Recovery component and the gas

One tip Ken and I were shown on our recent 4WD training day was how to connect two or more snatch straps.  Brief explanation.  A snatch strap is a strong fabric strap about 3” wide and 7-9 metres long.  It will stretch under tension much like an elastic band.  The purpose of the snatch strap is to recover a vehicle stuck in sand, mud, etc.  One end is tied to the stuck vehicle and the other to a recovery vehicle.  The recovery vehicle then drives away stretching the strap snatching (pulling) the stuck vehicle.  One potential hazard with doing this is only using one strap.  There is a risk the recovered vehicle will ‘spring’ out of the ‘hole’ and hit the recovery vehicle.  The instructor explained it was better to increase the distance between the two vehicles by using a second strap.  Very interesting but I only had one snatch strap purchased from Aldi.  That all changed when Outback Armour gave me a complementary recovery kit with my recent suspension purchase. 

This is how the instructor explained the snatch straps should be connected.

Each strap has a loop at each end.  The straps are laid out parallel to each other and opposing loops are passed through the opposite loop.  In the drawing below the blue snatch strap loop passes through the red loop at the right end and the red through the blue loop on the left.  The straps are them pulled apart.

 

The straps are them pulled apart.

Yes it’s a very rough drawing.  The two loops join in the middle.  Obviously the loops will form a very tight knot during the recovery.  To prevent this rolled magazines are inserted between the two loops.

It will look something like this with the grey vertical bar representing the magazines

The instructor stressed the importance of using the correct type of magazine for this task.  Consequentially I’ve used two copies of Jan’s “People’s Friend’ magazine.

According to the instructor you can also use  Woman’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, House & Garden, Vogue, Elle and Playboy.  OK I’m joking about the last one.  Under NO circumstances should you use ‘Wheels, 4WD Action, Hunting & Fishing, Esquire or Men’s Fitness’.

My two copies of People’s Friend have been tightly rolled together and bound with Duct Tape.  It now resides inside the recovery bag

The gas instant hot water burner had once again started playing up.  It wouldn’t ignite if the shroud was fitted to the unit.  I got onto eBay and purchase a new high voltage module which arrived today

The old module.

It was a reasonably simple task to exchange the modules.  Whilst it’s early days, the heater appears to again be working with the shroud back in place.