Trail Gear V. Inchworm Crawlbox

I am finnaly going to add a crawlbox after 5 years. Innitially I had collected parts for a 231/dana300 box (minus the adapters) that would leave me with no drive shafts mods and doubler. However now that the price of these things has dropped by a big amount I would rather stay stock parts for ease of repair later on. Another factor in ditching the 231/300 combo is that I no longer have to pay for driveline mods!


I contacted Davez Offroad and I can have a Case built for $800 with the 23spline imput. This case has a core charge of $150. Which is reasonable considering buying a case and shipping. So effectively his case is $950 without the shifter. Add $40-50 and shipping which the calculator says $50.
So all said and done its roughly $1050 shipped.


The inchworm case as far as I can tell starts at $1250 + shipping. This case has had major bearing issues that have supposedly been resolved. So if the shipping is the same it will be $300 more than the TG one.


Anyone have some good imput that can help me out?
Im leaning more the the TG one because it is $300 cheaper, however it hasn't been out long and I have not heard any reviews on it.
Comments?

 

If you choose a setup in the poll please say why.

 

I should start with, I don't know about the 231/300 setup, but I do know a little about the others.


I chose Inchworm for a couple reasons. First, their customer service is awesome. Also, their crawl box design (in my opinion) oils the box better than any other design.


As far as bearings go, all the manufacturers have had problems. Advanced adapters and Trailgear use a stock, single row bearing. This bearing ends up allowing the end loading to take the output shaft to go slightly out of alignment. This ends up causing fretting on the output shaft, which can lead to failure.


On the other side of the story, there is Marlin and Inchworm. Both of these companies work together on their setups. Both tossed the single row bearing in favor of Marlin's HD double row. The problem with this bearing is that, though it is very very strong in radial loading, it cannot handle thrust loads. This is because the ball bearings are inserted into the race via a filling slot. So, when a thrust load is applied and the filling slot lines up, you can toss ball bearings. This happened to me last November.


Now, however, some of us on TTORA did our homework and discovered that a Conrad style 5209 fits perfectly in the adapter. These bearings are made by two major manufacturers and have all of the benefits of the Marlin bearing, but can take thrust loading as well. The manufacturers are Nachi and MRC. At this time, Inchworm has switched over to the Nachi bearing and has sent out it's first unit in that configuration (to Ponethousand) I believe that this bearing will work well, but I also believe that the MRC would work better. This is because, in an oiled configuration, the Nachi bearing has a max RPM of 5400 and the MRC has a max RPM of 6800 (which matches the Marlin). Theoretically, you could overspin the Nachi, whereas you can't the MRC.... theoretically. But, overall, I think that Inchworm's bearing solution is better than the competition.


My two cents...

 

Side note you can buy an inchworm case from Polyperformance with 10% off discount. Actually everything on their site is 10% if your a pirate4x4 member.

 

Subscribed to learn more.

 

Sub'n

 

Well I have determined that the TG one is not worth saving the $300. Like lumpski said the old style adapters just don't get enough support with a single bearing. I don't want to have to deal with the failure that can cause.


The 231/300 idea is just to much work. Posted below. Plus I would need to figure out my speedo. But cable shifters would be mint


http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/toyo...ota-w-o-adapters-hybrid-r150-ax15-tranny.html










So it looks like Inchworm is the way to go.

 

Totally new to this, so have to ask a question or two...

Is this Inchworm a second gearbox that gives an additional gear reduction? And if so I could retain my stock 3.73 axle ratios for good highway gearing and then go into low range on two units and have a really good low speed/high torque for crawling?

Interested in something like this OR just a higher ratio low range in the standard transfer case.

All I had considered previously is swapping to 4.56 ratio R&P in both axles for a bit of improvement in low range, but this also means higher RPM all the time while driving down the highway for that marginally small improvement when needing to go slow.

 

Yes its a second case unit. You will have the option of a stock 2.56 to one low a 2.28 to one. Or a 2.28x2.56 for an ultra low. I went from 3.55s in the diff to 4.56s and I lost fuel economy even with 33s. Off road is marginally better. But not enough for me IMO I would do a crawl box before axle gears if your happy with street driving.

 

Very good info there.
I'll also be in the market for a crawlbox in the near future to mate with the twin-stick FJ case sitting in my garage.
Good to know the bearing issues been addressed.

 

Went with the Inchworm box, showed up Monday night With poly performance I got the 23 spline input and output. The extra $200 Is worth the piece of mind. With the Pirate 4x4 discount code it ended up costing $1419.00 shipped to my door. It even came with a shifter.

Has the new style bearing.

 

Installed yet? Pics? Review?

 

I've got a TG setup with 4.7's that was right at $1200 shipped to my door. All went together as advertised. Went with it because Inchworm and Marlin were looking at a 2 month wait and I've heard positive things about the TG setup if you use the correct lube on the coupler.

 

I haven't installed it yet. I Got the Box all set up with a New transfer case because my current one needs replacement. Its sitting ready to go in I shortened my front shaft already, I just have been busy with the boat and racing so this is going to be put off till the fall I think

 

Get the inchworm box like I see you already did. There are places to save money on the truck and there are other places to pay for quality and the tcase is one of those areas to spend money. Trail gear is good for cheap armor and things like that, when it comes to precision machined parts stick with the people who invented the crawler (marlin and inchworm), you also can get the total spline input with the inchworm setup which CANNOT be retrofitted to work with trail gears coupler. The total spline input prevent the input from stripping out (Google marlin total spline). I had an input strip on the street due to a botched install on my part. It happens 30miles from my house and the tow was 300+bucks and it was a week before I was supposed to go on 1000mile wheeling trip. Moral of the story spend money on quality stuff and install it correctly.

 

Connor, I can't find a difinitive answer for oil capacity w/ a TG crawl box. I was told the transmission dead space adds roughly 1qt of oil. I'm guessing 2 quarts total is good but wanted to get a better idea. I'm 2 lazy for the "remove fill plug and fill till it runs out."

 

I did manage to get it installed. Filling the crawlers is easiest with a long hose and a pump.



https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/crawler-and-crossmember-install.406359/

 

It’s closer to 1.5 from my experience. If I remember correctly, I threw two quarts through the shifter last year and it puked quite a bit out the shifter base when I hit the highway. This spring I filled it through the shifter with the fill plug out and it took about 1.5 until it ran out. That bastard is annoying to get to so I fully understand the lazy factor

 

Thank you sir!

 

Pardon my ignorance but in english what is the difference between crawl box vs regear vs locker. Sorry in advance im tryna learn