Fleeting fame and recovery hooks

The Motortech guys get on with fitting my hooks, oblivious to the BNT marketing machine.

Over the years, I've had a bit to do with BNT Automotive, a supplier to our aftermarket for more than 60 years. A lot of the company's brands are applicable to 4WDs and Autolign Suspension, which handles Bilstein, Monroe and Rancho, is a sister company. My connection, other than as a consumer of their products, has been writing the occasional article on things they've been doing. So yesterday I was at Motortech 4x4 in Glenfield, on Auckland's North Shore, having a pair of overpriced but battleship-strength Mopar recovery hooks fitted to the front of my Wrangler Rubicon when all of a sudden a bunch of BNT people arrived with camera, tripod and lights. They were doing some publicity photography and Motortech had volunteered the workshop, so maybe the Jeep will be world famous in BNT advertising.

A note to Wrangler owners: On the face of it, fitting these Mopar hooks should be a piece of you-know-what. Pull the grille, remove the bumper, remove the standard towing loop, fit the hooks which even have captive bolts, then refit the bumper and grille. But I had a suspicion that there was more to this for a carport mechanic than met the eye, so figured buying a couple of hours of competent labour might be money well spent. As it turned out to be. The instructions weren't quite right and I'd never have been able to get the tow loop off with the equipment at my disposal. It would have been a godawful job for someone who didn't know what he was doing, and wasn't much better for the mechanic who drew the short straw. There's a related post here.