Marlin Crawler's upcoming HD LCA Frame Brace Kit

nice! i have appointment coming up soon too. thought your daughter was getting the truck?

 

Quick question that there may not be an answer to. Sometimes manufactures intentionally make a weak point when designing a system to prevent failure of more critical or hard to repair items. If we are strengthening this area in the chain (LCA, UCA, spindles, mounting tabs, etc) what is the next point of failure? I'm guessing chassis, but I'm an idiot, so correct me if I'm wrong. If that is the case, is it safe to assume that the chassis would require some insane level of impact and abuse to get tweaked or bent due to everything else being up to par strength wise?

 

I would say to bend the frame would take a hit enough to total the truck. I have this kit installed and bombed my truck pretty hard last weekend at the dunes. Alignment is still spot on, steering wheel stayed centered. Here is a pic of me blasting clear in the back of Pismo beach in the big rolling dunes.

 

By design, the spindle is the "fuse" of the suspension.

 

I'm going to say tie rod is the weak link. After all the gusseting we do with aftermarket product the tie rod is the only thing i've had fail. I broke a spindle (upright) once but that was basketball size rock at speed and the spindle gussets had no heat in the weld. I'm also major ok having a tie rod bend than any other part of the suspension/steering. they are small, easy to replace and relatively cheap.

 

Has anyone been able to run these gussets with a LCA skid

 

Yes, BAMF skids, had to make a small cut in them. No problems.

 

Thanks for the feedback Gents. Anyone know if these will clear Dirt King lowers?

 

Ordered mine today

 

yes. they clear.

 

Awesome setup and thanks for the answer!

 

Do these work with PRO skids on 16+

 

and significantly more work.

I have had mine since black friday, getting them on next week

 

not a problem

 

Look at my post above. They clear DK's

 

Installed these today with the help of a friend that can weld and has the equipment. Also owning a lift helped. It was pretty straightforward. We did the install without removing the LCAs. We were able to get quite a significant amount of welding done with everything in place. Also as long as you take your time, and do a little bit at a time per side, there's really not a lot of risk of burning your bushings unless you're just going to town on one of them. We did the wet rag trick, but it was probably making more mess than it was actually helping.

 

What did you do about protecting the rubber boots on the cv axles? I was thinking of cutting up a welding blanket and wrapping them a few times

 

That's exactly what I did. Pics are in this thread somewhere.

 

Didn't do anything honestly. It wasn't an issue. No damage to the boots. Anything heavy that hit them rolled off before it could do any damage. But I'm sure you could use a wet rag or a welding blanket if you wanted to. Everything under my truck had been coated in fluid film a few times so there was still a residual layer of it on everything

 

Any update on this? Looking to get a set to burn in with my TC cam tab gussets