Beware!!! Rock Solid Toys

I am the Owner of Steel City Racing, the team that competed at the 2019 and 2020 KOH in the Steel City Racing v8 4th Gen 4Runner. I created this account just to post in this thread (I don't have a Tacoma). I literally knew nothing about this until I saw Otwell's post on IG yesterday, and then spent almost an hour on the phone with him last night finding out everything that is going on. It was really hard to hear.

First, I am so sorry to anyone who has been wronged by Wyatt! What he did was wrong, period. And I hope you all get back as much of what you have lost as possible.

My team and I were lucky, but I know so many of you weren't. It was so hard seeing the pictures of all the Toyota's leaving Wyatt's shop a few post pages ago - hard because I saw all those trucks in Wyatt's shop before our 2020 race and had no idea what was really going on. I'm glad they are out of there now and on to hopefully better places!

I'm not going to speak to Wyatt personally, all of you already have. The Wyatt I knew, or at least the version of Wyatt that he showed me, had a good heart deep down and I am so sad for all that has occurred and the trust he has lost from a small community of enthusiasts like us.

Next, I feel terrible for Wyatt's former employee, who should remain nameless. If he is reading this, please reach out to me direct as I want to share my thoughts on the whole situation. He is a quick learner, passionate about his work, and made Wyatt look really good. He deserved so much better than this. And if any quality shops are reading this, please seek him out as he is extremely talented and dedicated!

For the Steel City Racing 4Runner, I wanted to make sure to set the record straight on our project. Our 4Runner build started out by dropping it off with Luke at 4x4Labs in the early Fall 2018 before the 2019 race where all of our AR400 Armor was installed (Luke and HD did a killer job on time by the way). It then went to Marlin Crawler where RCLT HD v1 was installed at their shop, along with front gears and a locker. They had some complications (as would be expected with any industry first, cutting edge v1 prototype) and we were getting nervous before the 2019 race, but they put in a TON of hours and came through for us and we were able to catch up from there.

Next, Wyatt didn't have room in his shop (luckily, and for obvious reasons looking back now), so our 4Runner went straight to Otwell's shop in Lucerne. I paid Wyatt for the rear Dynatrac 60, Icon Front Coilovers/Rear Shocks, and RST 4-Link Rear Brackets in advance. Wyatt delivered everything to Otwell's shop before the build began, and Otwell took over from there. Besides labor, those are the only parts on our project that came from RST outside of the speedo adapter harness thing he did for our Atlas II. I then spent a month in Lucerne practically living in Otwell's shop - during that time, Robert Otwell and I worked side by side (me doing the easy stuff, him doing the hard stuff) and Wyatt and his employee would come up ever few days to do their work (rear 4-Link, Atlas II install, custom driveshafts, and helping with various things here and there).

From what I experienced, Wyatt was the "brains" behind the RST portion of the work, and his awesome employee did the actual manual labor. Wyatt seemed to understand the rear 4-link well, and it made sense to me that he didn't do the more manual labor tasks because it was hard for Wyatt to crawl around under the truck and he had already told me that he gave up welding/fab work personally years ago. He spent a lot of time on calls out of the shop, and would stop in every few minutes just to check on progress. When something hard or technical would come up, he would slide under and usually came up with some good ideas or fixes that worked.

He also had a really skilled welder drive up (who will also remain nameless) and do any really advanced TIG or MIG work we needed, whom he paid on the side. I paid for both of his employees work on an hourly basis at the end of each week, and Wyatt contributed his time and expertise as his contribution to the team which I was thankful for.

We collectively were a well oiled machine and knocked out a mountain of work over a 6-month period with a few days to spare before 2019 KOH. I got to know Otwell extremely well (I practically lived with him for that period of time) and thought I knew Wyatt fairly well, but also always had a feeling like he would only ever allow me to "get so far" in terms of knowing him. We raced in 2019, broke our steering at mile 26, and then started planning for 2020's race.

Again, we were lucky. We mostly received our parts direct except for Dynatrac, Icon, and DrivelinesInc. Even our Atlas II came direct from AA. Our truck never touched the RST shop except for 2-days just before 2020 KOH while we were putting Marlin's RCLT v3 on the 4runner with Marlin there with us in the shop and RST just doing a few tweaks to our rear 4-Link setup.

