How to Adjust a Rock Exotica Akimbo

Hi guys. I'm Mason with Rock Exotica. I'm here with Sherrilltree. We're going to talk a little bit about the Akimbo.

Let’s talk a little bit about how to adjust the friction settings on the Akimbo. The Akimbo has multiple friction settings that allow it to be used on different ropes, and you really personalize it to your weight with your full harness and gear on and the rope that you're going to use. So in order to adjust the friction settings, you have to move these friction arms down, just like I have here. And then you open the Akimbo up by bending it all the way back, pushing forward on the top part. And then once your friction arm is down, your device is open. This piece here can pull out, and there's two little teeth in here that will go in the holes. So you put it in whichever hole you want to do for your friction setting, and that's how you adjust it in order to figure out what friction setting will work with your gear, your rope, we're going to talk about that.

So once you open it up, throw it on your rope, start out at the heaviest friction settings, which is going to be G, 7g, on the top, seven on the bottom. And you'll start out there, clip into your harness, sit back on the Akimbo. And then what you want to do is you want to try and lower. You want to stay just a couple feet off the ground so that there's no risk of being injured. So what you'll do is you'll start, you'll put your palm on here and start to lower. If you can't pull the top down, if the top is too hard to pull down, you're going to want to loosen the top friction.

Once you get the top set where you can pull it, now you can pull it, but when you start to pull it, the top and the bottom touch each other before you're lowering. That means your bottom is too tight. So you want to loosen up the bottom. You want to get it to where, once you start to pull down, you start to lower, right about there. That's going to be your sweet spot on the Akimbo. That will make it so that as you're lowering and you go to stop, these will separate a lot easier. And that's how you want to set up your friction settings.

So that's going to change between if you add any weight on your harness, if you take off any weight, or if you switch ropes, you're gonna have to adjust those friction settings. But as long as the tips and tricks on how to adjust it, whether to adjust the top or the bottom, you're gonna be set to go. It should be a quick adjustment, and you'll be good to climb on that rope afterwards.

So that's the Rock Exotica Kimbo. You can buy that at Sherrilltree along with our other gear.