Tow Hook Bracket Alternative

[rockhardzj]

Another idea to add onto the cross brace would be to build it into a skid plate, add some more mounting points farther back, and that will let you slide up onto stuff easier.

[HOrnbrod]

AAAAAARGH, U B a hard man Pete. But not everyone has a rig like yours, custom bull bumper, and as you say, built the best way - over-built. These brackets now I think will do the job for most guys, thanks to the comments and suggestions from y'all (Eagle too! ). The old pharte really knows his stuff, and tells it like it is.

That's "olde" pharte, with an 'E'

 

I think the revised version is a lot better.

 

I'm a lot like Pete. I grew up when cars were over-engineered -- you could buy a Ford or a Chevy and (within reason) just drop in a bigger motor and take it to the drag strip. Today, cars (vehicles) are so precisely engineered to keep costs under control that if you add 5 horsepower you risk blowing a tranny or axle. There are no "frames," so the structure is engineered to be only as strong as necessary ... and to crumple in a pre-determined way in the event of a collision. None of this is geared to the kinds of stresses a vehicle might encounter under real off-road conditions.

 

Example: When AMC/Jeep offered the hidden winch option on the mid-80s XJs and MJs, they used a 5000 or 6000 pound Ramsey winch. Today, nobody would even think of putting less than an 8000 pound winch on an XJ, and I've seen estimates that the force needed to extricate a vehicle of around 4,000 pounds that's in mud up to the floor may be as high as 12,000 to 15,000 pounds.

 

That's why we want to overbuild. We're not concerned with CAFE (unless our trail rig is also our daily driver), but we are concerned with staying alive and not hurting one of our trail buddies.

 

Hey Eagle, glad to see you're still awake, and my apologies for forgetting the "e" in old. You're so right, cars were mostly over engineered back in the old days, BUT here's an exception. My first build when I was a dumb-a$$ high school kid and worked after school and weekends in a Sunoco station (in Rockville, CT BTW) was a 53 Ford coupe, in which we crap-canned the flathead and transplanted a 57 Olds J2 engine. Ran it a few times at the Colchester, CT dragway, and it basically snapped an axle every other run. Definitely Ford did NOT over-build in this case. Of course, with zero $$ to work with, my drag racing career was very short.

 

Also, the diff gear change still working well, and have almost 300 miles on it now. Maybe I should pop the camper top off and give it a go at our local strip. No one races in that class, and the Hesco stroker is running strong.

 

Naw, probably break an axle w. the D35................

 

Too old now for that - another oldE pharte. :cheers: