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

reasonable posts on this thread? get out

/unjerk/

This is a very good post. Whether we like it or not, social media has a huge effect on this hobby, and there is certainly some aspect of responsibility that ought to come with publishing material with the intention of education.

 

I'm in Socal and I'm loosely familiar with the trails in JV since I've run a couple of them in my 2nd gen. Based on the 60 seconds of actual crawling in that video it looks like you may have done Boulderdash. Fun trail, but when I ran it you could easily do it in a tacoma on 35s. Did you take your truck on anything harder than Boulderdash?

 

I could see why the bumps are setup like that. I messed up some calculations on my SAS, and I have around 2" of up travel and like 10" of down travel. It's actually kind of how the older school rock crawlers were setup, heavily favoring downtravel over up travel. It's pretty damn stable actually, would I ever do that with coilovers, probably not, but with my Uber cheap leaf front setup it works just fine. So Nate is that what you were going for there? I can also see the slap everything together to make an event, hell I have been welding at camp pre shakedown runs finalizing a build.


Maybe that's what he was going for.

Full disclosure I was also trying to build this truck as cheaply as possible, for max fun while slow speed crawling and I don't have a YouTube channel and sponsors.

 

Boulderdash/Lower Johnson and Fissure were the first trials I did in my 2nd gen at the Hammers , then the next weekend was Claw Hammer, been hooked ever since.. This was back in early 2008.

 

If I click on the link will you take my Shiba coins?

 

You're safe, I'm too old to have any clue as to how to steal your fancy pretend money... hell the fact that I copy pasted a functional link pretty much topped off my day

 

all good, like you said, pretend money. Thanks for the info provided, made logical sense to me.

 

I wish there was a guide on what trails we can fit our trucks on and what's likely doable with IFS. Not many folks out there wheeling with street legal IFS. Only way to verify what's possible is to either drive them or hike them. We did both when we were out there a couple years ago.

 

You'll be able to handle Aftershock, Sunbonnet and Wrecking Ball since you're on 40's and linked in the rear. I made it up Aftershock but had to be dragged past the slab near the very top.

Edit, probably easily can do Guacamole and Turkey Claw too

 

Yeah we ran aftershock, turned into a shit show at the notch.

Sunbonnet is on the list to check out.

 

I once lost the front diff drain bolt and lost all the fluid in the monkeycrawler because I was hung up on something stupid after the slab..

 

Chocolate Thunder was done by a 1st Gen single cab with stock suspension on 35's years ago, I doubt that he would be able to do it now giving how much its changed since then. @therealscubasteve was the driver/rig

 

Kyle and I both broke our steering messing around on one of the ledges on Chocolate Thunder. I ripped the driver side rack barrel out of the frame and he folded an inner.

 

https://youtu.be/oAvuUvQ6QWc

In action. Awesome!

 

I made it up Turkey Claw with an open front/35s, almost took out the passenger rear bedside and tailight but giving it too much throttle/some liquid influence worked to my advantage Need to raise my ride height a little though, too damn low

 

Agree - I hope he sticks around for Q&A - I enjoy watching the channel. He may not have as much up-travel but I think that rig looks pretty good in the dirt. Also - and this is definitely my ignorance -- seems there is a lot of droop -- so even if it doesn't stuff as high, if it droops lower is the overall articulation going to be the same? Stuff 2" less but drops 2" farther?

I do have a question about the cab mount. I don't understand the big deal about not chopping or relocating the mount? There is so much welding and other fab going on -- why so much interest in not touching the cab mount? When I went to 35s I was happy to chop it back and hammer the pinch weld and trim some of the fender out of the way - easy and a few less things to worry about.

 

I like how Alex's truck turned out.
Mine will be just about the same as his.

 

It’s not just a couple of inches it’s closer to 6” + and the point that everyone is trying to drive home is that it appears he has less or equal total travel than a truck with stock leaf springs due to all of the design limitations. With links as short as his and the coil over mounted directly to the axle straight up and down best case is that he is getting travel that equals the stroke of the shock. So ie: if he has 14” coil overs he would have 14” ish of travel but he also has those tall bump perches…

 

I assume since he apparently didn't know the difference between wheel travel and articulation, he drove 24" up an RTI ramp and said that's how much travel he has?

The funny thing is many of us in here would be well over 30" up an RTI ramp, with a few likely pushing 40".

Last time I lifted a rear wheel with a forklift I was around 34" on my archaic leaf springs, and you typically don't get as much out of a forklift as you do on an actual ramp.

I've also tested stock tacomas with and without the swaybar. Completely stock was 20", and no swaybar picked up the rear tire 21.5"

 

Nate said that's as far as he could go without lockers