Old Rope-bungee tow rope

I would think that an old climbing rope would be a good tow rope. to pull cars out of the ditch, because the elasticity, would almost sling shot the car out.

Thoughts?

I have a ~30 foot section of old rope in my car for that reason. Its plenty strong. Good for tying things to the roof too.

I have also used an old climbing rope several times to pull out stuck cars or to tow a car to another location. I have a chunk of old rope in each car for just that purpose.

Works great, even when wet. (pulling vechicles out of a river)

Cool --It's going in the back then--

portercassidy wrote:Works great, even when wet. (pulling vechicles out of a river)

There is a problem with using something like this for towing. The amount of elastic energy that can be stored is much greater than a steel chain, for example. This might not be a problem for towing a car on the road, depending on what you attach it to. The problem comes not when the rope breaks but when the thing you are tied to breaks off. Say you have it attacked to a hook on on of the cars. When the rope is loaded and the hook breaks off there will be a lot of elastic energy stored in the rope and the hook will be flying toward the other car. We discussed this in my strengths of materials class and the professor cited a case where someone was hit in the back of the head and killed like this. When solving the chain vs nylon cord problem the chain was MUCH safer in terms of stored energy. There are other obvious things to consider such as the fact that a chain will not have that soft catch a rope has and will put greater forces on the two vehicles. So long story short I'm not saying not to do it, just be very aware of the dangers and where you attach it... I personally use a TeraFlex nylon tow strap for off-road recovery stuff attached directly to the frame.

I was crossing a river on the Virginia/West Virginia border one night. While I was waiting to drive the rest of the way to Seneca Rocks the next morning.
I had a young kid who had brought his jeep to check out some of the mud bogging I had told him about. I cautioned him to keep his RPM's up so he could make it across the river and not have his engine die out. Needless to say, he hesitated and so did his engine. The water quickly filled up his exhaust pipe, and the floor of his jeep.
While I was laughing, and he was getting a little upset at making one of his first stupid moves in an automobile, I hooked him up with an old climbing rope and pulled him out. No problem, except the knot that I tied in the rope could not be untied. The Jeep started and spit water out of the exhaust pipe for a few full minutes, but was ok in the end.

The Slingshot aspect of pulling with a dynamic rope is fully true. It can be made better by throwing your jacket or tarp over the top of the rope to take some of the energy away if it did snap. <--- What do you think

porter, the tarp trick may or may not work, but what you could do to try and prevent the rope from whipping at your vehicle, topped with a 4lb steel hook, is create lanyard out of small cord...as in, 2-3mm, maybe?

there would be two lanyards, one from the knot on each end of the tow rope. they would attach somewhere sturdy on the car as well. in the event of the rope snapping or the tow hook on the vehicle breaking off, the lanyard would take the brunt of the force built up in the rope, most likely breaking it. on the other hand, the lanyard alone would not be strong enough to break anything else off the car.

The jacket trick is commonly used in swift water rescue to mitigate the damage of a tensioned rope. However, I think that tying a backup is safer consider that the loads and impact of gunning a car are much greater.

I would for sure use something heavier that my jacket.

Cheers
Evan