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Rave About Your Rack Please do not post retail SPAM.

Topic Date User

Knots 29-Nov-2007 At 11:27:36 AM Ronny

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Ok, much as I like a bit of chockstone bitching, I'm going to break up the monotony with this short anecdote about how strong ropes are.

A few years back I had a 20y.o. 244 volvo, and on the way back from Araps one day it broke down (surprise surprise). So the next day my brother is towing me from my house to the mechanics and we've used an old piece of climbing rope doubled over. We get to a round-about, stop and then start to pull out into the intersection. Then from out of nowhere a car full of school age girls comes screaming through the intersection from the right. They obviously don't see the rope (or me frantically yelling and waving out the window) and decided to drive between my car and my brother's.
They realise really late, hit the skids and hit the rope at some (not insignificant - say 20kph maybe?) speed. I'm most worried about them running into one of us, so both me and my brother have the brakes on. They end up getting pulled up by the rope, with the front wheels of their car sliding/skidding slightly to the right as their car slid along the rope. But the rope didn't break.

Since then I've figured that if my old retired rope (admittedly doubled over) can take a car hitting it sideways while already under tension it was probably ok for me and some fatass belayer...

Ok, now back to the made up numbers and the nit-picking...