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Field Splice Broken Steel Winch Cable

Tuesday, 19 June 2018 by Factor 55

Here is a flashback video from our friend Keller McCowen demonstrating how to field splice a loop into the end of a broken steel cable. When most of us break a steel winch cable, we either clamp (If we have cable clamps) the end into a loop or just call it a day for the winch. Kellen shows us just how simple field splicing a steel cable can be. This is not intended to be a permanent fix for your winch cable. Like many off-road field repairs, this type of knowledge can get your winch back to being functional and your rig off of the trail.

Some call this type of cable splice a Molly Hogan, Flemish Eye, Farmer’s Eye, Maori Splice etc.. It’s clear that people call this splice method by many different names. Depending upon the industry as well as the region of the world, it may be called something different in your region.

Definitely a useful tip that could help you get off the trail.

#factor55 #closedsystemwinching
#shadebrigade
#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer

#madeinusa #madeintheusa #buyamerican #winch #winchsafer #winchsafety

#vehiclerecovery #trailridesmatter #racerecovery #innovationnotimitation

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Closed System Winching™ Training 101st WMD Civil Support Team

Tuesday, 05 June 2018 by Factor 55

Special thanks to U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Jarrod Bunker for arranging a Closed System Winching™ training session with the National Guard’s 101st WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team). These specialized men and women of our Armed Forces (Army/Airforce) are trained to respond to any type of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear incident – think terrorist hot zones like bomb making chemicals and materials etc..

Factor 55 was invited to explain the Closed System Winching™ technique to the group. All of their vehicles are equipped with recovery winches with capacities ranging from 16.5K to the smaller UTV 3.5K winches.

After a classroom and Q&A session, we outfitted one of their response vehicles with an UltraHook for field evaluation.

Again, thank you to all of the men and women of our Armed Forces that attended the meeting and thank you for your service. All of our communities are safer because of highly trained service members like these.

Engineered, Tested, and Made In The USA

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#shadebrigade
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U.S. Army | US Airforce | U.S. Marine Corps | U.S. Navy | U.S. Coast Guard

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Factor 55 Rope Guards

Friday, 25 May 2018 by Factor 55

From our friends at GenRight Off Road. Between the Ultra4 Racing circuit and hard core trail wheeling, the guys at GenRight certainly put offroad parts to the ultimate test. Take a look at their FlatLink E with Rope Guard on the front of the Terremoto JK. This is a great example of how the Rope Guard is supposed to function. As you can see, although the Rope Guard is scraped up from impacts, the synthetic rope thimble and rope is completely protected behind the Rope Guard. Think of the Rope Guard as a consumable skid plate for the front of your winch line. It will protect the end of your synthetic line not only from offroad impacts, but also from oncoming freeway road debris and damaging UV light (Yes the drum of rope should also be covered when the winch is not in use).

For you rock crawlers, if you ever wear the Rope Guard thin, simply drill out the rivets and install another one.

This brings us to the subject of available colors for the Rope Guard. Some of you have asked why we don’t offer the Rope Guard product in various colors. Well this picture explains this well. A skid plate designed for scraping is best left to the color of the underlying material. In this case aluminum.

As an employer of Veterans and manufacturer of USA Made products we salute all soldiers past and present, thank you for your service and sacrifice. For all of you wheeling this weekend, have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend and remember those who gave all for our freedoms.

Products derived from science and facts.

Designed, Tested, and Made in The USA.

#factor55 #closedsystemwinching
#shadebrigade
#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer #madeinusa #madeintheusa #buyamerican #winch #winchsafer #winchsafety #vehiclerecovery #trailridesmatter #racerecovery #innovationnotimitation

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Synthetic Rope Breakage

Monday, 23 April 2018 by Factor 55

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 sequential failure, as each one of the individual strand fails, a small portion of the overall stored energy is released from the system. As this type of failure mode continues, energy is released in steps over time until there is little energy stored in the system and the final strand finally fails and the rope drops to the ground. The problem is that there is no way to predict that this mode of rope failure will occur versus a more dangerous sudden catastrophic rope failure.

