How do I strap my TJ to a trailer?

If there be enemies here they will be simple children.

You have never seen a healthy, properly cared for strap break from simple attachment. Anything you are describing is nothing more than user abused and neglected equipment. You obviously have no idea of the forces/impact it would take to cause the failure of one of these straps.

Again with the childish name calling...from those who formulate a plan of action based on a "3 strap" theory lol.

Ask yourself why is it the quoted attacks and insults magically disappeared from the thread.

I don't know if you watched the bleepin jeep video but he shows a good example of one strap breaking and the effects of that happened with an extreme scenario of the trailer on it's side. I understand your position that the straps won't normally break and it's probably very rare. However, all you need is slack on one of the four straps and effectively the vehicle isn't secured. All 4 straps rely on the tension of all the other straps to work effectively when you cross strap it. On a straight strapped vehicle you can lose one strap (or the tension of one strap) and the vehicle is still secured.
 
Using your rationale explain how it is any different with the straps inline? All methods will work as long as all straps are intact...difference being straps crossed will better prevent side to side movement.

Yes. If all straps are intact then everything will be fine. With straps crossed, if one breaks or otherwise fails there will be enough slack in the remaining strap to allow your vehicle to move enough to one side for it to fall off of your trailer/transport vehicle. Example: if your straps are crossed at the rear of your Jeep, and one of them breaks, say the one attached to the right side of your Jeep & the left side of your trailer, then there is nothing to prevent your Jeep from moving toward the left & eventually off of the trailer. Try this with a model or toy car & trailer/transport. Also look at the many YouTube videos that are available on this subject.
Stay safe.
 
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Broken strap scenario aside, 4 straps of the same design are going to stronger at preventing fore and aft movement than 4 crossed. Fore and aft movement is much more of a concern trailer than side to side. Braking, rear ended, acceleration. The trailer, the vehicle pulling it and the road your on all were designed with fore and aft movement in mind.



Unless you plan on rallying with your trailer..
 
Poorly worded reply. What you don't understand is none of those cross straps have lost an ounce of their rating until a force is applied. If you want to use the rigging ratio's of 45 degrees you theoretically might lose 30 percent of the gross capacity of a strap. Using these in a cross configuration with straps rated at say 10K you are well within safety limits and have gained more stability at the same time...more bases covered from the start.

Please stop with the "broken strap" scenario. You can't break one of those straps and nobody here has ever seen one break. This three strap possibility/impossibility has grown wearisome. You might lose a strap because it was improperly installed...that's on the user, not the straps fault. You can't predict the forces you will encounter so why not cover as many bases as possible? Cross strapping does this.

You cross the safety chains at your trailer hitch for a completely different reason. The chains are crossed in order to cradle the coupling on the trailer in the event that the hitch fails in order to prevent the coupling from falling any lower & possibly hitting the road surface.
 
Broken strap scenario aside, 4 straps of the same design are going to stronger at preventing fore and aft movement than 4 crossed. Fore and aft movement is much more of a concern trailer than side to side. Braking, rear ended, acceleration. The trailer, the vehicle pulling it and the road your on all were designed with fore and aft movement in mind.



Unless you plan on rallying with your trailer..

You don't know what forces or the direction of them will come from when things go bad. Why not try to cover as many bases as possible?
 
You cross the safety chains at your trailer hitch for a completely different reason. The chains are crossed in order to cradle the coupling on the trailer in the event that the hitch fails in order to prevent the coupling from falling any lower & possibly hitting the road surface.

Most people already understand this, but it is not the current topic.
 
While I would agree that straps themselves don't normally break however, mounting points or connections do. Look at any extraction with cables, ropes or straps. More often it's the mounting point or a connection that breaks or tears off that will create the havoc. It's rare when securing a load on a trailer but I would not count it out.
 
While I would agree that straps themselves don't normally break however, mounting points or connections do. Look at any extraction with cables, ropes or straps. More often it's the mounting point or a connection that breaks or tears off that will create the havoc. It's rare when securing a load on a trailer but I would not count it out.

Lets take your statement at face value. When said points failed you knew it right away. Why would anyone continue to use a broken system further?

What if...what if two straps break? What if all four fail? This "what if" rational never ends and is a poor starting point. The truth is no healthy strap is going to break under normal usage and I contend if any of you have seen a healthy strap break it had to be under extreme circumstances...and you realized it immeadiately. Using worn or faulty equipment and executing poor judgement blows the conversation completely out of the water.
 
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You cross the safety chains at your trailer hitch for a completely different reason. The chains are crossed in order to cradle the coupling on the trailer in the event that the hitch fails in order to prevent the coupling from falling any lower & possibly hitting the road surface.

That only works if the slack in the chains is tight enough to prevent the tongue from hitting the ground. What everyone who employs the crossed chains overlooks is the very simple test. Hook them up the way you plan to run it and then use a floor jack under the tongue to lower the tongue to the ground and then gently back the tow rig up. You'll be surprised to learn that there is enough slack in most of them to allow the very thing you are trying to prevent.

