That was in the late seventies. As you can tell, I've been tied up for years in the rope field!
The third best tow rope is without doubt a three strand nylon one. It's the strongest of all the normal man-made fibre ropes, but what's more important it's got some give in it. So when you are towing someone on-road you won't get all that nasty jolting that you get with a polypropylene 'dead' rope. Nylon rope is always white in colour and has a smooth surface.

Towing

Perhaps this is a good time to explain how to tow another vehicle on-road, or off-road come to that.

Firstly, the maximum distance between vehicles when being towed on road is 4.5 Metres, so it's appropriate to have a 4.5 M tow rope. Ideally, all tow rope should have a soft eye spliced loop in each end with no less than five 'tucks' to create the best possible splice. As a matter of interest all the ropes that our shop supplies has their loose ends 'dogged'. This prevents the splicing coming apart however badly the rope is misused.

Obviously adequate towing points are essential - tow hook on the recovery vehicle, shackleable point on the vehicle being towed.

Talking of shackles, if towing or recovering another heavy 4x4, always use no smaller than a 3/4" shackle, with a 3/4" pin. This size shackle has an approx Safe Working Load (SWL) of approx 3 tonnes, which equates to a Minimum Breaking Load of about 18 tonnes. Put it this way, I've never bent a 3/4" pin yet!

Always carry with your tow rope a 3/4" D shackle, a 3/4" large Bow shackle and for hooking up smaller ordinary cars, a 1/2" D shackle. With this combination you can tow anything.

Good communication between the two vehicles is extremely important whether by sight, hand signals and the driver behind anticipating ahead, as well as closely following his mates brake and indicator lamps in front. If you have CB communication in both vehicles - use it!

Towing vehicle should have headlights on. Towed vehicle, side lights. By rights the towing vehicle should have a reflective sign up front say 'TOWING' and the towed vehicle having a reflective sign on the rear saying 'ON TOW'. Make the 'dead vehicle' safe, gearbox in neutral, steering lock free and driver aware that the brake servo will not be working.

Towing vehicle takes up the slack and proceeds when clear to go and aims to to maintain a steady speed of probably no more than 25-30 miles per hour.

It is very important for the person being towed to keep the rope in front taught at all times. If the rope starts to go slack, then gently apply the foot brake to hold back. The aim is never to let the rope fall to the ground until the journey is concluded. If you can do this you will avoid any vicious snatching and reduce the risk of breaking a weaker rope. This usually happens when the towing vehicle reaches slower moving traffic, comes up to a road junction or proceeds down a hill. As the recovery vehicle starts to pull away from you, come off the footbrake. This way you will have a reasonably pleasant journey without too many frighteners.

A nice large white nylon rope is obviously a good choice, a bonus being, it shows up well between the vehicles. Be very careful when you pull out of a junction turning right across the traffic. Try and plan your journey ahead so you don't have nasty blind junctions, as you could risk some idiot driving too fast around a corner to your right and possibly driving between you. Oh, it can happen!

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