And by the way, we placed 10th in class in 2020 KOH. We didn't finish in 2020, but made it to race mile 126 or so I think through 6 or 7 of the hardest Hammers Trails before we timed out, but we never broke a single thing. We had to skip 2021 because I got COVID a few weeks before and some of our newest parts weren't ready. We never had any issues with any of of the work RST did on the truck throughout both races.

Lastly, I want to brag heavily and endorse Robert Otwell, Marlin Crawler, and 4x4Labs!

If you have a build that Wyatt was "working on" and haven't already spoke with Robert Otwell, please call him (https://www.otwellweldingandfabrication.com/). He is as genuine of a person, passionate off-road enthusiast, and skilled fabricator as you will ever find. He is honest, forthcoming, and runs a modest business doing what is right. He has a small but mighty shop, but also won't take on any project he cannot finish and will tell you if he can't do something upfront. If you need someone to pick up the pieces Wyatt left behind, please call Robert. He is the only fabricator we trust with the SteelCityRacing 4Runner!

Second, I have to brag on Marlin Crawler. Yes, RCLT has been a Long Time Coming. But BigMike and his team are passionate about what they do, have built an amazing RCLT product (in addition to countless others), and the time to launch is a reflection of a) how much passion, technical precision, and "pursuit of excellence" effort they have put into it along with b) some machining and pandemic related delays that were truly well beyond their control. They are amazing people and have world class products. They don't operate like the huge shops (glossy marketing campaigns, fancy websites, etc), but they are as knowledgeable and passionate about Toyota Offroading as anyone you will ever find and they build precision products accordingly that you can’t find anywhere else.

Lastly, 4x4Labs is another firm I will always endorse heavily. The hospitality Luke, HD, and the 4x4Labs team showed me, quick turn-around on our extremely complicated and "4x4Labs First" products, and commitment to simply envision and building amazing products (even when our first ever AR400 skid plates almost broke their massive press) is unmatched.

I know this post doesn't do anything to help those hurt by RST's failure. But I simply wanted to add our story, share my sincere condolences, and point any other Toyota enthusiast looking to the trustworthy shops that we endorse and trust! Thanks for your patience in reading this long post.

 

this bolded part is bullshit. he admitted on his forum that he didn't know how to weld that well and never fabricated anything. he paid other people to weld everything he ever needed welded. his forum "crashed" when people started to call him out on things and he never brought it back cuz it "was to much work". more like he didn't want people to know how much of a liar and crook he was.

 

Thank you for taking the time to post this. Very glad to read what you wrote about Marlin and RCLT. My experience with Wyatt and RST has shaken my confidence in smaller shops and vendors, but those are the types of shops I like to support. I have always heard great things about Marlin and can't wait to get RCLT on my 4Runner. Cheers and I hope to see ya'll at KOH 2022.

 

After reading this, I had to make an account...

I almost ordered RST front and rear kit "beast" setup from him in Fall 2020. Hydro assist, crawlbox, everything. The phone conversations sounded great. I was ready to pull the trigger on both invoices. I told wyatt that I was in the middle of getting both axles from a junkyard where I live in Virginia. Wyatt pressed so hard for me to go with the dynatrac setup vs junkyard 05+ Dana 60's. I told him to send me the invoices for both kits except for axles, in which he did very quickly.

This is where things went sketchy and I am glad I caught on in time. I called him back the next day to ask a few more questions about the brackets and if they could come ready to mount on an axle or if they could be made for a truss mount. He acted like he didn't want to deal with any more questions. He said the brackets would work for truss mount, or axle mount. (Yes, I understand I can modify brackets) but for 25k+, I would hope I would be able to almost weld this project together).
He ended the call stating if I would get the two invoices paid, he tossed in the whole "free shipping if the invoices get paid before monday" speech. I stated I would.

I talked it over with the "financial advisor" aka wife. She was on board with it, but found it odd that he was super pushy about paying the invoices by a certain deadline and also how he pushed me on the dynatrac axles several times on our phone calls. If you get a free 05+ Dana 60 and 10.5, it's kinda pointless to buy a set of crate axles if you ask me.

