TF2 Marlin Crawler

[Toyotarc]

Soo haven't posted anything for quite awhile as all my micro rc builds I have lost interest. Saw this puppy for sale online and I thought I might as well add another 1/10 scale rig to my fleet.

It's not bad out of the box but of course need to make modifications

So far I have noticed quite a few stripped screws from factory which is disappointing and a pain in the rear to deal. If only the regular tf2 kit came with the same accessories as the Marlin crawler I would of bought that as id prefer assembling everything myself. Oh well can't have it all I guess.

I will be posting some mods pretty quick here, fingers crossed the photos work first try :mrgreen:

 

[lkvisser]

Sweet stuff!! You can give me some extra ideas.., I bought one as a winter project[emoji108].
Best of luck and I’ll be following[emoji1360]


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[Toyotarc]

Well first thing i noticed out of the box is the front tire rubs pretty good when slightly flexed and wheels turned which is pretty annoying for an RTR.

Good thing I purchased a body lift when i bought it :mrgreen:

Easy install for the body lift, provides .2" or .4" lift

Still rubs after the lift but atleast it doesn't rub as much

I'm trying to think of a way I can put on some body posts for the front to get rid of the screw in cab mount which gets annoying after the 2nd battery change.

 

[Toyotarc]

The leaf springs are quite stiff out of the box which makes it not flex completely and the internal shock springs are wayy to stiff to let the leafs do any work either.

After a little trial and error taking out the 2nd largest leaf in the rear and the smallest leaf in the front I found helped the most without limiting flex or ruining the springs. The internal springs i removed on all four corners which is another quick and easy mod.
Found some lovely stripped out screws doing these mods so my advice is to use pliers to break the leaf spring screws loose as i stripped two allen key heads out before i pulled out the pliers.

Another thing that was bothering me was the front metal bumper mounts was too long and I couldn't get screws in the closest hole to keep the bumper snug against the truck. So quick hacksaw job on the furthest hole and theres room to fit the screws in finally! Some reason it made the bumper solid instead of rattly like before but if its fixed I aint looking into it to hard lol. Oh and enjoy the extra approach angle you gain from this mod!

 

[Toyotarc]

Another thing thats been bothering me is the shackle in front of the front axle when it should of been behind. Well I fixed that fairly easy.

So once you have the leaf spring hanger and shackle removed and axle floating you have to get smaller screws and nuts to use. The picture below is kinda confusing because the both the hangers should be next to each other but anyways I had smaller hardware laying around to use for this. I also had a sleeve that you can see in the middle of the screw that I used to reduce the front holes in the frame to a smaller one since the leaf hanger uses smaller screws compared to the shackle.

Heres a photo of the front hanger installed, now theres only one screw in because theres no room to drill another hole for the other side. The hanger can't move much as part of the hanger also is against the bottom of the frame so it can't just twist around even though it looks like it can :mrgreen:

The rear shackle was pretty easy of course to. You use one of the old leaf spring hanger holes in the frame which is of course smaller than the shackle hole so I had to use a small screw with a washer to fix that. The angle right now is with no weight on it so that's why it looks straight up!

Here's the other side of the shackle, I used a nylock nut on it as I felt like a regular one will spin off.

Front looks like it got lifted a little bit

Here's a full body shot, I believe the front axle got moved forward a tiny bit and lifted the front end.

Took about 1.5 hrs as i spent a lot of time looking for hardware to use

I have some tamiya bruiser shackles I might toss on the rear to lift it up to match the front. Will post when I do it!

 

[lkvisser]

Pics aren’t working[emoji22][emoji22]


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[Toyotarc]

Pics aren’t working[emoji22][emoji22]


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Strange, I just checked on Firefox and Chrome without being logged into my account and they seem to be working?

 

[durok]

I can see all the pics - but this happens sometimes depending on the host you use.

I am using the Chrome browser on my Windows PC.

Very creative solutions to issues so far, keep 'em coming!

BTW - just checked using IE and Edge - also visible...

 

[lkvisser]

Strange, I just checked on Firefox and Chrome without being logged into my account and they seem to be working?

All good now for me as well.., something must have been messed up last night (iPhone/ Tapatalk app)...
Thanks


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[Toyotarc]

Ok this is going to be a long post,

I tried last night to fit the bruiser shackles to the rear of my tf2 but they made the rear leafs sit flat without flexing so I removed them as I defiantly would of wrecked the leafs. I think I will just try and make a small metal lift block for the rear later on.

Anyways onto today's mod I thought I would try and move the axle forward a little bit. Now the reason for doing this is because of the shackle reversal that I did now when the front suspension compresses the tire gets pushed towards the cab instead of getting pushed to the front like before. So of course I made more rubbing occur more than before

So my plan to move the front axle forward was just to drill another hole in the leaf springs as I didn't have any other options. So I first tried drilling with my drill press to enlarge the center hole and then create another hole infront of the rest. Well if any of you have tried drilling spring steel with regular drill bits probably know it doesn't work very well and unfortunately it snapped after I drilled the last hole. Since I'm cheap and didn't have any spring steel around to make a new leaf I welded a helper leaf to the main leaf will a small tack weld on each side which hopefully will hold up.

So after that train wreckage I decided to try something new on the other leafs. This ended up working very well. I used an impact punch and punched through the hole leaf and then used a air drill with a metal reamer on the end to enlarge the hole...