A sudden winch rope failure is quite possible, especially if the winch line is either shock loaded, or in this case the rope may have been overstressed by an undersized corner radius on the fairlead, or the rope possibly contacted a small burr on the fairlead. Regardless of the cause, it’s important to play it safe and plan for the sudden failure and recoil of the rope. What’s the take away here? Be cautious and don’t count on a sequential rope fiber failure, use a rope damper, and stay away from the recoil danger zone.

So do any of you have any experience with winch rope failure? Sequential or sudden?

Engineering Facts Matter

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#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer #madeinusa

#madeintheusa #buyamerican #winch #winchsafer #winchsafety #vehiclerecovery

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How strong is the steel cable (wire rope) that comes with your winch?

Wednesday, 11 April 2018 by Factor 55

How strong is the steel cable (wire rope) that comes with your winch?… Not very.

It turns out that there is little margin of safety with steel cable equipped winches. Why is this? Unlike the lifting industry, the recreational pulling industry is unregulated, consequently winch manufacturers typically equip winches with steel cables with minimum breaking strengths that are very close to the max winch capacities. The lifting industry requires a 5:1 safety factor due to the overhead dangers. The pulling industry does not. In fact many steel equipped winches possess a safety factor of less than 1.5!

Take for instance common 5/16 steel cable supplied on most winches up to 10K capacities. The working load limit (WLL) on common 5/16 steel cable is only 2000 pounds. The minimum breaking strength is approximately 10K pounds. So in many cases a 10K winch can be supplied with a steel cable with a minimum breaking strength of 10K. Take a look at the steel cable writeup from our friend Tyler at Roundforge (Roundforge.com) for more comprehensive data on steel cable types and classes.

One of the reasons that cable failures are relatively infrequent is mostly due to vehicle recoveries being in the 4-5k pulling load range, well below the cable breaking strength. Also, often times steel cables can possess ultimate strengths above the minimum breaking loads. So what’s the takeaway here? Due to the little margin of safety in steel cables, make sure you properly maintain the cable and be on the lookout for weakening factors like kinks, broken wires etc., and when possible use a snatch block to reduce the cable load.

Yes, we often end up breaking wire rope slings during the pull testing of our products.

Picture supplied by our friend James Pickard. James snapped his steel cable while using the UltraHook. The UltraHook possesses a breaking strength of 31,000 pounds(hook opening) to 48,000 pounds(shackle pin mount). Engineering facts matter.

Factor 55 – Engineered, Tested, and Made in USA

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EMC Line Up at King of the Hammers 2018

Tuesday, 06 March 2018 by Factor 55

Are Factor 55 parts really tested and evaluated in racing applications? You bet. And we are not just talking about 1 or 2 sample parts. Take a look at the short video we shot of the front of race cars while walking through the starting lineup of the 4500 and 4800 class at the recent King of The Hammers race.

This year we simply couldn’t keep count of all of the race cars running our safer Closed System winch hardware. We knew the drop off at Back Door could pose serious damage to the exposed ends of synthetic winch ropes so we attempted to install as many Rope Guards as possible but we unfortunately missed out on many of the race cars.

We mentioned this before, nobody abuses winch hardware as much as Ultra4 racers do. If it can survive Ultra4, it can certainly survive anything that a weekend warrior can dish out.#aluminumandtitaniumforthewin #Engineeringfactsmatter

Factor 55 – Engineered and Made In The USA

#factor55 #closedsystemwinching #shadebrigade
#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer

#madeinusa #madeintheusa #buyamerican #winch #winchsafer #winchsafety

#vehiclerecovery #trailridesmatter #racerecovery #innovationnotimitation

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Holiday Closure 12-25 thru 1-1-18

Wednesday, 20 December 2017 by Factor 55

*HOLIDAY CLOSURE*

Dec 25th – Jan 1st

Factor 55 will be closed for the Holidays! If you need assistance please email sales@factor55.com and we will promptly return the message. Any order placed from Friday December 22nd after 4pm until Monday January 1st WILL NOT SHIP until Tuesday January 2nd.

Wednesday December 20th before 4pm is the last chance to order for guaranteed Christmas delivery.

