Making Rope Tow

TheProfitSkier

TheProfitSkier

Active member
They did this way back in the day, around 1940-60. has anyone tried to make one? i think it would be sweet to make one with a private jib park
 
that would take some time and money i imagine, and running it would be a bitch, either fuel or electric. plus operators.
 
That'd be really sweet to have in your yard. I know there's a few people around that have rope tows in their yards, but I'm not sure how they do it. Maybe try a google search or something like that.
 
i designed one and someone asked me to make one for them but they never followed up. i think i might try to make one. maybe use my lawn mower to power it.
 
The first rope tow in this country was in woodstock vt i believe, and was made using an old ford engine. How they set it up I am not exactly sure because I dont know shit about cars, let alon enignes. But I know it can be done, and prolly pretty easily and cheaply.
 
I don't think a lawn mower engine would ever get you up a hill, unless you have a pretty decked-out mower. I'd probably try looking into a small dirt bike engine if I was building one.
 
yea man it sounds dumb but if ya happen to have a car engine layin around that shit would work wonders with a rope n stuff just be imaginative
 
funds are low, so i think we might try to run a rope around an old lawnmover underbelly(without the blade) and run it through a pulley at the other end
 
i think nahoba valley (shitty MA bump) uses like crappy old engines but they like use tires as pully's its kinda a ghetto set up that u could probably make yourself, ill take a pic when im there for a race on wed.
 
o, i seen that on tv, they had a sweet set up with the rope tow, rails, walls, etc, but no idea how they did the rope tow
 
hahaha i have one at my hill. This is our main lift......it is finding the rope. I think you will never find that.
 
it wouldnt be to hard, get an old car (that runs) or motorcycle or whatever and put a pulley/chainwheel on the drive shaft and go from there, a smrt person could rig one up in a weekend for a few hundo
 
get a tractor or anything with a PTO. make like a cone out of steel, like the frame, and then run the rope around the diameter of the cone, and then slip the tip onto the pto, get like a big heavy duty clothesline pully, and then put that into the ground at the bottom, tractor at the top. start up the pto, and your rope tow is going. it would actually be EASY
 
isnt there a car rope tow used in one of the warren miller movies with the two guys from some middle of nowear farm. Im almost positive they jacked up the rear of a car and put the rope on it and used old rims as pullies.
 
I remember seeing that, but I don't remember which one it was in. I still think the dirtbike engine would be the best idea for powering it, seeing as there would probably not ever be a large number of people on it.
 
if anyone knows anything about tractors... use the power take off (pto) to power it, just loop a rope around it
 
I tie a rope to a tree and pull my self up.

Or get a crank and get a younger sibling to pull you up.

Or hike.
 
couldnt you use a bike wheel or dirtbike wheel as a pulley and attch it to a really strong tree? that was my idea and i think it would work too. in a warren milller movie the schrab brothers had a ropetow setup in wisconsin and they had an old truck with the rearend up off the ground and the tire missing on one side so it was just the metal rim.they put the rope in the rim so it was U sahpe and the rope wouldnt slip out. i guess they put the car in a low gear or put somethng on the gas pedal to make it run, on the other end they had a big stake i the ground with a bicycle wheel mounted to it so the bicycle wheel spun freely and acted as a pully. their design didnt look hard at all to construct and it worked great.
 
put the back of a truck up on blocks, and loop a cable around an axle, that's what my friend doesa
 
Yea, it's not hard. My grandpa was saying how he used to do it with is friends back in the day. Prop up the back of a car (prefferably RWD since I said back...) put a rope around it, make a sort of pole or something at the top for the rope to go around. Make the whole set-up really tight so there's no slide in the rope, so it grips the tire. And put the car on idle (make sure it's automatic trans). Just don't put too many people on at one time or the rope would slip.
 
GUYS!!! Hasn't anyone watched Warren Miller Movies? (We all know they are the sickest... *extreme sarcasm*) But seriously..... i think it was the Schrab brothers or something. Just go get and old truck, and set it up on cinder blocks or jacks or something. Then take off the tire and add some onto the rim so the rope doesn't slip. Put some sorta weight on the gas so it constantly goes. regulate the speed somehow so its not floored. Sounds super dangerous, and a good way to loose your fingers. its prolly easier to just hike.
 
i cant believe im the only wakeboarder/wakeskater here. If your going to do this, u should probably just buy/build a winch. They use them in wakeboarding all the time to ride in spots where a boat cant fit and hit rails and stuff. Its basically a small motor that winds up 500-1000 feet of rope on a spool and pulls you forward at up to 20 ish mph. They can pull a boarder out of hte water so im sure they could pull you right up hill.

www.hypoxicfilms.com

www.piratewinch.com

check out those sites or go on wakeboarder.com and do a search for homemade winches
 
Iw as jsut thinking about the winch possibility as well. It would work well except the rope would have to be walked back down the hill by someone
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top