Always tow a vehicle by its frame, not its body. I’ll repeat: by THE FRAME, and not THE BODY. Otherwise, your tow rope may leave a piece or two of your car behind. Like the entire frame.

This isn’t a new video, but it’s new to me, so no complaining. By the look of it, these guys got their Wrangler YJ stuck in a deep mud pit in Azuza Canyon off-road park in California. For whatever reason, the crew decided to tow the Jeep out from the roll bar (technically “sport bar”), which is not directly mounted to the frame. That’s when a predictable disaster struck:

These guys could have yanked that Jeep from the front bumper, leaf springs, or axles, and they probably would have been just fine. Anything but the body! But they weren’t fine, because they tugged the YJ from the top of the sport bar, while the bottom of the body—connected to a frame that was firmly planted in muck—wanted to stay in place, creating a moment arm that ripped the body right off its mounts.

Here’s the crew just yanking the body out of the mud pit, and leaving the frame just sitting there, helpless.

I will say, that body did appear to tear off that frame rather easily. As someone who owns a with only one or two functional body mounts left that aren’t rusted off, I’m praying there won’t be too much of a crosswind.