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

Rooting against you guys? No.

Highly skeptical of MC and the long-standing and well-established gap between their promises and their delivery? Yeah. A little bit.

 

Nailed it.

 

Fair enough. At this point I'm skeptical too, I'd be a fool not to be. My friend has worked with Marlin for years, and I trust his advice and inside knowledge of the situation. I wouldn't have shared that if it was a friend of a friend who knew a dude who knows Marlin, etc. Because yea, I'm well aware of how naive that sounds.

 

I really hope your friend isn’t someone with an Instagram account and a YouTube channel with a million followers on each one. Seems to be the pattern lately.

 

Nope, not by a longshot. I'll be furious if I see a RCLT kit on Dirt Lifestyle before they're delivered to paying customers.

 

Not a fan.

 

You can bet he'll be getting one before some of the pre-ordered ones do. Just remember there was a group over a yr ago that was asked not sure how many actually took the bait. That's when I bailed and went elsewhere that email didn't sit right with me. Glad I did too.

 

In before the internet burns marlin down like pelfrey and rst. Hope you guys get your stuff but after following this from the beginning, pictures of maybe 5 non complete sets would not get my hopes up. Especially considering they’ve promised at least 5 sets to you tubers and the likes.

who knows, trail gear may have there own coming out soon

 

That front tube bumper email alert is coming any day now.

 

I wasn't cool enough for that email. Probably for the best tho.

 

What went down with the tube bumpers? I don't know much about the company's history... Have they ever collected money from people and not delivered (like RST/Pelfrey)? Or just instances of stringing people along then not releasing products?

 

The pics of the 5 complete kits didn't mean much to me either. But the pic of 20+ sets of the machined hubs? Those are not cheap or easy to produce (billet + milling). I can't imagine them going through all that trouble to not deliver. If they're scamming, they're not doing it right.

 

Neither was the 100s of bumpers and other products that Pelfry had at their old facility and Laser Nut had at theirs and was never paid. Just saying because you see a lot doesn't mean it looks good.

Pretty much the latter. The crawl boxes was a whole other fiasco with that crap. MC can't get their shit together. Originally they were supposed to have their own rack advertised that until the day they opened up to public general preorder then up nope it's a 200 series rack. That seems like a bad taste. Like shit why you pushing the end all be all steering solution even knowing you are using a 200 series rack. Especially when you were called out saying it looked like a tundra or similar rack and then completely denied it and said nope much better.

Yep and had the similar ND crap written on it like your current one. It's pretty shady if you ask me they just want to be able to sue if their end dies and people start posting pics of the emails and stuff putting them on blast.

I won't even recc their LCA gussets anymore even if they are the best solution for someone wanting to keep the stock LCA pivots.

 

Those I ordered when I ordered RCLT and they shipped out the next day. I'm waiting until I disassemble the front to put them on. As far as the tacobox goes, I can't imagine why they aren't cranking those out. Seems like there's a huge market for them. It's hard to beat a beefy OEM steering rack for ~$465. Mine is sitting in the garage and it's massive compared to the stock rack, and my stock rack has 230k miles on it and has been thoroughly abused. Personally, I prefer one that is off-the-shelf, and again I wasn't privy to the stories during its development.

They definitely underestimate the importance of jumping on this forum (or somewhere) and explaining things to people. The lack of communication when deadlines are missed is unacceptable after you take money from people.

 

You know, an OVTune twin turbo setup is cheaper than these long travel kits.... he had some serious development delays but kept up with communication and didn't take people's money as far as I know.

 

The steering rack cliffs notes.

We'll make something that is just bolt in no modifications or fab work required unlike tundra rack
A few people said that sure looks like a tundra or similar rack to me.
MC-no we're working one.
Updates the rack is coming along yada yada yada BS
RCLT release guess what guys we couldn't get our rack to work so went with an LC200 rack and no information or answers to questions about what's involved in fitting it in the truck.

So they kept promoting this new MC Rack that will be better than a tundra or the like that's on the market then Bam just does the same damn thing just with an LC200 rack last minute. Throws a curveball and doesn't deliver what was being promoted the whole time. And it's optional with the kit otherwise you have to source it yourself.

As far as the LCA gussets that was me saying they don't deserve the business with everything else going on. Doesn't matter if they can deliver those or not.

 

I totally get how some folks love to fabricate to push boundaries and develop new things. That’s MC and those like them.

What I don’t really understand, especially in the context of this thread, is why the bolt-on folks get so frustrated with the fab type’s inability to keep pace with their desires.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper, easier and a lot less frustrating to simply buy a Jeep?

 

I think it would be less frustrating if people that advertised and sold goods were held to the same standard as every other industry.

If you market something as "coming soon, preorder" and take money, then sit on it, or never produce the product without explanation to customers, it's a surefire way to kill any positive vibes your company may have.

Having good QC/QA/CS is how you stay in business.

 

Considering I went with stuff with a lot more fab work and they still were able to deliver before MC I think it's less about keeping pace and more about being a good business and the face you set in the public eye.

I also bought a jeep so there is that but it's got more fab work than the MC kit does sooooo........

 

Marlins crawl box delays have been going on since the early 2000s. When I was building my lefty/rebuilding my crawl box in 2010 I used to call inchworm to buy marlin parts because marlin never had shit in stock on their website. They have always been kind of a mess, anyone who's been into building toyotas for a long time will tell you stories of waiting on hold basically all day to get a hold of them. I'm basically saving up money for an atlas if/when my crawl box/lefty finally blows up. Its seems they can't even get their supply chain figured out for their bread and butter product that basically prints money for them (crawl boxes), the skeptisim around this product starts making sense. I have no dog in this, just watching on the sidelines because it does look kind of cool, I would probably never buy one, but looks cool none the less.