Official Crawlbox BS thread!

so $8400 for everything? seems steep but its not surprising. wonder if that includes shortening/lengthening drive shafts and shifter fab. if so, its probably not to far off but yikes for that.

 

Yea, I just asked what the installation cost is. Provided my vehicle and they replied with “depending on vehicle” (which I provided…) so I’m assuming that’s most of the cost. Before taxes… so probably 9k at least.

 

If this is something you don't think you can handle, see if you can make friends with someone on here local to you who has done it, and would be willing to help. The more you can be a part of it, the better.

Just curious, what aspects of the install are you worried about?

 

That’s steep. Install is pretty much straight forward. The hardest part is cutting a hole through the cab if needed for the shifter. Extended and shortening the DS is easy, measure and supply shop with measurement, probably cost 3-400 to re-tube/balance.

Look around your local area for a shop. If you’re willing to drive to Fresno area, there’s a few 4x4 shop in the Clovis/Fresno location area that will do it for much cheaper.

 

If your profile is accurate and you do in fact have a manual, then the increased labor cost could be accounting for cracking open your transfer case to swap the input shaft. Hard to say for sure but that is Marlin's recommended approach, versus what the kind folks here suggested as an easier alternative which is just swapping to the transfer case out of truck with the automatic.

 

I'd also second what the other guys here recommended, i.e. looking into how you can do it yourself or shopping around for other quotes. Custom modifications like this will generally run up an expensive bill at any auto shop, if they're even willing to take it on. I also wouldn't doubt that Marlin's quote is high because while they do install their own parts it's generally not their core business; most of their customers install their parts themselves. So you can undoubtedly find a place that will do it for less. You can also try to compromise and maybe do some of the work yourself or find ways to cut down on the labor, like having the driveshafts modified and ready to go or finding a used auto tcase so that it can just be swapped in. Anything that will make the mechanics life easier will cut down on labor and therefor cost.

 

Did they give you an itemized list of what they are going to do, or just a flat quote of $4,500 installed?

It'd be good to know if some of these things folks have mentioned like drive shaft mods, swapping inputs, and the additional tcase mount are included.

Bending and welding the sticks was my big obstacle, and even I managed to bend some metal and melt some bolts on the end of pre-fabbed shifters to make it work.