That and if the attachment points to the tongue for the chains are stout enough to hold crossed in that scenario, they are also strong enough to hold them going straight forward. I run mine straight with just enough slack for full turning and have tested them by lowering the tongue with a floor jack to make sure the tongue does not contact the ground when the momentum shoves the tongue under the rear bumper.

The point is just because you cross, doesn't mean it will work if you haven't tested it.
 
You don't know what forces or the direction of them will come from when things go bad. Why not try to cover as many bases as possible?

You definitely know which forces you will encounter more frequently and that is fore and aft. I have a copy of a quote below from what apparently is an expert on the matter saying crossing straps do not protect as well in fore and aft situations. So why would I use a setup that is inferior to forces I will see a majority of the time I am towing just to compensate for a situation that has a much lower chance of happening?


If you have a single broken strap there is no limiting factor. Inline does poorly in side motion because of the angles involved. Crossed might not be as effective as inline in fore/aft motion, but it is hands down better side to side simply because of the angles involved.

Envision a properly secured vehicle on a trailer that has been turned on it's side...which method do you really believe is going to better limit said vehicle from slipping sideways? You can't get enough tension inline to equal what crossed/angled can withstand.
 
While I would agree that straps themselves don't normally break however, mounting points or connections do. Look at any extraction with cables, ropes or straps. More often it's the mounting point or a connection that breaks or tears off that will create the havoc. It's rare when securing a load on a trailer but I would not count it out.

If you tow on a trailer, then you like the rest of us stop and check the straps after a few miles to see how they are doing. We would leave the lake bed and stop before the highway after a few miles of dirt road to check them. Regardless of how I tightened them, they were always looser to some uncomfortable degree. I always had to tighten one or more before getting on the highway.

The reality is under normal conditions, it really doesn't take much to keep the rig in place. I know this due to how mine is set up. I have side walls on the trailer and I suck the front tires up against a front wall and then go over the tires with straps that go through semi flat bed strap winches. On the way home, I tend to be lazy and not strap the rear tires down with over the tire straps. Not once have the rear tires moved to touch the side walls on either side and I've towed home like that many times. The grippy bed liner on the trailer floor may help with that but I always looked for it to move some and they never have.
 
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You definitely know which forces you will encounter more frequently and that is fore and aft. I have a copy of a quote below from an expert on the matter saying crossing straps do not protect as well in fore and aft situations. So why would I use a setup that is inferior to forces I will see a majority of the time I am towing just to compensate for a situation that has a much lower chance of happening?

I early on cited a situation which is not all that uncommon. Do you know how much capacity of a strap is lost due to angles? I do, and it is minimal in the grand scheme. Why would you knowingly handicap yourself with other methods?

Btw, most that employ inline strapping are in fact using angles already so that becomes another non-issue.
 
The owners crew goes out with 3 to 4 cars in the trailer. I asked he says, straight. Says the owner likes crossed and is to lazy to check them and every time he's done it they open the trailer to a car against the wall
 
The owners crew goes out with 3 to 4 cars in the trailer. I asked he says, straight. Says the owner likes crossed and is to lazy to check them and every time he's done it they open the trailer to a car against the wall

That is the downside to crossed. If one can work loose, then that loosens the other 3. That is the nature of long angles, it only takes a small amount of slack to allow a whole lot of movement.
 
That is the downside to crossed. If one can work loose, then that loosens the other 3. That is the nature of long angles, it only takes a small amount of slack to allow a whole lot of movement.

Is there an opnion ?? of the over the wheel straps
 
The owners crew goes out with 3 to 4 cars in the trailer. I asked he says, straight. Says the owner likes crossed and is to lazy to check them and every time he's done it they open the trailer to a car against the wall

Something wrong with that story or the wording. If cross strapped properly you will never find a car inside a trailer that has shifted against a wall. See my previous post citing a wreck...the trailer was at a 35 degree angle when we opened the door to inspect the car and it had not shifted more than 1/2".
 
Is there an opnion ?? of the over the wheel straps

Depends. They are harder to do because you need good tie down points front and rear of each tire. That's a bit much for folks to do so they don't.

I prefer to restrain by the tires because I don't like taking a 2 ton rig, stretching the axles out as far away from each other as is possible and then bouncing the rig down the road against all the control arm joints. That is not good for them because it adds a bunch of premature wear. Plus that movement is rough on the straps.

The other issue is all of our tie down methods require that the tires don't lose air pressure. It is a bit more critical with wheel nets.
 
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I early on cited a situation which is not all that uncommon. Do you know how much capacity of a strap is lost due to angles? I do, and it is minimal in the grand scheme. Why would you knowingly handicap yourself with other methods?

Btw, most that employ inline strapping are in fact using angles already so that becomes another non-issue.

So the slight angles from us straight strappers also help mitigate some side to side action based on what you just said. Why would I still cross them then if my slight angle works to help reduce side movement if that would further compromise my fore and aft protection?



You keep mentioning how much load capacity being lost due to angles is minimal but you won't provide the math you use to come to this conclusion. The greater the angle of the strap the quicker that strap can reach its WLL. So why risk that if as you say the goal being to reduce your handicap as much as possible for all possible scenarios?