TL;DR: About 28 feet of pre-shrunk Sterling C-IV rope makes a good replacement for the “stock” option the 71 ships with. Whatever cord you use, pre-shrink it.
The Ferno 71 comes with a “Pre-rigged Nylon Rope for Attaching Restraints.” It’s adequate, it could be better.
I replaced mine with the 9 mm Sterling C-IV rope. The Technora sheath should provide superior abrasion resistance.
Most of my experience with the Model 71 comes from the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC). The pre-rigged rope is replaced with usually an 8 mm nylon cord, with overhand knots where the rope crosses through the inside. The knots provide an element of redundancy. If part of the rope were cut, the knots would stop the rest from pulling through. The knots also provide a bit of standoff, so threading webbing for patient lashing is less difficult.
On some NCRC litters, this 8 mm cord becomes pretty tight, and threading webbing through is difficult. My theory is the factory cord is replaced with brand new 8 mm nylon accessory cord. As the nylon is wet and dried through training exercises, rescues, and washing, the cord shrinks and tightens.
I deliberately left the rope a bit looser, to see what advantages and disadvantages it provides.
The factory cord is knotted on the foot end. The double overhand bend is easier to tie on the head end. Before cutting with a razor blade, tightly wrap the rope in electrical tape. Zap CA Thin is best, but any superglue will seal the ends to prevent fraying.
I started off with about 30 feet and ended up trimming a little over 2 feet, so 28 ft should be sufficient.
If you look closely, you may notice not all the overhands are the same or mirrored. Eventually I went back and fixed this, and it looks better.
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