Buying rated chain

[biosurf]

Just ordered my off road kit to be able to use my cheapbay hi-lift as a winch (from arbil4x4 who were the cheapest I could find) but need to get some rated chain to run between the vehicle being recovered and the hi-lift.

Any ideas? Found lots of places that sell chain but harder to find some thats rated. Ideally it would be somewhere that has actual branches as the postage on 20' of chain could be nasty

On a different topic, just got back from my first greenlaning excursion in the dark. Great fun and certainly gives a different edge to it!

[nero279]

I'd stick with fibre/webbing slings if i was you.

Chain wise you'll be looking at Grade 80 (or 100 but at even more of a price) to get rated chain anywhere. 10mm dia grade 8 is rated to 3100 kg and weighs in at 2.2kg/metre and around £18/metre. meaning 20' gonna come in at 13.5kg and £110, without any fittings.

Compared to two shackles and a 2t 6m strop for around about £35.

I can get either if you want me to, but don't get much discount anymore.

[The Lovely Boyo]

Just ordered my off road kit to be able to use my cheapbay hi-lift as a winch (from arbil4x4 who were the cheapest I could find) but need to get some rated chain to run between the vehicle being recovered and the hi-lift.

Any ideas?

Well, yeah. As Ian said, stick to straps, coz if you are going cheap, chain will hurt you one day.

You really are only as strong as the weakest link.

Webbing won't cut you in half like a stray chain/cable (but will hurt).

But I'm glad to see that you have the Grin...........

[Gamedawn]

You can't use straps with a hi-lift winch setup because by the time you've put loads of effort into the hi-lift to stretch the strap, you've reached the end of travel on the jack and not moved the vehicle.

Most of the places selling 4x4 recovery equipment sell lengths of chain or if you want somewhere local, look in the yellow pages for a company doing industrial lifting equipment.

[biosurf]

I agree in principal about avoiding chain and for that matter, avoiding metal as much as you can in recovery. However, using a hi-lift as a winch I can't see how you can use straps as you need to jack one jack length, then take up the slack you have just jacked, hold the load, reattach then continue jacking etc.

Without using something like a linked chain I can't see how you can do this.
Unless you had a very wide range of different length straps. Also I guess they would need to be lifting strops rather than anything with nylon in as the jack would spend all its effort taking up the stretch in the rope.

Alternatively of course I could use a Tirfor (which is more weight but I'll get one when I see one cheap enough) or a front electric winch (less versatile in terms of direction but dammit I'm having one as soon as I can afford one) but for now its the hi-lift


thanks for the offer Nero and for lots of chain info

[BioHazard]

agricultral suppies .......hmmmmm.....is there a SCATTS near you , i know there is on at godalming .......



ah there is on at redhill too