RV FEATURE
There are any number of ways to recover
a bogged vehicle, from a bullbar-mounted
winch to traction boards, to digging around
and under a wheel and stuffing bracken
underneath. Sure, there are other creative
methods, but now a new piece of equipment
travels in my boot: the BOG OUT.
This clever device essentially transforms a
bogged wheel or wheels into a winch. Made
of two main lines connected by a series of
‘rungs’, the BOG OUT can be connected to
the bogged wheel by a special tether (using
a sheet bend knot). The other end is tied
to a suitable anchor point, such as a tree
or ground anchor. Then, as acceleration is
gently applied and the bogged wheel rotates,
it ‘grabs’ the BOG OUT, which ‘captures’ the
engine power as it wraps around the wheel
and pulls it to firmer ground.
Each BOG OUT has a 3.5-tonne
breaking strain, but using two – one
on each wheel – increases that to a
massive seven tonnes.
“Most vehicles can only exert about
two tonnes onto the tyres, which
frankly would be an enormous
amount of torque, but far less
is actually required,” BOG OUT
inventor Paul Aubin said. “Every
vehicle has a beautiful winching
system built in – a spinning tyre. Why
not use it?”
One of BOG OUT’s benefits: it requires
much less energy than a traditional
winch; in fact, while a winch requires
”WE MANAGED WITH AS
MUCH MUD AS WE COULD
FIND IN MID-SPRING”
an onboard secondary battery, the BOG OUT
uses the problem – a spinning wheel – as the
solution.
“A standard winch pulls from a higher spot,
pulling the car down when you actually need to
come up out of the bog, so you have opposing
forces,” Paul said. “BOG OUT pulls the lowest
point possible, the bottom of your tyre, which
makes it very efficient.”
We would’ve liked to have been bogged to the
sills in order to really put the Bog Out through
its paces, but we managed with as much mud
as we could find in mid-spring.
With our vehicle going nowhere, we acquainted
ourselves with the device – its bright orange
colour gives it maximum visibility. There are
two methods for attaching it to a wheel – which
one you use will depend on clearance through
the wheel – but both are said to be equally
effective.
On first use, we found the BOG OUT to be a bit
fiddly but I can see that with a bit of experience
there would probably be less mucking around
with a BOG OUT than a conventional winch. We
used a tree as our anchor point, and while you
can connect BOG OUTs together for additional
range, we used a winch extension strap,
connected to the BOG OUT via a soft shackle.
gorv.com.au
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