Marlin Crawler's New Rock Crawling Long Travel IFS Suspension System (#RCLT)

Original text message to the guys I did this trip with was this...."just did this on my iphone while sitting here doing nothing at work"
Havent thought about it till I saw your post above...lol

 

They are now planning on a January release according to the site. I'm sure by Valentine's Day we'll all be driving around with our new kits. I've gave up on this along time ago and will be getting JD Fab products for my Tacoma when funds permit.

 

January 20??

 

I already ended up with a JD kit. I wasn’t waiting for this to never release.

 

Yep I ended up blowing all my money on another car, still come back here to see this failure

 

I did the same, I laugh every time I come back here.

 

Marlin has been posting on TW this entire time, just not in this thread nor updating it; despite being tagged.

Not sure why they do whatever it is they’re doing, but they definitely screw the pooch on every product release they’ve announced.

 

What date was that? April 1st?

 

Year 20XX, allegedly.

 

I too ended up going the JD fab route.

 

But I do hope MC gets things figured out. It’s unfortunate to see such a great company and pioneer in the Toyota rock crawling scene struggle with product development/ release issues. The taco box would be a solid alternative to an atlas.

 

I really don't know much about MC, but I wonder about employee turn over in this industry. Finding good people to produce quality parts consistently in a small business setting can't be easy. You can do the best R&D in the world, but without the infrastructure to get the product to market? Tough situation.
Not trying to let anyone off the hook for missing promised deadlines, just curious mostly.

 

You’re right about finding good employees. Most guys think they are getting into this industry to build trophy trucks and that’s simply not the case.

The other big issue is customer service/support. I was a utility consultant for a decade and worked with some very high profile clients so I understand the value in this. The reality is most guys are working on their trucks after hours and on the weekends which is why I make myself available during those times. The last thing I would want is to plan my Sunday around working on my truck only to get stuck with a simple question and no one to answer. There are a lot of very talented fabricators out there but if they don’t understand the importance of customer service and customer relationships the business will suffer greatly

 

Good point...a great product is not what makes a great business

 

Frankly I'm surprised Marlin Crawler hasn't gone under with the current leadership. Sad, because Marlin built such a legacy and to see it steadily decline in recent years has been nothing short of disappointing.

 

Now factor in having to live in Fresno on top of that. Just think about where most guys linked to these kinds of jobs end up - beach and or cities next to off-road Mecca’s like Barstow or major cities.

 

guess he got tired of posting in here and just moved everything over to his thread about his truck.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...-new-2016-tacoma.427850/page-53#post-24931459

 

This threads funny. I have been in this hobby since 2005 and marlin has always had god awefull customer service and support so this is no surprise. I remember the days of having to sit on hold for a few hours just to talk to someone.

 

There is a vendor/middle man in the 4Runner world that helped get our Thorley V8 headers and Y pipe done a few years ago. He has lost dozens of customers because of his lack of communication skills and missed dealines. He's not a fab guy, but poor customer relations = lost sales plain and simple.