Freedom winch line 3.0 from the Bleepin Guy
- Thread starter L J
- Start date
Which I would think would be the biggest strike against their design. A lot easier and cheaper to replace a soft shackle vs the whole rope. Even if you replicate what they did you’d lose over 10ft of rope.
One of the goals of safe rigging in vehicle recovery is to reduce the amount of connections. Historically, Factor55 has been antithetical to safe practices. There are several things wrong with this setup, apart from the F55 Flatlink being completely unnecessary.
So what kind of winch shackle would reduce the number of connections from what you posted?
$30 to replace the consumable portion of the freedom winch line and I’m guessing plus shipping.
The setup shown above can be reduced to the little thimble on the rope eye and a soft shackle to connect the strap. This eliminates a couple heavy chunks of metal that won't be there to kill you in the event of a rigging failure.
From there we can work towards improving the thimble in a few important areas.
Seemed like more of a time saver idea since a thimble and soft shackle does the same thing with safety and mounting just the fact you don’t have to pull stuff from in the rig to use it. Absolutely died when I saw the screen shots of the forum pop too.
One thing I noticed in the Freedom Rope video was when Matt would snug the knot up to the fairlead. While certainly an improvement over the traditional thimble that can damage the fairlead, the knot can still be easily sucked through the fairlead. The Safety Thimble addresses this.
You still use the tree saver and the loop is basically just a long soft shackle with loops at both ends instead of a knot at one.
It's just
Rope with knot->"freedom loop"->tree saver
Instead of
rope with thimble->soft shackle->tree saver.
He was pretty ineloquent about it but he didn't advocate against using a tree saver, and even said you should generally always use one, but spent so much time talking about a rare hypothetical situation where you might skip it that it came across like he was.
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Matt's (Bleepin Jeep) idea in the weight and number of connections department is good. What I don't like is that he uses part of the rope as a tree saver. He actually said that it was not 3/8" wide but doubled over rope so it's 3/4". That doesn't really impress me when a real tree saver is 3" wide. The effects were obvious on the tree he winched from.
Matt (Offroad Recovery) said that he was going to replace his Freedom Rope even though it was in good shape because it had been used a lot. That's just dumb. If it's in good shape you keep using it.
Matt (Offroad Recovery) said that he was going to replace his Freedom Rope even though it was in good shape because it had been used a lot. That's just dumb. If it's in good shape you keep using it.
He got the first one for free. He mentioned that.
The thing is that if I expected a lot of winching one day on the trail all I'd have to do is attach my soft shackle to the safety thimble and toss it over the recovery hook. When I needed the winch someone can just run up there and release the brake and grab it and run. No different than what he's doing. Nothing novel that I am interested in because the part about using the rope doubled over as a tree saver is not a practice I want to follow.
I left a soft shackle on my front bumper attached to my hook and proceeded to damage the soft shackle on a rock.
On the floor next to the seat is where I keep one and the rest are in a backpack snapped to the roll bar ready to grab and go.
In all fairness, that may apply to the average user but if offroad recovery is your business and you're using the winch on a regular basis (possibly daily) I see it as preventive maintenance. Replacing a $300 winch line after two or three years in his business is about the same as one of us replacing a soft shackle.
He does it with a lot of his gear. He did a crossover video with an Australian channel I can't think of the name for where they talked about the different types of kinetic straps and ropes, and he specifically discussed the subject of useful life and replacement intervals. I suspect he has a pretty good feeling for how much use he gets out of one.
On the other side of fairness, I all I could think is Matt (Offroad) was kissing Matt (Bleepin Jeep's) ass. 🤣
if it's good, it's good. If it's compromised, it's not good.
My soft shackle, tree strap, and controller are all in the center console.
It's possible to damage the soft shackle if it's attached to a safety thimble that is stretched over to a hook on top of the bumper, but not common. You'd literally have to hit the top of the bumper edge (not the lower edge or front face) to do it.
If it's $300 over the course of two or three years of business, it's not even worth thinking twice about.
