BigMike’s Big Journey: New 2016 Tacoma

May 1, 2019: First Road Trip on RCLT HD!

The very next morning with less than 10 miles on RCLT HD Prototype V2.0 I loaded up and headed south for a 500 mile round-trip journey to the Los Angeles area!

And HOLY CRAP guys this front end rides LIGHT YEARS BETTER than the one-off prototype LT setup I've been running all these trails with. Unbelievably better!!

It rides WAY smoother, corners WAY better, comes out of corners WAY better, drives PERFECTLY STRAIGHT at 75 MPH on the highway, and is simply everything I could ever ask for thus far.

I've been intentionally driving up and off curbs all over the place and am completely amazed at how the front end sucks up bumps, NOTHING like my old LT setup.

I can NOT WAIT to get this baby out on a trail!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RCLT HD. Amazing.

And I thought the rear leaf spring setup was a pile of crap before??? The front suspension is SO GOOD that now the rear suspension is SIMPLY UNBEARABLE!!!!!!! What can I do to improve the crappy rear suspension??


Coffee break, south end of Bakersfield, CA



Filling up in "what am I doing here" Tujunga, CA



Eat your heat out automatic owners!! Ha! And this INCLUDES going up and over the Grape Vine! (~ 4,000 ft climb & descent)

 

May 1, 2019: First Road Trip on RCLT HD! (continued)

Found another White Sport brother who likes to back-in so I knew what had to be done!!







The next morning I found a nice place to park the truck for a while



...to be continued

 

In In In we need release dates and pricing please

 

Very cool!!

 

I know and I'd like to chat about this real quick.

We still have a LOT of work to do... Thus far everything RCLT related has been a two man show: Myself designing/producing/installing/marketing, and my lead fabricator Rocky doing the welding.

So far we have only made 1 x each prototype, which is very slow to produce and extremely expensive.

The good news moving forward is that I now have confidence for the next prototype (V3.0) to be considered a RC (Release Candidate, sorry I'm also a programmer ) which means we'll be producing a few of them. Sorry, they have long been scheduled for specific vehicles with tight and confidential (NDA) criteria.

I am mentioning this now because I am confident that V3.0 will be the last prototype after which I will *finally* pass the reigns of RCLT HD over to CruzrDave, who is my lead production and operations manager. He will then have the uphill task of establishing vendors, creating production schedules, creating part numbers, getting raw materials in, organizing warehouse space, figuring out packaging & shipping, educating our sales and installation teams, and so on.
Somewhere in there he will figure out costs and finally a retail price. I'll then move to working on the installation guide, pictures, video marketing, and getting all the information up on our Store website.

This is all shorthand for WE HAVE A SH*T TON OF WORK TO DO and RCLT HD will have one of the highest SKU counts for a single product we've ever done as a company. So this isn't something where we just blow our nose and suddenly we have RCLT HD listed on our website with same day shipping ready to go.

I am still hopeful for a Summer release, but, the Standard RCLT kit obviously is behind schedule. Of course it was never our intent to release info and get all this hype started without actually having a product ready to sell (not many companies spend hours of time posting to forums about progress of expensive prototypes with ROI no where in sight) but we were motivated by specific factors to get progress of RCLT out as soon as we could.

It's a lot of moving pieces

Regards,
BigMike

edited for readability

 

Wow! I'm really looking forward to the RCLT!

 

Congratulations ,You my man did what needed to be done for Toyota 4x4 IFS ,
Now you have a bolt on (some welding ) Rock crawling strong IFS front axle , That I for one am very interested in !
Good job and Happy trails ahead

 

Just assuming, there won't be any of this to come to 1st gens?

 

We have received a lot of demand for 1st gen Tacoma & 3rd gen 4Runner and will start working on those once we get the current-design RCLT Standard and RCLT HD to market

Regards,
BigMike

 

Awesome to hear someone is still interested in 1st gens!

 

I'm so torn. I want to hate you for the hype of this but I love it and cant help but respect you for creating something that seems so amazing and bringing us along for the ride! Now I just need to know how much to put away to afford one of these setups. I'm running into issues with my wheels and 33" tires at my cab mount chop and firewall when flexing and turning. I want 35's or maybe something bigger but the amount of work needed to make it all fit seems daunting. I also need to to get 5.29's and a front locker also...

 

I'm really glad I found your build thread and also found out about your innovation with the RCLT. This completely changes the route I'm going to take with my Tacoma. Really looking forward to the release! I think the demand for these are going to be huge considering all of the design improvements over other LT set ups.

 

Ive been talking with various venders for years trying to convince them to build something like this for my truck. I feel as I've taken my truck as far as I can without some serious frontend work. Lifted, Body-mount relocated and firewall tubbed. Geared and 4.7 Marlin Crawlbox installed. Currently running 39.5 Iroks and wheeled heavily in the snow. Ive considered SAS for several years but now that this kit is closing in on its release date, I can only hope to be able to get my hands on one before the supply and demand war begins.

I really think this kit matched with my current setup will allow me to run 41-42" tires..... Thats right the guy that was mocked for running 36" tires 5 years ago and again with 39.5"s three years ago will be running 41-42" tires on IFS.

 

Badass brother, very impressive! Thank you for running our TacoBox Supreme!! 41" to 42" + IFS.... WHEW!! We're going places now alright!!

May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension!

