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

Perfect prep helps make perfect welds…exception is underwater welding.

 

With the 12" shackles the leaves now get nearly flat and the shackle is still at a good angle at full bump. The axle is pretty close to the frame too:






In contrast, here is the Archive kit with a 5" shackle going horizontal with about 4" of stroke going unused on the shock:

 

Nates truck has McNeil 2" glass, so the fender sits a bit higher. I'm guessing up travel ends up roughly the same as stock or a little less

 

Yeah agreed. For my 37's I had to tub around half way up the hole for the stock air intake.

 

Did you do any clearancing to make room for the tires?

I am getting more travel than stock with the RCLT kit. On 37s my frame is sitting at 21 inches off the ground with 9" of up travel and 5" of down travel.

 

Yup, we got pretty close to that same spot:

 

Ahh I think you can go even bigger on 3G because my limiting factor is the headlights. Yours are smaller and higher.

 

Just remember that the frames flex a lot, so I would give yourself lots of room. Or do an engine cross over to tie the coil buckets together.

I'm also curious if the shock will allow that amount of travel since you're cycling without the shock installed?

 

We set the bump height with the shocks in and took them out for the cutting. So the bump stops are still there. The ORIs are actually shorter than the recommended radflos, but with the same 8" stroke. The frame has been fully boxed in the rear, with a custom cross member. An additional cross member at the middle, to hold the crawl box, engine mounts gusseted, replaced the engine and trans mounts with heavy duty mounts, gusseted the LCA / UCA mounts / coil buckets, reinforced the front frame, and added an engine cross over brace from the coil buckets. Was thinking of adding another brace across the front, but with the full bumper and valance and full skids from front to gas tank, I think the frame will be solid.

 

I would benefit greatly from that. I hope to have the time one day. I taught myself a little over a year ago. Bad teacher I don’t get to weld often, but I would like to get better. If I can settle down and prep properly I can usually get decent looking welds, but nothing spectacular. Fortunately anything I’ve ground through after the fact has had proper penetration and nothing has failed including box blades, bush hogs, trailers and truck stuff. A huge improvement was upgrading helmets last week…
All this tube is extra challenging. Maybe one will end up being decent haha

 

Nate did do some cut'n and some fold'n up front.
Looks like he did some work on the pinch weld too.

 

That one looks good for being on a bung, actually. Weld positioners help so much for welding round items but I'd run it.

I started out buying a cheap Craftsman welder off craigslist and built bumpers for my first Taco about 20 years ago so I know the struggle. I am currently a certified aerospace welder for a major defense contractor. It takes A LOT of seat time to get "good" at it. I took one welding class some time ago and found it useful but with the amount of quality welding videos on YouTube now, its pretty easy to pick up small tips here and there that pay dividends in the end.

You are brave starting with such heavy projects is all I really meant by my original comment but to each their own! Pretty much every welded piece of equipment coming out of Harbor Freight has very questionable welds and I've yet to see one fail lol

 

So I took a couple hours to dig into my welder this afternoon. I’ve had better luck welding before this project. I couldn’t get consistently good welds for very long before sputtering and losing arc on most of these pieces. Ground was good, tips were clean etc. I went through every combination of wire speed, voltage, gas and swapped wires. I thought moving up to .035 would help since these brackets are so thick.

Apparently .025 is the sweet spot for this welder or material. I finally got the most perfect, consistent sizzling bacon. I should have spent the time to dial it in from the get go, but luckily there’s a lot left to burn in and I’ll hit another pass on the super boogers I don’t have enough seat time to intuitively know if it’s me or the machine settings yet. And yes I like to jump off the deep end haha

 

Have you tried 030? 023 (or 024,025 is all the same) is pretty thin for this thickness of material. I use 030 on all my stuff and like it way more than 035.

 

I started out using .035 wire for the longest time but found it would deposit too much material into the weld making them look bulbous. This can be fixed by turning heat up or wire speed down but eventually started using .030 the most. I think the most helpful tip for MIG welding is keeping the tip (where the wire comes out) 1/4-3/8" away from the weld puddle at all times, ensures a nice hot and clean weld, as long as your material is shiny. The hard part is maintaining that distance around different contours That's where seat time comes in...

 

I was originally using .030 and moved to .035 to try to get better results, but it got worse. It’s only a Lincoln 140 so I don’t think it’s got the juice to really sink in some heavier wire on this thick of material. I can burn the .025 much better on the thick link mounts. Even the chart on the machine lists .025 for the thickest material spec for the welder.

 

Oh man, if the opportunity arises, invest in a 240v machine. I did when I bobbed my bed and had to build my own bumpers and it’s a night and day difference. I don’t have 240v in my garage so I run a 30’ extension cord from my dryer.

 

Its definitely do-able to weld heavy material with a smaller welder, you may just have to make a couple passes or sit on the weld puddle longer with .025. Flux core helps (but has a lot of after cleanup). Have a buddy that SAS'd his Tacoma and built ALL of his link brackets with a 120v MIG welder, flux core even. He's a glutton for punishment lol

 

It may be time to step up. I was going to before starting this project, but seeing as all the Toyota steel was under 3/16” I didn’t see much reason. Duty cycle sucks. I’ve got an unused 240V about 20’ away, so it wouldn’t take much to bring it in the garage.

 

Interestingly @DirtlifestyleNate has a video on welding with 110V: