Offroad-Express

How can I go about fitting tow hooks to the '95 5 door Vitara? Will be getting bars eventually but will have to fit hooks to it in the mean time but it looks a little trickier than I thought :scratch: . Any advice, pointers or pictures will be greatly apprieciated. Thanks.

Matt.

Hi my front one is bolted up in side the front cassie rail and rear is bolted to side of tow bar frame seem to work ok.

all i have done till my bull bars are built which will hopefully be this weekend is welded some 6mm plate to the factory towing eyes and bolted the hooks to them. There are also people that do national trials that have done this and it is plenty strong enough. when you have built your bars just cut the factory eyes off.

dvszuk wrote:all i have done till my bull bars are built which will hopefully be this weekend is welded some 6mm plate to the factory towing eyes and bolted the hooks to them. There are also people that do national trials that have done this and it is plenty strong enough. when you have built your bars just cut the factory eyes off.

Oh really? You wouldn't mind posting a couple of pics so I can see what you have done exactly. That would be great. Thanks again.

Matt

sure i try and get some pics up over the weekend.

Awesome!! Thanks alot buddy.
:thumleft:
Matt

Here's one setup i have previously used ...
Similar to CCVC requirements (which are easily avaliable on the net)

91 Vitara Front

It has a 3mm? Box section chassis
Put a 5mm thick steel plate ?140mm long inside the chassis, with 3 nuts welded to it started out as same width as chassis, but notched pieces to fit round stuff so bit thinner now...

5mm Stainless Plate ?140mm Long on the bottom outside the chassis, roughtly 50mm wide or just wider than chassis... 3 holes in it

Standard 10,000lb rated tow hook, used bolts that came with it ?12mm (stamped hi-tensile) and spring washes to bolt through 1st two holes on hook/outside plate/chassis/inside plate/nuts (creating a sandwhich construction)
3rd shorter ?12mm hi-tensile bolt & spring washer bolted through the outside plate/chassis/inside plate/nut

Whole thing mounted a reasonable distance from the end of the chassis. hook facing down with retainer clip.

The inside plate once all set up was fed above the round tube in the end of the chassis and then droped down to the bottom of the chassis rail (to line up with the holes i had drilled in chassis (will make some sense to vitara owners)

Primed where possible with anti-corrosion primer and then sprayed, then painted hook enamal yellow

Note: Oh and i used stainless cos thats what i found that was about the right size in the scrap bin at the engineering place, and didn't realise till i got home. But it seemed like a good idea to use it anyway well it did untill i started breaking 12mm drill bits at $25 each and the drill (which was around the same price haha)...

For the rear (off the top of my head) as i don't have that vehicle anymore... It wasn't ideal but i thought it did the job for a lighter vehicle. There probably should have been crush tubes through it but seemed faily solid as is...

On the rear chassis rails there is holes for the stock towbar to bolt into but they are spaced too far apart to put a tow hook in.
I used some ?6mm/8mm? thick 50x50 RHS, prob about 150mm long with caps welded on the ends (for added strength) and bolted it up (using rated bolts) into where the stock towbar would go. So it sat just under one of the chassis rails parallel with it.

Then drilled two holes horizontally through it for the towhook to go on, and i think i had the hook pointing towards the outside of the truck. and then just had to trim a little plastic away from the bumper...

Like i say that was for a 91 so not sure if 95's are the same...

You can sorta see them here...

thanks for that icekayak. much appriciated.