Let me preface what's about to come next with the following:

I've only ever Rock Crawled leaf sprung vehicles. This Tacoma is my first IFS truck and in the city I constantly find myself never slowing for speed bumps due to how efficient coilovers are. The rear, however, hits like a ton of bricks and I realized a long time ago that I wanted to update the entire platform to coilovers. To make matters worse, my leafs springs are a Heavy Duty / Expedition style 3" lift type made by a company who as far as I'm concerned is no longer in business. These spring packs are comprised of TWELVE LEAFS and ride incredibly stiff. I never liked them from the beginning due to how stiff they are, but they got me the lift I needed to fit 40s and served me well so I can't complain too much. After all you can't expect too much from mass-produced one-fits-all leafs.

This particular rear suspension project was originally planned to be completed more than a year ago, but the MarRack project occupied that last winter/spring and then of course RCLT that summer/fall/winter. So now that both are done and installed to my rig, it was finally time to do something about my rear suspension.

Subjective Ride Comparison 1 of 3:
If I rate my old front LT suspension as 5 times smoother riding than the rear leaf spring suspension, then the new RCLT HD is now 8 times smoother riding than the rear.

RCLT HD rides SOOOO MUCH BETTER than my old LT. The shortcomings of the rear are so much more obvious now.

SO LET'S GO! -Zohan

Whoops, tires fell off!



Whooops, leafs fell off!



Whoops, metal fell off!



Whoops, exhaust fell off!



Whoops, the bed fell off!

 

May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension! (continued)



Frame prep'd



Wow... We never had to worry about this with the older Hilux trucks. C-channel frames are a joke. You guys have seen how I pack for trips; Most of my gear is in the cab and I usually only pack two or so recovery gear boxes in the bed. I feel sorry for the frames used under rigs with popup tents, tons of expedition gear, heavy bed cages, rear tire & fuel can swing-out carriers, etc... Toyota: Please bring us the 70-series Land Cruiser so we can have a real man's Toyota truck once again in America!

RST's fabricator told me they see this all the time with Tacomas, but he at least did complement the 3rd gen's apparent "High Strength Steel" material commenting on how it was much harder to collapse the frame back into it's original position. He also mentioned how it is more resistant to grinding and how it welds differently than 1st and 2nd gen frames. Nevertheless, I'll take the fully boxed frame of the 1979-95 Toyota minitrucks any day over this "high strength" c-channel frame.

I was hard to capture the right angle by camera. It looked worse in person



Boxing it up like it should have come from the factory!







This Tacoma is no stranger to deep night work!

 

May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension! (continued)

During the first few days of progress, while they were working on the rear suspension I was doing a few small mods here and there

Got my Marlin Crawler winch fairlead reinstalled which had been removed while installing the lightbar. (A winch is in the works, just hasn't been a priority yet)

https://www.marlincrawler.com/accessories/recovery-parts/hawse-fairlead





I also picked up 8" limiting straps and got them installed. I wasn't able to do so before, and still have yet to, but I'll now be able to set my downtravel so I can figure out what limits RCLT can be improved upon. I don't know where the full extension should be until I get it up in the air, so I just shortened it all the way for now to be on the safe side.

Not entirely happy with this location... It's potentially going to make adding a second shock difficult. On the KOH 4Runner project I placed both straps in front of the axle, but then they would drag on the MarRack boot depending on LCA & steering angles which is why for Prototype V2 I moved it to the rear. Anyway... more trial-and-error work to do!



I also *finally* installed the fender trim that I've been caring around in my cab since bloody Jan 2018!! >_<

Here is what I purchased, 1/15/2018:
1/32" edge x 25 feet

$37 TRIM-LOK - 62B3X1/32-25 Trim-Lok Edge Trim – Fits 1/32” Edge, 3/8” Leg Length, 25’ Length, Black, Pebble Texture – Flexible PVC Edge Protector for Sharp/Rough Surfaces, Easy to Install

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NL45NFY/



I knew it would be stupid easy to install and was happy with how it turned out. I still haven't done the front fender yet lol



Finally, knowing that RST will be welding new brackets to my frame, I ditched my old bolt-on Rock Sliders. I am finally 100% free of products from this company! Whew, what a roller coaster ride that has been...

I told RST to find a new home for them and within an hour they had a customer come pick them up and they are long gone. I was super happy to get rid of these, thank you RST!!

 

May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension! (continued)

Also while this was going on, RST was finishing up the install of another Marlin Crawler TacoBox, this time into an automatic 2nd gen 2WD Prerunner converted to 4WD with a TacoBox Supreme & FJ Cruiser manual shift t/case.



RST does some of the cleanest TacoBox installs we've seen. If you're in the SoCal area, we highly recommend them! http://rocksolidtoys.com



I was asked if I could sign the Crawler and it was my honor to do so. Always such a humbling experience and strong reminder that all this hard work and long hours we pour into the Rock Crawling industry is well worth the effort!

 

I showed a friend the RCLT development and he wanted me to four-link the rear when we do my truck....nothing like one-stop shopping!

 

May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension! (continued)

Most of the time while RST was working on @SlowestTacoma, I was off at various cafes trying to get caught up on marketing work that I had to push off in order to get RCLT HD Prototype V2 built & installed onto my Tacoma. We are blessed to have a well working system where our owners can be away and work remotely and the company continues to push forward in our absence. Thank you everyone starting with CruzrDave who were back at the home fort living keeping Marlin's Rock Crawling dream alive!

Getting our Round-Up Registration up and running
https://www.marlincrawler.com/mcr



Typing up another awesome MC Newsletter
https://www.marlincrawler.com/newsletter



...and getting this build thread updated!

 

May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension! (continued)

Back at RST they were quickly getting things finished up!

Unboxing 12" Radflo rear shocks