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ATV Roll-Over Recovery KitWhat to bring and how to use itNovember 1/09 Written by Glenlivet Winches - front, rear, or both, are all very fine for recovering your quad from 'stuck' situations, but a rollover is a different thing. The winch can pull you forward or back, but when you are on your side or upside down, perhaps in a ditch or hollow, you don't want to do either of those things. Dragging the quad while upside down will not likely get you out, and will almost certainly cause damage to the expensive pod and handlebar items. In almost all cases you will need to roll back the way you went over. Happily there's an easy and inexpensive way to do this.  You can have a rollover recovery kit already prepared, and carried in a place which can be accessed when upside down and your main quad-box or bag is inaccessible. The kit can be carried in a fender bag for instance.The kit's main item is a hand winch, otherwise called a come-along. A very neat and tidy version of this tool is called the EZ 2000, and it is sold through many tool outlets for as little as US$20.00. This little gem is sized just right for ATV use, and can be configured as a 1000 lb. rated straight pull or used with its snatch block for a 2000 lb. rating. The 1000 lb. configuration is just fine for righting a flipped quad. The handle is detachable, making the overall unit easy to store in a fender pouch. The rest of the kit should consist of enough straps and small screw shackles to allow you enough flexibility to reach an appropriate anchor, and to rig the hand winch for you to recover your flipped ride. Straps can be doubled or wrapped on a sizable anchor to use up excess length. You can always make a strap shorter but you can't make it any longer!  This kit has two short 10" straps to go around frame members or similar points. A footpeg location for instance is ideal for righting a rolled quad, as it is strongly reinforced and central to the machine.So this kit consists of: - 2 10" straps - 1 10' strap - 1 50' strap - screw shackles - 1 EZ 2000 hand winch (come-along) Here's a circumstance where the recovery kit saved the day. 
 Photo 2: Here the 10' strap has been tripled in order to put the hand winch properly in it's working range, and at a convenient place to operate the lever. Photo 3: The quad has been pulled back to wheels-down and held there by the hand winch. The steering is turned to the downhill direction and the ATV lowered by the hand winch until it is stable enough to set the brake and unhook the recovery line. Photo 4: And then she's back on track. Total elapsed time, 15 minutes. Total damage, the mirrors had been knocked out of adjustment. :) What could have been a big problem becomes just another adventure in the days ride. The use of the come-along in this application is quite straightforward. You simply choose the place on the ATV that will best suit what you want to accomplish by pulling on it, and you find a suitable anchor that is closest to the location you wish to pull that part of the quad toward. The anchor must appear to be capable of resisting a pull of several hundred pounds of steady pressure without failing. When you are rigging your come-along, you must consider not only the anchor point and the attachment point on the machine and how far apart these are, you must also look at the machine where it lays and where you want it to be, and make a rough judgement of how much line will be pulled until the machine has been moved to the place and position you want it to be. You need to pull at least this much line off the spool of the come-along so that when your recovery setup is rigged, you will ideally be able to accomplish the deed with one winching episode. Failure or inability to do that means that after you have winched all you can with the come-along you will have to hold the machine in place with some other method (rig another strap between the machine and an anchor perhaps) and release the come-along in order to pull line off it's drum again and take another 'bight' to pull on the machine some more. Think ahead and pull enough line off the hand winch drum to get the whole job done. It doesn't really matter whether the winch's pulling line is attached to the machine and the strap from it's dorsal hook leads to the anchor, or whether the winch line is attached to the anchor and the strap to the machine, it will pull just the same. You may want to consider, though, that the lever you'll be pulling on works so that you pull away from the direction the hand winch drum's line leads. Since the 700-or-so pound ATV is most-likely to have rolled to somewhere low, and the recovery needed will most-likely require pulling it toward some anchor located higher than where it lays, you'll either be pulling the handle toward the uphill or you'll be pulling it down depending on which direction you hooked it up. This might be important if you are in a place where the hand winch must needs be in an awkward spot or where your footing may not be ideal. In this case it might be better to rig the hand winch so that you will be pulling the lever down from the direction of the anchor, rather than pulling it up away from the flipped quad. Not only will it be easier to do by a great deal, it will be safer because the action of pulling will be helping to hold you up and if your footing should slip the handle is immediate support for you. If none of that is a concern then why not rig it so you are pulling away from the machine? That way it's easier to see what you are accomplishing. If you are using a single line and hook to connect to your anchor and that anchor is a tree or stump, wrap the line fully around it's circle and hook back to the live line with as little deflection in the latter as you can get. Don't center the hook on the anchor! This will kink your line needlessly. If the anchor lays in such a way to your direction of pull that the line may slip along the tree or stump and be in danger of slipping off then you should pull enough line to make a second wrap around the anchor and then hook to your live line. It will not slip in this way. If you are using a strap around the anchor then likewise make a second wrap around the anchor and then bring the strap eyes together. The strap will not slip as long as you have two wraps around it. Do what you need with your straps to get the hand winch in the right location to use it. In the case above, the fully-extended hand winch line was too short to reach the ATV and the little strap around the footpeg, so a 10-foot strap was tripled up to make it little more than three feet long. This left the hand winch with enough line out to pull an amount needed to right the ATV. Another thing that can be done to 'shorten' a strap is to wrap it several times around a sufficiently large anchor (when it is on that end of the setup). Remember, you can always make a strap shorter but you can't make it longer! You don't need to bring a ton of stuff with you, just enough simple rigging with enough flexibility to get you out of a pickle. |
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