I finally decided that I need to get the axle rebuilds finished first and that I would order the kits from Wyatt this spring. I am so glad that I changed my mind. I came across this post and I truly feel so sorry for everyone involved in this mess. Just speechless. At this point I'm switching gears and piecing everything out myself for this build. It's definitely going to take a little more research and time but that's life.

Ps. If anyone on the east coast (Virginia) area knows or has a 2nd gen tacoma that's done an solid axle swap, I'd love to get in touch. I have a ton of questions prior to tearing into this project.

 

You do need to remember that he IS sponsored by marlin and is being used as an advertising platform for them. I would take that with a grain of salt IMO.

Marlins operation is such a damn shit show that me as a customer since 2005 is planning the rest of my future builds around NOT using thier parts, I have probably spent $20k with them over the years and they have been riding the wave of the old man, hell even then the company was kind of a dumpster fire (anyone remember the mid 2000s and sitting on the phone with them for multiple hours?). So it's honestly no surprise wyatt teamed up with them and they worked so closely together.

 

If Kevin makes it back to Virginia in a month without a shop snatching him up on this side of the country, he built the white 2nd gen just getting finished.

 

thanks for the note. deff a different perspective. i always wondered why i was years behind and he had a whole crew drop everything to finish your build.

but i always like race trucks that run consumer products. race testing always creates more reliable parts, i used to do it for
bikes.

good luck in 2022 koh. matt should be easy to
get ahold of if you need a hand.

 

Haha, goddam. At this point Marlin has my money for RCLT and a few other vendors have my money for parts that only work with RCLT, so I'm just gonna hope that you're wrong about this one. Always appreciate hearing other people's opinions and, more importantly, experiences.

 

Does any one have a picture of the scammer? im trying to google the dudes face
IG...facebook... anything?

 

so interesting to re-watch. only hear the word "we". which means not him.

https://youtu.be/z8n6z5QttTI

 

I hope it works out for you man! They have been having COVID related supply chain issues since like 2008. I used to call Jim at inchworm to buy marlin parts when they were out of stock.

 

There’s so many similarities it’s scary.

-Big hype game on forums/social media for future products and pre-orders

-Finding ways to get into magazine articles and playing nice with the media guys

-12+ months lead time for thousands of dollars of product paid for in full. Always waiting on a vendor with an excuse, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I deeply appreciate what Marlin C did for Toyota rock crawling with innovative stuff like shifter seat bushings, couplers, or a metric shit ton of tech info...But it feels like Big Mike and Wyatt have some serious similarities...

 

IMO they should be figuring out how to build a low range planetary setup for the chain drive cases, like what the jeep guys figured out in the late 90s. Wyatt said that's literally impossible, but he's literally a dumbfuck.

 

I remember Wyatt saying that Marlin had determined that there wasn't enough space in the planetary to re-gear it much lower than 3-to-1, which wasn't a big enough difference from the factory 2.57 reduction with the factory gears to be worth the cost. But I do think that they should figure out a way to make a crawl box with the factory planetary. 2.57 * 2.57 = 6.60, that should be enough reduction for most people. And it shouldn't need any custom adapters for the 6-speed guys. I'd buy one.

 

LOL I noticed the notw sticker on the back window of his truck, how very Christian of him to rip everybody off

 

you might reconsider who you focus your aggression on.

Also might want to re-read my post. I am not offering any defense for RST in any way. I was fooled like everyone else and I have very close friends that were scammed out of a lot of money.

 

The only people that are going to get more angry are the perpetually unhappy/never satisfied. I have clients that have been waiting on parts since March 2020 (all of our parts come out of the UK, so combine the covid shenanigans with the brexit shenanigans and it gets deep pretty quick). And ive had some clients who have pulled their orders and either sold the vehicle or looked for another option, but 99% do so respectfully and understand there are factors beyond my control. Proof of delay and communication are key. Canned answers and avoidance are a good way to anger the village.

 

TW is one of the largest collection of assholes on the internet. dont let the lack of conversational filters get to you (i know its hard sometimes), most of us would pull over and lend a wrench if you were stuck on the side of a trail...

 

Was wondering when someone else was going to bring this up. From my understanding Marlin is a far cry from the gem they used to be. Their days of innovation with Toyota off-roading are long gone.