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

The JD LT kit pushes the wheels 7/8ths forward and another inch if you have their pivot kit installed and 37's work with these fenders. Its tight but its doable according to JDFab

 

I guess it is a toss up, cut out all of your inner fenders, bolt in new fenders with bolts you will need to keep tight, or measure and cut, weld in new sheet metal.

 

The JD kit is based around his LCA pivot kit with adjustment 1+ forward plus the JD long travel kits pushed forward another .875 of an inch.
Their kit is focused entirely of pushing the wheels forward.

edit:looks like they beat me to it.

 

I think most of the prototyping was done on his 3rd gen. The 1" forward helps clear the cab mount and most of the inner fender, but affects the front. The 3rd gen headlights are up a bit higher than the 2nd gen, so its more of an issue on the 2nd gen.

 

I considered it, but this is where I am at now.

 

Yeah it will definitely be close.

 

Would be nice to see that at full bump

 

it clears a 35” tire no problem at 1 7/8” forward full bump lock to lock

 

I thought one of the great things about this kit was it’s bolt on with a few tools people already own and easily removed if you want to go back to stock.

It’s literally mention in the first few post on this thread. I just checked! Am I missing something? Seems like a lot of fab work to wedge this kit in.

 

It's bolt in......if you limit travel severely....

 

We patiently waited 2 years to get our hands on a kit. We waited just like everyone else. This kit provides something that a lot of other kits on the market don't, it's not for everyone nor is it designed to be. The JD Fab kit in my opinion is a killer price point for the value. Solomotorsports makes another killer high strength set up at a big price point but it lacks the ground clearance for the rocks. The ground clearance at the arms is my biggest gripe with other kits for what we do with this vehicle. I also don't love that JD Fab is not doing a fabbed spindle, just reinforcing the factory spindle. Getting rid of the 2 LBJ bolts was a huge plus for us going to the Marlin kit as they have shown their ugly face more than once. Having to retap/replace the spindle if the threads are ever damaged is a huge bummer for race applications. That and going to a larger uni-ball to handle a lot more stress. We run this suspension because in our opinion it truly is the most capable off-the-shelf suspension setup on the market for these rigs for rock crawling and go fast desert stuff.

I wish we could cut everything out of the way of our up travel but 4600 rules tell us otherwise. It's nice that the tire placement of this kit allows us to run a lot more than we were able to with the TC kit as we are now out of our firewall. We have about 3 inches of wheel travel we can't use because of class restrictions which is a lot when you are talking 13-14" of usable travel.

Too much up travel can also kind of suck in a non-crawler aspect when you front diff wants to live in the dirt. Nothing is more uncomfortable than using your belly as a bumpstop, but most people don't go fast enough to find out, granted I know I have seen both you and Noah doing this at the same time, it was just in sand lol! This has taken out our radiator once before.

 

We haven’t done a custom spindle yet because it’s a waste of money to do one and still retain the stock Tacoma unit bearing. Also to benefit from a vertical uniball setup the entire core support needs to be removed so you can gain the additional uptravel. Then you run into the issue of ground clearance when bottomed out because of the 4x4 “snow plow” crossmember. For less than $150 you can purchase a proper spindle gusset and steering arm double shear gusset that makes the stock spindle very, very buff.

If there is enough interest for a custom spindle we will gladly build one however we will only do so with custom stub shafts, huge bearings and 934 outer CV’s

We also chose to focus on things like sealed uniball inner pivots for the upper and lower arms instead of squeaky bushings. After all spending thousands of dollars on a custom kit only to end up with noisy bushings makes no sense to us.

 

Class restrictions or this 4runner would have 40's under it...

 

I think you guys make a killer product, I am solely speaking to our application. We ran a beefed-up factory spindle for 2 seasons and it never failed, I was just never a fan of the unserviceability of the LBJ bolt threads past retapping them. Nobody wants to have to re-fab a spindle because two threads are too far gone. I am also really excited to see how it does out at Hammers as I have heard some fun news! I also really appreciate the lower link pivots you guys are doing as it beefs up the belly quite a bit.

I hope my statements are not taken as hate towards your kit because it is far from, I have loved watching the progression and thought put into it. Custom stub shafts with bigger bearings would be huge, it's something I wish was offered for the Marlin kit. It would then have to be accompanied by a bigger diff to make sense IMO whether that's an ultimate dana44 from a Bronco or a crazy setup with a 9" center. We are still running the original unit bearing from when we bought this 4runner going into our 3rd season of racing with absolutely zero play. I'm sure a 37 or 40 would do more work on them but we are blown away.

My experience and short knowledge in long travel is specific towards a racing application and just speaking from a user standpoint.

I run all factory IFS on my 3rd gen and it wheels harder than most guys on here with LT and beefed up rear ends I just have to work on it a lot more lol.

 

Camburg makes a fabbed spindle - no need to have more than one supplier since they’ll be roughly the same price anyway.

Dirt Designs also makes a kit with a fabbed spindle and upper and lower horizontal uniballs.

 

Same issue as previously talked about. It uses that baby size Toyota hub bearing instead of some cool Dana 44 style and size hubs. Why spend the money on a spindle that ain’t showing it needs to be replaced? Seems like that would be better off on another portion of the suspension.

In my line of work solving a problem that doesn’t exist doesn’t get you ahead but puts you behind the curve….

The RCLT kit has its advantages. I think paired with the JD lower pivot kit you could cycle some real travel and have some of the benefits that were sold to everyone when mike first started talking about their kit and how awesome it would be.

the kit is nothing compared to what he portrayed it to be from the beginning…. No cutting or trimming to run big tires because this “solved those issues in corrected steering angle” turns out to be a crock of crap and nothing more than a sales pitch to gain interest and make people willing to finance your R&D endeavors. Which again is a crappy way of doing business. Using your customers money to develop a product to sell to other customers.

I am personally pumped to see the JD kit and the RCLT working side by side on similar terrain.

 

I’ll wait and see who’s blowing out bearings before believing it’s necessary. I run D44’s so it’s not that I poo poo it, but 99% of this thread is a circle j [edit - now that I remembered to use big boy language] boisterous fandom [/edit] for Marlin. An alternative thread title is “I dig SAS trucks but don’t have any knowledge or ability to do it.” Why strengthen your drivetrain to the point of making your 8” clamshell your weakest link when you can run bigger tires and not worry about it plus cut less with SAS? So you can remove your kit and sell your hacked up truck with stock size tires? Ya?

Common sense would tell someone you can’t stuff a 37 on these trucks without cutting.

Having the crawl ratio that Big Mike has is probably way more important than the RCLT for what most guys want to do with their trucks but selling a “bolt on” kit is much easier to those with no clue.

 

I didn’t take it as hate at all! Just simply explaining our reasoning for doing what we did. We also can’t stress enough the fact that our lower arms are 100% cromoly plate, inside and out. Not sure what other guys are doing but the strength from the cromoly is massive compared to a mild steel arm, especially the internal ribbing.

Also the stock unit bearings are fine for rigs more geared around rock crawler stuff... however if you want to go fast with big tires they won’t last.

 

What would you consider big tires? Tons of guys run 35’s and a few run their trucks hard with 37’s using stock hubs. I know big hp 39-40” tire guys don’t do well with anything other than beefy hubs but who’s doing that on a yota besides completely modded vehicles?

 

37’s and up... also driving hard is very subjective. Driving hard to us means plowing through 4’ whoops over 70mph for hours on end