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

He can come over here and we will both wheel with him and get those numbers and report back here lol

 

SAS > IFS
Leaf springs > strip poles
Reliable >

 

Nate,
Wheel travel is measured from bump to strap ( if you have straps ) as follows :

1. Pull your CO's off & remove the springs
2. Put the CO's back on
3. Let your axle droop all the way out
4. Measure from the floor to a fixed point ie: rotate your studs so that one is bottom dead center
5. Put a jack under the rear axle and jack it up to full bump and repeat the measurement
6. Subtract the first # from the second # ie: 30" - 15" = 15" of wheel travel bumped and strapped ( ie: my 3 link is 20" & most popular spring under kits hit 19" )

I think that what are lot of folks are intending to comment on but not being descriptive enough or straight forward enough about is that you keep mentioning packaging constraints being a factor in your design however some of us are not seeing those same constraints on our 3 link set ups and are identifying your design and choices of prefab items such as the CO towers you used as the constraining factors. In addition the amount of wheel travel that you have in the rear end is clearly visibly less than " normal ". It is important to understand that Youtube guys whether you like it or not kind of fulfill a role model position in modern society so if a bunch of self professed Taco experts feel like your design has some flaws or lack of performance there is naturally going to be pushback or challenging going on.

IE:

• The coil over towers you used and where you located them are severely limiting articulation
• The combo of coil over towers and coil overs you used do not allow for maximum travel of articulation
• The CO towers are not tied into a bed cage or cross brace
• The frame side pan hard mount not being tied into anything
• Using the OE front leaf spring perch creates an extremely short link which causes a lot of problematic long travel performance issues and drive shaft plunge
• The relationships of your upper and lower links vs performance characteristics
• Position of pan hard at ride height

I think it would help if you told everyone your actual wheel travel #'s and also plugged your stats into this 3 link calculator so that everyone could see the performance characteristics of your design. Those two items are really a great "facts only " wat to compare designs and performance :

https://www.crawlpedia.com/files/3_link_calculator.xls


Here is an example of why some folks are questioning your design, your up travel appears to be severely limited as compared to some other 3 link designs :

Your 38" tire at full stuff :


My 35" tire at full stuff ( home made 3 link ) :

 

I'd be curious to see your design plugged into the calculator as well for comparison

 

All things considered, I think he as a good attitude. A person probably has to have a great attitude when their day job rotates around social media. He came here and found people picking his setup apart and didn't explode. That counts for something. As for geometry, travel, durability, etc. I have no clue; I'm just watching the madness.

 

This is easily the most constructive reply, kudos to you.

I'm in the same boat as you, and I concur.

 

Yes that is the evap canister. Feel free to PM and we can discuss more.

 

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.