‘Hope for the best, but plan for the worst’ is the mantra by which best-selling author Lee Child’s ultimate tough guy character Jack Reacher lives. As the active owners and users of 4WD vehicles we could take a leaf out of one of his books!
Get addicted to – as I found myself doing during the COVID-19 lockdown period – larrikin Aussie 4x4 adventurer Shaun Whales’ 4x4 Action trip videos (on YouTube) and you could be excused for thinking that heading off-road in your 4x4 is going to be a cross between a round of our own Central Zone Club Truck Challenge and a round of the Mainland Winch Challenge!
If Shauno and the lads are not winching through seemingly bottomless, bonnet-deep mud holes, or extolling the virtues of their ‘lockers’ (lockable front and rear differentials) as they climb impossibly steep and slippery rock steps, they are cracking out their spades and recovery boards to help their often hapless industry guests get going again after getting hopelessly bogged in soft beach or desert sand.
Entertaining
Slickly filmed and edited by a professional camera crew that goes along for the ride, the videos are entertaining with a capital E, and arguably make our activity look really appealing to the ‘Tuff Truck’ set.
To anyone else, particularly those with a heightened sense of mechanical sympathy, or who simply know the value of the $20+K they paid for their ‘family’ 4WD, they are literally like watching someone else having a car accident – fascinating and impossible to look away from, but equally, not something you’d ever willingly subject yourself to.
Fortunately – the last time I looked, anyway – it’s a free world. So you don’t have to break your ‘truck’ in two to have fun.
In fact, if you talk to operators of some of our most iconic ‘tag-along’ events, they will tell you that one of their definitions of a successful event is that ‘no-one gets stuck and no-one needs to be recovered.’
Self-sufficient
That doesn’t mean, of course, that these very same operators do not carry with them – and know very well how to use – a full complement of recovery gear, from winches through recovery boards, snatch straps and tow ropes.
Nor does it mean that the rest of us shouldn’t work through what I will call a ‘self-sufficiency’ audit to make sure we have the best possible opportunity to ‘get out of Dodge’ ourselves should things go pear-shaped when we are out enjoying NZ’s great outdoors in our 4WD.
As our own Richard Soult, of 4x4Explorer.co.nz says, “If you’re going to drive anything more difficult than a Grade 2 gravel track, you should be prepared to get stuck (therefore) the minimum recovery gear that you should carry is a tow rope or snatch strap, a shovel and a set of recovery boards.”
Also there’s little use going to the expense of buying a dedicated snatch strap if your 4WD doesn’t have something suitably strong to attach it to, front and back.
So at this juncture it’s a good idea to invest in some rated aftermarket recovery points.
To winch or not to winch
You will know that you have arrived at the point when you are serious about your 4Wheeling when you decide that you ‘need’ a winch. A winch, after all, is the ultimate self-recovery tool, and – short of throwing your truck down a bank and burying the nose at the bottom – should be able to get you out of most scrapes and ‘bugger, she’s stuck fast’ moments by yourself.
That said, a decent winch is still one of the most expensive single accessory items you are likely to add to your 4WD. And I’m pretty sure most buyers agonise over the purchase of one for months – perhaps even years – before taking the plunge.
Like insurance, a winch isn’t something you need every day – but the one day in 365 you do get stuck and need it will make you wonder why you waited so long to buy and fit one in the first place!
Lan-cor time
The same could well go for the Kiwi-made Lan-cor land anchor, a light-weight yet well-proven device which you attach your winch to when out in the open (and there are no handy trees to winch off!).
