Lately, self-recovery has become a topic of much interest to me, due mostly to the problems I had with my TW200: Yagi, a couple of weeks ago. LINK.
This morning, I decided to actually try and use the "Come Along Tool" or Cable Winch Puller Tool that I've been carrying in the VRRV for years. Simple tool, lots of finger pinching potential and I'd never used it till today. In fact, had to Youtube the procedure to get it to "lock" and be ready to winch!
It took me some time to figure out how to lay out and adjust the two ratchet straps and one cam buckle strap used in conjunction with the come along tool.
As this was practice (The Ural is working just fine for a change), the straps I used were the ones I normally tie down the rig onto the trailer. I think I need to use heavy duty locking carabiners for safer operations in the future. Open hooks aren't safe if they fail!
As I was by myself, there wasn't someone holding the front tire pointing straight, so the third cam-buckled strap was used. First on the left side of the handle bar to keep the front tire from turning right as it negotiates the ramp hinge; then on the left side of the handle bar to keep it from drifting right. (you'll see in the video)
All in all, the first attempt took a bit of time, the second and third attempts went much faster. Practice makes perfect right?
The come along required little effort to winch the rig along, up the ramp and onto the trailer. Way less effort than using the z-drag system I'd recently bought for use with Yagi, my TW200. (more on this z-drag system in future post).
The z-drag system actually worked to drag the Ural up onto the trailer as well though, just requires more muscle and time.
The video is run at 4x normal speed to hopefully prevent boredom on your part.
Now I feel more confident in being able to load a non-functioning Ural sidecar rig (estimated weight 800 lbs +) onto a trailer by myself. Sure, a powered winch would make it even easier of course but it's what I have for now.
A manual boat trailer winch would work as well but would have to be anchored permanently, as is a powered winch. The come along tool allows some flexibility in other scenarios. Not to mention, I've been spending too much money lately on stuff.
And, as you probably noted in the video, I need new tires for the sidecar rig!
3 comments:
Since you don’t need the mechanical advantage from the snatch block, you can remove it and winch it up twice as fast. I didn’t watch the video but I’ve use a come-along every time I load the Ural onto the trailer. Since my trailer is narrower, more control is needed.
Agreed, RichardM, I did try the come along with the z-drag system, took too long. The z-drag, which I assume is what you meant by snatch block, can do the job by itself too. I bought it to allow me to pull the tw200 out of trouble while sitting on the tw to keep it upright.
I’m thinking of mounting a boat winch to the trailer to simply loading…
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