Well, if I understand right, FreeCAD needs libCoin 60, but python links 80s version. Is there an elegant method to bend the linker to the right library?
No, that's not possible. Coin3d is a C++ library and version 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 (or 4.0.0 respectively) are binary incompatible. Any attempt to trick out the linker will either lead to an immediate crash or the linker reports unresolved symbols.
The one and only way is to report a bug to the package maintainer. Since pivy links against the newer version I recommend to contact the package maintainer for FreecAD to move to the newer Coin3d version. This should be fairly easy because only a build script or so needs to be adjusted, I guess. Source code of FreeCAD doesn't need to be touched as it runs with that Coin3d version for several years now.