Please let us know if we can help or if you have any questions.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

FROM ALL OF US AT FACTOR 55

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UV Degradation of Synthetic Winch Rope

Tuesday, 12 December 2017 by Factor 55

You asked for it and we listened. Many of you wanted more information on the UV degradation of synthetic winch rope. For off-roaders, UV damage to winch ropes is secondary to the more damaging abrasion and impacts we subject our lines to. But with regard to UV damage, the web is full of anecdotal information about this subject, but what are the real facts? Many will claim that winch ropes are coated with UV inhibitors that prevent ropes from getting UV damaged, others say that all polymers are subject to some level of UV damage. Since we don’t have the facilities to conduct an accelerated UV exposure test ourselves, we turned to our friends in the cordage industry as well as scoured the web for any real test data. Here is what we have discovered. You can extrapolate the data as you wish.

First of all, a majority of the winch rope manufacturers do not manufacture the individual UHMWPE fibers that ropes are comprised of. These rope companies purchase spools of the fibers/yarns from companies like DSM which owns the Dyneema trademark. The real fiber knowledge resides with these fiber companies. In the images below we have included UV test results direct from the fiber source – DSM. We have also included data from the sailing (coated and uncoated fiber) and the climbing industry.

As the exposed outer layer of your rope sustains UV damage, the damaged fibers become opaque which attenuates further damage to the inner rope fibers. The problem is that the UV damaged outer rope layer is weaker and abrades and rubs off easier when used, exposing fresh undamaged fibers beneath. This is not as much a problem with a static application like standing rigging in sailing. However, this can be a problem in a dynamic application like off-road winching where we are repeatedly rubbing and abrading the dirty gritty winch lines across our fairleads.

So how do we tell how much strength our winch ropes have lost due to UV damage? You can’t. So what’s the take away then? All fiber and rope companies agree that prolonged UV exposure will damage UHMWPE fibers to some extent. In some cases up to a 20% strength reduction can occur in under a year. Take a look at the UV data charts and decide for yourself. The simple fix is to cover your winch line from the sun. Winch covers work well to cover the spool, and because silicone is inorganic, an opaque RTV silicone can be used to cover smaller areas of winch line as well. Common Cordura abrasion guards can also protect the last portion of your line from UV damage, but don’t rely on these guards for winch line protection when rock crawling.

#factor55 #closedsystemwinching
#shadebrigade
#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer #madeinusa #madeintheusa

#buyamerican #winch #winchsafer #winchsafety #vehiclerecovery

#trailridesmatter #racerecovery #innovationnotimitation

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Rope Guards for UltraHook and FlatLink Products

Friday, 08 December 2017 by Factor 55

We like what we see, but we really like what we don’t see even better ……exposed synthetic winch rope.

Let’s face it, if any of your synthetic winch rope is visible on the front of your rig, then it’s also vulnerable to damage from the sun and impact or abrasion. No one ever argues this point.

If you can see it, then you can ruin it, plain and simple. So where is the best place to stow the end of your synthetic winch line? There is only one place, behind your fairlead where the sun and rocks can’t get to it. Our ProLink family of products have always provided this type of complete rope end protection, and now our Rope Guard equipped Flatlink family of products does the same.

We also make the Rope Guard for the UltraHook product, making the UltraHook the industry’s first winch hook with rubber pads and complete rope end protection. In addition, we also manufacture the industry’s first splice on rope thimble shackle mounts that provide complete rope end protection.

So, if you are running synthetic winch rope and you can see it, then get it out of harm’s way and behind the fairlead where it belongs.

Engineered, Tested, and Made In The USA

#factor55 #closedsystemwinching #shadebrigade
#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer

#madeinusa #madeintheusa #buyamerican #winch #winchsafer #winchsafety

#vehiclerecovery #trailridesmatter #racerecovery #innovationnotimitation

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FlatLink Rope Guard Installation Video

Friday, 01 December 2017 by Factor 55

Our new Rope Guard products come with installation instructions but many of you asked for an installation video as well. Well here it is. Please remember to remove the FlatLink and UltraHook products from your winch cables so that you can properly place them on a horizontal surface for easy drive rivet installation. Have a great weekend everyone! #justthefacts

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