Making Up a Hi Lift Jack Winching Kit

[Michael]

I am following this thread as I am also looking for an alternative to a normal winch in an emergancy situation.
I dont want a winch on my Patrol as I have never needed one and only want something I can pack in when going out on a trail. Would be nice to actually use my Hi Lift jack for something.....

Has anyone had a look at the "bush winch"? Doesnt seem to hard to make one of those.

[Clem]

Clem the hi lift jack winch that i have seen works similar to a turfoil the problem is the stroke ...so even 5m of cable with a come along works well ...the travel on the jack is very small and needs to be ajusted problem comes when jack needs to be moved to new position. ....how do you hold it? ....mabe after all the extra weight ect a winch with 3 x 20m recovery straps is not a bad idea. ....you can even pull yourself back by passing cable under the car...

Tinus, the way it works with the Hi Lift jack is this: you have two pieces of chain, one fairly long (you can make it as long as you like, so a 5 m chain and a 5 m pull is quite possible, a grade 80 alloy chain with a 3.2 ton working load limit of 5 m length weighs 11 kg) and the other fairly short (say about 25 cm). The short piece has a grab hook on the end with a "mouth" correctly sized for the thickness of the long piece of chain.

The long piece of chain goes around the "foot" of the jack (which is to say the part that you normally place under the bumper for example when lifting a vehicle). The other end of that chain is attached to the strap, rope or other item that is attached to the vehicle that you wish to move. The short piece of chain goes on the end of the jack rack.

As you work the jack, it runs along the rack until you get to the limit of movement. Then you take the grab hook which is on the short piece of chain and attach it to the long chain. You then reverse the direction of the jack so as to have the short piece of chain and grab hook take up the tension. You can then safely remove the end of the long chain from the "foot", run the "foot" back to the end of the rack, reattach the chain and start winching again. As you winch the tension will be taken off the short chain, with the result that the grab hook will drop off.

In this manner you can successively pull, with a 1.2 m jack, sections of 1 m at a time without too much difficulty. The Hi Lift jack (I'm talking about the proper brand-name product, not the other copies) has a rated pulling load of 2.1 tons. It is not a great deal but probably enough. If though you combine it with two snatch blocks and a length of polypropylene rope of the correct working load rating (which is relatively cheap and easily carried), you have pulling power of in excess of six tons – more than most of the bigger electric winches.

It is certainly a heck of a lot more hassle than an electric winch but it has a certain degree of versatility which an electric winch does not have (unless it is of the kind mounted on a removable bracket which is capable of being also attached to the tow bar or other appropriate attachment point at the rear of the vehicle) and I imagine will probably be a lot cheaper all round.

I know about the theory of using an electric winch to pull a vehicle backwards by running the cable under the car. I have no doubt that some people have done it successfully but I reckon that by and large it is more theoretical than real and that also you run a very real risk of doing significant damage to the underside of the vehicle.

[Clem]

Has anyone had a look at the "bush winch"? Doesnt seem to hard to make one of those.

I have one of those items for my Land Rover and have used it for recovery purposes. They do work but you need to be careful with their as the cable can also wind up other than on the drum, causing damage to the vehicle. The other thing is that they are also fairly bulky to carry around. I am interested in selling my Land Rover set, if anybody is interested in buying. It is the brand name Huby Trax.