My 1973 FJ40 came standard with two tow/recovery hooks on the front chassis rails, identical to those on every stock 40 I’ve ever seen. In my early, pre-winch days, I used them to recover numerous fellow drivers using either a heavy rope or a chain. (Hey, I said “early” days.)
When I graduated to a kinetic strap sometime in the 1980s, I remember wondering for the first time just how strong those hooks were. Whenever I asked anyone associated with Toyota, I was simply assured, “Oh, they’re strong enough, don’t worry.”
Later I installed a factory PTO winch, but only ever used single-line pulls with it. After swapping the original three-speed transmission for a four-speed, I never got around to cutting the new transmission tunnel for the lever or swapping in the PTO gear case on the new four-speed. So when I got a new Warn 8274 after a winch test at Overland Journal, I sold the PTO and went electric. By then I’d learned more about, and was employing, double-line pulls, using those hooks as the anchor for the doubled line. Again I found myself wondering about their capacity—and again when I asked around the community I was assured, “Oh, they’re strong enough, don’t worry.”
But, while I didn’t worry per se—by this time I’d subjected them to dozens and dozens of mild to severe pulls and yanks with zero negative effects—I was also doing a lot of instruction by this time, and emphasizing the absolute necessity of using rated equipment for recovery. And the one element in my kit that had no rating were those tow hooks.
Finally I decided to circumvent the issue and add a pair of rated bolt-on shackle mounts to the front bumper—but as I was shopping I chanced upon a set of 10,000-pound rated tow hooks, outwardly identical to the factory hooks, at Cool Cruisers of Texas.
The irony is, I have absolutely no way of knowing if these rated hooks are any stronger than the unrated factory hooks, or even if they are as strong. I contacted Cool Cruisers and was told that no, they had no idea of what, if any, safety factor was built into the 10,000-pound figure—that’s simply the way they get them from the supplier. I must assume that, given our litigious society, the rated hooks are at least good to their stamped capacity. And I can point to that stamp when a student asks me about their capacity—as happened a couple of times with the original ones, when all I could reply was, “Oh, they’re strong enough, don’t worry.”