SmartStraps Ratchet-X Ratchet Tie-Down Strap - 2" x 8' - 3,333 lbs - Qty 1

Video Transcript for SmartStraps Ratchet-X Ratchet Tie-Down Strap Review

What's up, everybody, it's AJ with etrailer.com, today we're gonna be checking out the Ratchet-X Ratchet Straps from the SmartStraps. These are gonna be good for vehicle straps, so we have two of them here on the back and two of them on the front. They are shorter length straps, so that's why they're made more for vehicles, that way they don't have as far to go. But you wanna make sure it has that ratchet, that tension down, 'cause you definitely don't want the vehicle going anywhere on your trailer when you're going on the road. Now, since this is made for hauling vehicles, like I said, the length is a little bit less than other ratchet straps and it's gonna be eight foot long, and it's gonna be two inches wide. It's also gonna have a safe working load limit of 3,333 pounds, and then it's gonna have a break strength of 10,000 pounds.

Now keep in mind, these come in a of kit one, but we have two on the front and two in the back. So what you would do is combine all those safe working load limits together, and that's your actual safe working load limit. On both ends of the strap, you're gonna have a snap hook, they're really easy to use, and I like those, because you just kind of push it against whatever you want to attach to, and it snaps into place, just like that. So it's easy out here, but really more so underneath the vehicle, 'cause there's not a whole lot of clearance. When you finally get that axle strap wrapped around the axle, you need to hook up to that, you can easily do that really quickly, just snap it into place and it's hooked on.

Not to mention, if you do that first and then come back out here, you don't want it to detach and come off there, this just make sure that doesn't happen. It's on there, it's secure, so whatever end you start with, it's gonna stay here while you're attached to the other end. Another cool thing is this twist here in the end of the hook. I like that because when it's hooked up here, this, even if the hook is up and down like this, the strap is still flat so that's just gonna save you the hassle of it getting twisted up while you're trying to hook things up. Now let's go over operation, I'm gonna kinda get rid of the extra strap we tied up here, and kind of show you how this works.

So this is the standard ratchet strap design, so you'll pull up on this part to get it out of the lock position, and then the way to use it from there is just a standard ratchet. Now you can kind of see you one of the problems we have right now with it. It being this far in the vehicle, especially on the side with my exhaust, it's gonna hit that and be a little cumbersome to kind of get it to ratchet down here, you have to ratchet it little bit by little bit. Now as we saw that this is more towards this end over here towards our stake pocket, with our D-ring on it, and that's just because the strap is here. Now, there is other ones where the hook is directly mounted into the ratchet strap mechanism, and that would be far more clearance and you wouldn't have to crawl on there as much.

Now you might not have this problem with your vehicle, yours might be a little more lifted, so it might be a non-issue. But just wanted to point that out, that it kind of was for us today, just making it a little more difficult to ratchet down and then also to break that tension on there, we're gonna have to kind of go to the side here and go up like this. Just like that. Then that's how you break that tension so that you can pull this through and a little bit more out of it. And then you're gonna need to break it a little bit more actually, there we go. Loosen it up to disconnect it, and now to reach. To do that, connect it, that's what I was talking about with that snap hook right there, just how easy it is to get that attached. We wanna pull out all that extra strap ahead of time, so I don't have to ratchet quite as much, and then pull that lever back up and start ratcheting it back down. We're gonna start okay here, but as it gets tensioned, it's raising up, and we have to kind of go to the side because of that exhaust. You're gonna get a little bit more on there, we'll go to the side here. That seems good right there, and we're done. Another thing is that when you go to tie up this extra you can tie it to the strap itself, but there are also cinch straps out there. I know Bulldog Winch offers it, it really saves you a bunch of time if you get one of those because then you can use the hook and loop fastener to wrap it up nice and neat right there. It'd be really tight and you wouldn't have to check it as much, or as you're going on the road. Otherwise, without that, you're gonna have to tie it to itself and just make sure you check that on your longer trips. Up front, we actually used one of those Bulldog ratchet straps and cinch straps I was talking about. I just want to show you, this is the cinch strap wrapped around that extra strap there. See how nice and tight it's holding there, I can move that around and it doesn't seem like it's gonna unravel at any time. The other thing is the hook is mounted right to the ratcheting mechanism, so it's gonna be right here at the V-ring. Plenty of clearance, we're not gonna have any issues ratcheting this down or loosening it up. It might come a little closer, but man, that's still a lot more travel than we had back there on the backside. Something I do wanna point out on the Ratchet-X Ratchet Strap here is the handle. I do like the handle design, this a little bit longer than normal handles are, so I felt like when I was going to ratchet down, I had a little bit more leverage, so I didn't have to work as hard to do that. And I think that plays into a little bit of the clearance issues on the other side with the exhaust, just because it is a little bit longer. But otherwise, I like that It's got the plastic coating here on the handle, so it's not just metal you're grabbing onto, and you got plenty of room to get your whole hand in there, which is good. Like I said before, when you're applying the tension, ratcheting this down on a vehicle, you wanna make sure that it's tight 'cause you don't want it moving. So you want to make sure you can get a good grab on this to get that ratchet out there to get that little bit more, just to get a real tight. Now, another thing I like here on the side is you got the caps here, protecting the mechanisms that way dust and debris doesn't get on there, or whatever, the elements don't bother it. This is gonna keep your ratchet strap and your ratchet mechanism working longer. Overall, I think these are good straps, it was good. Like we said, we really liked the ratcheting mechanism, it was easy to use with that leverage, the only issue I had was some of that clearance underneath my vehicle. Now, something I would recommend, if you're just getting a strap or just two, this is all you we're looking for, you're maybe replacing some old ones, these are gonna work great. If you are starting from scratch, I would recommend that Bulldog strap. they make a kit where you get a bag, four ratchet straps, and four cinch straps all in the same kit. Now it's not gonna be everything you need, but it's gonna be a good base if you are building up that kit. So you have all that stuff ready to go, and that bag has got room for all the extras, like the axle straps, you can get down online, if you need those. Get those, add them to your kit, you got them all in the bag, everything's nice and neat, I just recommend that if you're starting your base kit. Otherwise, I think that does it, thanks for hanging out, and I hope this helped..