Choice of Rope

In my earlier days of Land Rover recovery there was not much choice, you used what you had! My rope was sisal, purchased from a nearby ex WD dealer by the coil. I found a piece of it the other day when clearing out the garage. Having measured it's size, I've just worked out that it's Minimum Breaking Load is only 4 tonne. No wonder ropes never lasted long in those days!

When choosing a rope you must decide what you are going to use it for, i.e. there's a big difference between swinging the children, tying loads on the roof rack and pulling a stuck One Ten out of a bog.

Manila and sisal ropes are fairly cheap and for the first two uses above it will be fine, but for towing or recovering vehicles between two and three tonnes, think again.

Another sound reason for discounting manila or sisal is that they don't like being stored wet as this leads to deterioration of the natural fibres of the rope. It will also smell horrible.

The second best rope is a polypropylene rope made from fibrillated film tape. This man-made raffia type fibre is in fact a twisted 'tape' as you get in baler twine. Normally light blue in colour, has a slippery surface and is quite cheap. I don't like it for on-road towing as it has no 'give' in it. In other words, it is a 'Dead' rope. Polypropylene ropes also come in 'Monofilament', which is made up of single filaments enlikened to fishing line. This is more expensive, very slippery and difficult to handle.

Splicing at its best, five 'tucks' with loose ends 'dogged'

If requiring a cheaper rope for whatever reason, I suggest a Staple polypropylene tow rope. It has a 'hairy' surface similar to sisal, easy to grip, not too expensive, but still has no 'give' in it. The colour is always white. If you prefer a 'Dead' rope, then this is the one to have.

Polyethylene rope is similar to monofilement polypropylene and is normally orange in colour. It is no good whatsoever in large diameters for towing as it is very slippery and awkward to handle. However, in much smaller sizes, in an 8 strand versions, we supplied thousands of tow ropes for the 'car field'. This was in fact our 'Easytie' tow rope - the simple to splice rope that we had on Tomorrows' World.

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