer hitch to the frame. It stuck out about a foot behind the bumper. I was sitting in a parking lot wait for my wife one day when I felt the back of the car move. I looked in the mirror to see a guy rolling around on the ground. I got out to check on him and he mumbled, berk you, and hobbled off. 

Of course hoops are preferred, their issue is mostly hooks on the strap (projectile) but everything goes through Tech.

Just for fun, I grabbed the tow hook off my bench. Looks like the one abused with the hammer at first glance, with the same loop design.

Steel extension, male thread into the loop, larger diameter threads. Not sure it's it's stainless or not, I suspect not but there is no sign of corrosion. It is magnetic. You're not going to pop the head off this with one hammer blow. Makes it tough to judge these by the looks. This one sells for $55 which is more than the Amazon special but considerably less than the sponsored unit. 
 

You should do your own hammer test!

Thanks as always Chris, Tom, Tim, GRM for continuing to be a very valuable asset to those of us who don't already know everything!!!     Having a reputable, proven source for quality, unbiased (relatively) information has been immensely helpful in my enjoyment of motorsports (particularly track days)! I use the 034 tow hooks (F/R) and the first thing you notice is how robust and well-engineered they are!

Chinese or increasingly stuff Chinese companies have made in Vietnam are 'engineered' by people with no engineering training or experience. The stuff is designed by someone with enough gumption to get a pirated seat of CAD software and scrape together enough computer to run it.  The cheap-o parts in this vid don't have radiused transitions, a hallmark of Chinese design which of course leads to gargantuan stress risers and kaboom.  Container ship after container ship of Injection molded parts suffer the same issue.  Even if a CAD person in China knows better and adds radi in the right places, chances are the machinist or tooling person skips the added step as too time consuming.  The parts never come back from the 'brands' so there is no reason to make them right.  Product liability issues outside of China have no reach into the Chinese legal system.  Nobody cares.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Hammering it is comparable to having to tug the car from the side to pull from a sand trap.

I wish they would have tried towing with them. It would have been interesting to see if it actually holds up to getting out of a gravel trap.

Seems to me that leaving a tow hook on a while driving on the street is not necessarily a good idea.

No one wants to hit a pedestrian, but accidents can happen. Hitting someone with a tow hook would be signicantly worse than doing so without the tow hook.