Lone Peak Labs | New Grab Handle winch pull test

Kyle and Tyler hooked our new grab handle prototype to a winch and a truck to see what breaks first. Watch the video above, then tell us what we should try to break next.

How should we test the Grab Handles next?

• Same test with a solid anchor and more force
• Shock test by starting with slack in the line
• Run over to the guys at HowNot2 over in North Bend! (Climbing gear test)

Grab handles get used and abused. So if we made a new version, we didn't want to just tell you it was tough. We wanted to try to break it on camera.

In the video, Kyle and Tyler from take the new handle out to the trucks. Tyler was nervous about hurting his truck, so the plan changed: his tire went on the truck, and Kyle pulled with his winch. The full video is the Lone Peak Labs Short on YouTube if the player doesn't load.

Material. The new handle is injection molded from a glass-filled nylon made by DuPont. As Kyle puts it in the video, it's the same kind of stuff they make Glock frames out of. We wanted something stiff and tough without going to metal.

Mounting. For the test, we bolted the handle to a scrap section of one of our camper uprights, the same kind of part it mounts to. Two small blocks sit inside to keep the load as even as possible across the mount.

Neither of us knew what to expect. Tyler said it best before the pull: "I honestly don't have a clue on how much this will be able to handle, but we're going to find out soon." We put a scale inline to read the force.

Here's what happened:

• The scale peaked somewhere around 700 lb ("700 change," per Tyler).
• The handle didn't break. Neither did the bolts.
• Instead, the load started dragging Tyler's truck, tire rotating and all.
• Kyle expected the bolts to pull through the socket, since the wall there is fairly thin. They didn't.

Short version: we ran out of anchor before we ran out of handle. Tyler also wouldn't hook it to his actual hitch, because he didn't want it to fling back and hit his "beautiful white taco." Fair.

We haven't been able to destroy the new grab handles yet, so this is now a series. Next time we're finding a sturdier mount and going again. Take one is in the video; take two is coming.

1. Tell us what to try next. Reply below with the test you want to see in part two. 
2. Tell us how you use grab handles. Climbing in, tie-downs, something else? Real use cases help us design the right test.