FREE OFFER -- Harbor Freight 1/4" wire rope and hook

Well it was harbor freight.....

Yes, it was rather crappy. Not weak, as such, just not convenient to use due to unfriendliness of the wire rope. I did keep the hook, however.

The story is that I got some end of year money and decided to upgrade to a super flexible stainless wire rope, and to a better hook that I already had.

Man, I would NEVER throw away still-useful rigging gear; the disabled vehicle is always 10' too far away for my winch cable to reach or something similar. Maybe the best use for it is as a loaner when you just know the turkeys will wreck it yanking their trucks out of the mudhole.

I do not think that this 1/4" wire rope is suitable for car recovery.

My neighbor has 3 short pieces of the braided yellow/orange tow rope from WalMart hanging from the rear of his Polaris. It wasn't even suitable for 800 Lb ATV recovery.

I think that this applies to all Walmart goods. I have that rope too. I use it for miscellaneous light duty uses.

Their 2" wide yellow ratchet straps aren't bad. I can crank in a measured 1000 Lbs of tension by leaning real hard on the handle, enough to pull my truck right through a snowbank (very slowly). I had one loaded to 3000 Lbs while pulling down the entangled oak tree being cut up in the sawmill photo:

I had a much worse experience. I had two of their straps holding down a bed cover on my old Dodge.

On one of them, a hook mysteriously fell off, without any undue strain, etc. I threw away both.