Factor 55 Blog
Are all Fairleads created equal?
Barlow Adventures “Why we keep hands away from fairleads during winching. Even a fairlead and FlatLink as sweet as @factor55llc can grab a finger in an instant. We recommend staying more than an arm’s length away to avoid a momentary slip-up. By the way, this is the first hawse fairlead EVER that I find acceptable. And not just acceptable-outstanding. It has NOT chewed up my winch rope on less-than-straight pulls due to a large radius and the quality and industry-leading Type III anodized surface on 6000 series aluminum. And it looks great after over a year and 17,000 Nena miles.”#safewinching...
Synthetic Rope Breakage
TBT to synthetic rope breakage. MYTH: Synthetic winch rope falls to the ground when it breaks. Well, the truth is, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. This video was sent to us from our friend and GenRight Off Road Ambassador Jeff Perkins. In this particular case, the synthetic winch rope broke suddenly without warning and the recoil was significant. Sure, there is less energy stored when compared to a steel cable, but you still would not want get hit with this rope. The mode of synthetic winch rope failure is uncertain. At times it can fail by sequential strand failures. In a...
What is Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
FEA or Finite Element Analysis, is a mathematical method of determining stresses in materials before actually building a physical prototype. This allows our engineers to optimize our product designs for the greatest strength to weight considerations. In other words, we can remove material where it is not needed and add material to any weak zones of a particular design concept. This method of design takes away the guess work on determining how thick or what material something should be made of. One of the images to the right shows our winch locking bolt being subjected to over tightening...
Hook or Screw Pin Shackle - Which is better?
Smart off roaders have known for years that the most secure way to use your recovery winch is replace the hook with a common screw pin shackle. Unless you are competing, the added seconds required to use a shackle versus a hook during a vehicle recovery is not worth the safety risk associated with standard winch hooks. What is wrong with the hook? The technical name for a standard winch hook is " Clevis Slip Hook". This describes two things. First, clevis refers to the method of cable attachment - the cable eye is attached to the hook by...