TBT – For those of you who haven’t seen this winch cable field repair video from our friend Keller McCowen, enjoy!  
This is a great informative video on how to trail splice a broken winch wire rope. Keller McCowen splices a steel cable eye using the Molly Hogan knot technique. Although none of us here at Factor 55 have ever personally performed this trail repair, it looks to be some useful knowledge to have. Great job Keller!

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

A little Friday reminder for those of you that would like to eliminate the traditional steel tube thimble on the end of your winch line and run a “soft loop” termination instead. We manufacture billet aluminum load spools for this purpose. The load spools simply fit over the titanium shear pins on our winch line shackle mount products and provide the minimum bend radius dictated by the Cordage Institute (CI 1500). Take a look at some of the IRT workshop presentation slides and note that to properly tensile test rope eyes, the standards dictate minimum D/d ratios from 1.5 -2. If you follow this CI standard, the winch line will never fail on the backside of the pin, but instead will fail at the end of the buried tail.

Factor 55- Engineered, Tested, and Made In The USA

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#shadebrigade
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#winchsafer #winchsafety #vehiclerecovery #trailridesmatter
#racerecovery #innovationnotimitation #hookreplacement

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TBT. What’s it like to be a co-driver for racing champion Dan Fresh at King of The Hammers?

Take a look at the co-driver helmet cam video from Fox Racing’s Mike Kim during the King of the Hammers UTV race. In this case, Mike created a rock anchor linking several Factor 55 Extreme Duty 20 inch soft shackles together. He had these soft shackles strapped to the roll cage for quick access during the race using the Factor 55 Strap Wraps. Why do racers prefer using USA made recovery gear? Predictable performance derived from USA tested materials. There simply is no reason to risk a race win by using cheap imported untested materials.

Nice work Mike! Thanks for the video!

Factor 55 – Engineered, Tested, and Made In the USA

Savvy Off Road | WARN | Off The Grid Surplus | Sparco | Falken Tire | Vision Wheel | Torco | Rpmextreme | Ultra4 Racing | Adventure Offroad

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Some of you mentioned that you would like to see product test data from a source other than ourselves. We get it. You want to see unbiased field test data, the good and the bad.

It’s no secret that prior to releasing any products to the public, we like to gather prototype field data from a wide variety of others in the industry (Vehicle recovery companies, Racers, 4X4 Trainers, Military, SAR, Enthusiasts etc). We’ve mentioned how valuable this data can be since often times these organizations when compared to the average off-road enthusiast, use Factor 55 products in more demanding ways such as higher duty cycles and extreme loads. So, in the next few weeks instead of posting our own test data, we will be posting some videos and test data from other external sources. None of these sources were paid by Factor 55 in any way, although some of the evaluation products were offered in exchange for the field data.

Are you interested in testing/evaluating Factor 55 products? Simply send us your test plan including what instrumentation that you will be using and what data you will be recording. Don’t worry about your plan being perfect, we can work with you on creating a plan that will result in valid data. Also, for you web sticklers, let’s be easy on these testers. No test plan is perfect and in some cases, neither is the safety execution of said plan.

So let’s start out with a raw unedited video from our friend Joe Osuch of Arizona 4×4 OffRoad Recovery LLC. Joe owns a towing company and definitely uses Factor 55 products with more frequency than most. He recovers stuck vehicles off-road on a daily basis. A while back we sent him an RRP for evaluation. Although the RRP is not intended for ultra-high duty cycle applications, why not see how it holds up to this type of usage? In this case, Joe is using a 15K capacity winch to extract a well-mired F150 that others previously attempted to, but failed to recover. The F150 was not running and in neutral. No instrumentation in this case, just a video showing how the RRP functions. So, let us know what you think of these types of videos. Stay tuned for more field RRP videos revealing efficiencies, not all friction pulleys are created equal.

Factor 55 – Engineered, Tested, and Made In the USA

#factor55 #closedsystemwinching #equippedtoexplore
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#precisionengineering #professionalrecovery #itsyourwinchonlysafer
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#winchsafer #winchsafety #vehiclerecovery #trailridesmatter
#racerecovery #innovationnotimitation #hookreplacement

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We just returned from the Ultra4 Racing 2020 King of The Hammers!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and congratulations to all the competitors. After a full week of racing it all came down to the 4400 Unlimited Class and a new King was crowned.

1- Josh Blyler
2- Erik Miller
3- Marcos Gomez

The top 3 podium positions were all equipped with Factor 55 winch safety products. Congratulations to our friends at Big B Motorsports, Miller Motorsports, and Gomez Brothers Racing. We are so proud to be a part of your teams!

