Tow ball for recovery point?

[White Stripe]

Seems like a bad idea to me...

Tow Dawg USA | Tecumseh OK

Tow Dawg USA, Tecumseh. 1,035 likes. Revolutionary ball hitch tow strap. Whether you're going into the backcountry or daily driving, the Tow Dawg should always be in your truck.

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[mouthpiece]

I can’t see the link but for many years, I have used the tow hitch for recovery, snatch straps and such with pickup truck all the way to gvw 54k dump trucks. I have a “D” ring on a receiver hitch on my truck right now and have used it many times and would not have a problem using it in my 18LC if needed.

 

[White Stripe]

I can’t see the link but for many years, I have used the tow hitch for recovery, snatch straps and such with pickup truck all the way to gvw 54k dump trucks. I have a “D” ring on a receiver hitch on my truck right now and have used it many times and would not have a problem using it in my 18LC if needed.

Nothing wrong with using a hitch. Using a tow hitch ball specifically is dangerous though.

 

[Mark W]

It is an incredibly bad idea. I am amazed at the ignorance. It is even worse than simply dropping a strap over the towball!

Mark...

 

[cruiserpilot]

3 minute search as to why that thing is dangerous, and just plain bad idea. I remember seeing the women hit in the face
on a video who was a spectator at an event. I think that video has been removed. Now, how do you go about removing
tow dawg?

youtube tow ball fail - Search Videos

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[Gun Runner 5]

Check out Ronny Dahl on YouTube. He has videos that will make you think twice about using tow balls.
He uses mannequins in his videos and trust me you wouldn't want to be one of the mannequins.

 

[Mark W]

A couple of the "don't do this" videos on you tube that deal with recoveries are pretty lame, inaccurate and misleading. For example, one where they are talking about how DEADLY WINCH CABLES CAN be... while using a snatch strap in the rigging??? And cutting through tow balls to make them break pretty much invalidates anything they think that they are demonstrating.

That however has no bearing on how terribly bad an idea it is to us a towball as a point to attach an elastic recovery strap. In this case, they actually add in a metal fitting that locks the towball to the strap, eliminating even the possibility of it not being propelled along with the strap as well as concentrating the stress on the neck of the ball far more than a strap would.

IF you only want to use it as a tow strap with no shock loading, like dragging a rig around at the shop, or loading a rig on a trailer... low load NO shock applications, than I would have no problem with it. If you ever tried to use it in even a semi-strenuous dynamic recovery that I was involved with, there would be an instant discussion/education and that strap would be put away. Or, one of us would immediately NOT be involved in the recovery.


Mark...

 

[mouthpiece]

So it’s ok to jerk 18,000 lbs of trailer and frontend loader down the road but the ball is only rated for downward force? I don’t buy that.
Or a 1/2” or 3/4” clevis pin is stronger than a 1” or 1 1/4” ball hitch shaft?
I’ve jerked a front tow hook off of my Chevy truck so I guess that chunk of steel is safer than what? A “D” ring on a bumper? Same thing to me.
Some of this doesn’t make any sense.

 

[cruiserpilot]

So it’s ok to jerk 18,000 lbs of trailer and frontend loader down the road but the ball is only rated for downward force? I don’t buy that.
Or a 1/2” or 3/4” clevis pin is stronger than a 1” or 1 1/4” ball hitch shaft?
I’ve jerked a front tow hook off of my Chevy truck so I guess that chunk of steel is safer than what? A “D” ring on a bumper? Same thing to me.
Some of this doesn’t make any sense.

Do a search, look up unsafe recoveries. The ball shafts aren't hardened, and its not that they break - it's the unguided
ball projectile when they do break that's the problem.

 

[Mark W]

The ball is in a single shear configuration, and subjected to twisting forces as well. The clevis pin ins in double shear and has no twisting force applied when it is loaded. Just because the tow hook on a chevy truck was unsafe and failed does not somehow negate the negatives of using a tow ball as a snatch point. When you say "jerking" a trailer down the road. I assume that you mean towing it. You can never exert the force on tow ball when towing that you can when you get a full bore running start on a snatch with a 30k elastic snatch strap. Two completely different situations.

Many tow balls out there on rigs are of unknown origin, age and condition. So are many hitch pins. That adds to thhe danger of failure. Do you really want to put 30K shock load onto a trailer ball and a 3 dollar hitch pin, bought at walmart 20 years ago, rusting, maybe loose, and made in a sweatshop of a village foundry in Vietnam in the first place? When you back up to the jeep stuck in the mud, are you sure that is not what you are dealing with?

Just because we are going on about the absurdness of this product does not mean that every other potential connection point for a snatch strap is therefore safe. I have seen, hell I HAVE ripped bumpers off or trucks when they were poorly connected/engineered. Dynamic recoveries can be dangerous. You have to be careful and you have to understand the forces involved and how the components will be loaded. A tow ball *might* take on hell of a tug. It might take a LOT of them. It might survive yanks that snap recovery straps. But there have been many cases when they have not. And when they fail they are particularly dangerous. People have been killed by them. Yes, people have also been killed by flying bumpers and even frame sections. But why purposely use an anchor point that is know to be problematic and dangerous when there are better options?

Mark...

 

[White Stripe]

A buddy of mine was at his folks farm while they were trying to pull out a truck out of the mud using a tractor with a strap hooked to the tow ball on the truck hitch. The ball snapped, hit the side of my buddies face below the nose at who know what speed. Shattered much of his face. He lived. Many months later he came back to work after lots of surgeries. Hitch ball steel seems to be very brittle I guess. Thus probably why it snaps when overloaded rather than bend.

 

[Capt. Jim]

The two forces acting on the ball are shear and bending. The weak point may not necessarily be the ball itself, but the threaded stud. The loop with the pin, as Mark says, has two load faces reacting to shear which reduces the shear factor by 50%. Bending is not eliminated but drastically reduced to be negligable leaving only the shearing as the critical failure. This configuration is significantly safer than the device in the video, which is an accident waiting to happen.

 

[cruiserpilot]

So I was watching Highway to Hell and the guy was recovering a couple of stolen Suzuki’s on the Fraser R mud flats. So a guy in the Cherokee comes in to help out and hooks the tow snatch strap over the tow ball. The first snatch strap broke. So they did a second bunch of pulls and recovered the two stolen Suzuki’s. The first they pulled backwards. It amazed me they’d put it on TV.
Had that guy tweeked the wheel that thing could have rolled in an instant. That would have made for good TV

 

[cruiserpilot]

Then they pulled the second Suzuki out, it wasn’t so bad and it was pulled forward. Still using the tow ball as a recovery point.
What I couldn’t believe is that they are a tv show about recovery and I’d have thought the editors would have realized they were endorsing a potentially dangerous idea.
This all being said, it wasn’t a really high load pull. But I just felt worth mentioning.