After all that insanity the leaf spring had another hole and I didn't snap it this time! :mrgreen:

Of course ran into another problem once I had the leafs installed. The front driveshaft was pretty short and there wasn't a lot of engagement anymore so I installed a RC4WD punisher shaft that I had laying around.

Before

After

It's all back together finally and heres some before and after shots

Before

After

You can clearly see the axle got moved forward in the last picture. It was roughly .25" it moved forward which defiantly helped tuck the tires in while flexing! Little issue now is the front is pretty tall compared to the rear which I will address tomorrow by adding lift blocks to the back!

 

[lkvisser]

shackle reversal that I did now when the front suspension compresses the tire gets pushed towards the cab instead of getting pushed to the front like before.

Oh no, didn’t think of that! Just bought 2 sets of reverse shackles for 2 rigs. I already went through so many bits moving the rear axle of the blazer[emoji2961][emoji2961][emoji2961]


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[Toyotarc]

Oh no, didn’t think of that! Just bought 2 sets of reverse shackles for 2 rigs. I already went through so many bits moving the rear axle of the blazer[emoji2961][emoji2961][emoji2961]


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The punch and reamer method worked very well and quick. if you got the tools I'd try this way. I might try and make a better looking front hanger with my 3d printer when I got time as I hate ordering parts from the US.

 

[Toyotarc]

Well because I have so much free time today I did a small .2" body lift on the rear to help with the cali lean :mrgreen:

Quick shot of old body mounts next to a new pair of random mounts that I will cut down

Drilled a small hole in the bottom and threaded them with the stock screw

Final view

It was a quick and easy and helped fix some of the cali lean. Still there a little but I'm heading out to the trails now :mrgreen:

 

[dezfan]

Best mod I did on my Marlin was installing the A&M Garage skid plate.

I know some people hate on the Marlin, but it’s one of my favorite rigs.

 

[Toyotarc]

Best mod I did on my Marlin was installing the A&M Garage skid plate.

I know some people hate on the Marlin, but it’s one of my favorite rigs.

Yeah that skid plate looks pretty sweet. Defiantly would help slide over stuff unlike the stock one.

I hear a lot of trash talk about the regular tf2 but not the marlin. The marlin has a way better parts list compared to a regular tf2. The only downside compared to the tf2 is you don't get a two speed trans but it's not a huge deal since it's a crawler.

 

[Toyotarc]

Will be a easy mod for today,

I will be flipping the battery tray around so there's less weight towards the rear. RC4WD makes this super easy as there is already bolt holes in the frame on the otherside.

One minor adjustment I had to make was hacksaw this corner off as my body lift brackets were in the way.

Ran into a slight problem as when I do my flat belly mod and rotate the transmission the front driveshaft will hit the tray...

Had some longer screws on hand and put a nut on the screw to lift the tray up slightly.

Here is a shot with the spacers on and the transmission rotated to where I want it to be. Shaft has enough clearance now to work properly.

Here's how much room I will gain when I make the skid plate tomorrow. I will make the skid plate wider than the stock one so it can't snag as easy.

Stay tuned for next update!!

 

[Toyotarc]

Well got some cool little parts today :mrgreen:

Easy plug n play wiring since the receiver has 4 channels stock.

Here's a decent shot installed, don't mind the no wheels :mrgreen:

Tested function with my radio after and it works great. The winch has pretty quick wire speed so you have to be ready to turn the winch off when its close to the bumper. Will eventually get a shot actually winching the truck on a hill!

Skid plate is on hold till tom as I'm busy today.

 

[Natedog]

Would seem better to notch the battery tray and keep it lower. BTW, my TF2 had too much forward weight bias with battery tray flipped forward, one crawl and swapped it back, ymmv.

 

[Toyotarc]

Would seem better to notch the battery tray and keep it lower. BTW, my TF2 had too much forward weight bias with battery tray flipped forward, one crawl and swapped it back, ymmv.

I thought about notching but I thought this would look cleaner. It is only like 1/8" taller than normal though. I did think of notching the rear of the battery tray to clear the frame rails if I were to push the tray towards the back instead of flip it but I ended up flipping it instead.

Did you swap it back because you were flipping the front end over descending?

 

[Toyotarc]

I found a easy way to improve the rear flex by simply changing the shock location. Long incoming explanation below.

So basically on leaf spring rigs when they are compressing one side (flexing) the axle will move towards the rear shackle slightly. Now the problem comes into play with the stock shock location since its making the shocks point forward at an angle. What this does is when the leaf spring is trying to compress the shock won't be able to use all its travel because it will be binding because it's trying to move the axle towards the front when the shackle dictates it towards the back. The new location for the shock to function smooth would either have to be straight up on the chassis or pointed towards the rear slightly.

Here's the hardware you will need. The shorter screw is the old one I'm just comparing the length. You will need a nut as the hole isnt threaded and also a spacer to spacer the shock off to prevent rubbing.

Here's the new location for the shocks, easier to remove the receiver box and the old shock crossmember for access with your Allen key.

Here's a shot of the angle of the shocks now. As you can see they are angled towards the rear.

Now the shocks don't bind when flexing which makes very smooth shock movement throughout all of the travel. There is multiple holes along the crossmember so if you have longer shocks this can still work for you. Definitely a worth while mod in my opinion!

I did also install 4mm lift blocks on the rear incase anyone noticed.