Stay tuned for more pics and stories from this year’s King of the Hammers!

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

HeavyMetalConcepts | Driving Line

Just in the nick of time! Our friend Bryan Crofts of CBMotorsports will be debuting his new Campbell Ent. Custom Fabrication / Campbell Racing Ultra4 Racing car this year at King of the Hammers. The final assembly just completed. Not much time left to get to the desert and shock tune and debug the new car! We love the retro black and gold Trans Am theme.

We will be leaving for Johnson Valley this week as well. We are honored once again to be sponsoring the Tech Tent where all race cars will be safety inspected and the vehicle transponders installed. We are set up right next to the Tech Booth, and just like every year, we are offering free repair on all synthetic winch lines that are damaged during qualifying and racing. The car looks awesome Bryan, good luck and we’ll see everyone Friday on the lakebed!

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

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The Land Rover Defender has not been available in North America since 1997. After a 23 year hiatus, Land Rover is reintroducing the Defender model to North America in the spring of 2020. This is one of the most highly anticipated new model releases from Land Rover. Compared to the other Land Rover models, the new Defender is designed to be the most capable off-road.

Previously, Factor 55 was chosen to equip winch safety hardware to the recently released Land Rover Discovery 5 Trek edition. Now with equipping the new Defender TReK Edition, Factor 55 has supplied safety equipment to all of the Land Rover teams that challenge the demanding TReK off-road competition.

Factor 55 – Engineered, Tested, and Made in the USA

Lucky 8 LLC | Scully Offroad | Land Rover Defender

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#shadebrigade
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#racerecovery #innovationnotimitation #hookreplacement

A shout out to our friends over at King County Search and Rescue. Whenever people find themselves in imminent danger or distress, SAR organizations like this are ready to respond. This is a 100% volunteer organization serving its local community with Search and Rescue services along with Education.

Take a look at some pictures from this past weekend in Greenwater, WA where they put on a Vehicle Recovery Clinic. In addition to basic safe vehicle recovery techniques, the instructors were also demonstrating the use of snatch blocks along with our new lightweight Rope Retention Pulley alternative for synthetic winch lines.

SAR organizations are always looking for volunteers to help in the community so if you are interested, look up your local SAR group and sign up! Thanks guys for the pics.

Factor 55 – Engineered, Tested, and Made in the USA

SARpinz | Photo Credit to Celerity Media

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

WARN | CRAWL Magazine | Trails Magazine | SpiderWebShade | CMM Offroad | TNT Customs | sPOD | Rock Krawler Suspension | BFGoodrich Tires | Raceline Wheels | Radflo Shocks | Savvy Off Road | Synergy Manufacturing | Off Road Solutions | 4WD Toyota Owner Magazine | Overland Journal | Expedition Portal | Barlow Adventures | I4WDTA – The International 4-Wheel Drive Trainers Association LLC | Ultra4 Racing | ULTRA4 EUROPE | King of The Hammers | COMEUP | SUPERWINCH | 4×4 Magazine | XTREME4x4MAGAZINE | Jp Magazine | Extreme 4×4 Nation | Tread Magazine | Jeepfreeks | ModernJeeper | Poly Performance | Off-Road Safety Academy – Blue Sky Adventures, Inc. | Off Road Consulting and Driving Instruction

Take a look at a photo that one of our readers sent in. This is a case of poor structural design from a cheap imported bumper company. In this case, the shackle tabs were simply welded to the thin skin of the bumper without any structure on the inside to provide a load path to supporting structures like the frame rails or frame cross member. As we all know, shackle tabs can be exposed to tremendous momentary loads when yanked on with a kinetic rope, etc.. Proper recovery points need to transfer the pulling load through the bumper and to the underlying supporting frame. So, the next time you are about purchase a bumper, winch mount etc, just try to picture the path that the load must take to get to something strong. In the case of bumpers and shackle tabs, make sure you at least look behind the bumper to see some type of supporting structure.

Have a safe and adventurous weekend!

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

Earth Anchors, Ground Anchors, Deadman Anchors, whatever you choose to call them, sometimes there simply is no available winch attach point so you must use one. Check out the various types of anchors we have seen used offroad. Note how all of these users are practicing the more secure CLOSED SYSTEM WINCHING™ attach point to their anchors. Have you used one? Which do you prefer?

Photos courtesy of Deadman Off-road, Off Road Consulting and Driving Instruction, Pull-Pal, Three Amigos Offroad, Martha Tansy Offroad, Racing and Hunting, 4X4 Australia

From everyone here at Factor 55, have a safe and Happy New Year!

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