Marlin Crawler Round up 8 Report

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....Coming soon!

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[S/C '03 taco]

hope your wheel bearings held up,lol

[Tacorossa]

hope your wheel bearings held up,lol

Ouch! hahaha....

[874runnersr5]

dude, that pic is juicy!

[mookie]

dude, that pic is juicy!

Great pic!!

[freeze]

haha.... yeah the wheel bearings are still intact!

here's a little vid in the meantime as the write up is being completed with more photo's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0LUc2ghxZM

I took that pict with Meghan's awesome SLR!....

[S/C '03 taco]

whens registration for next year open....i so f***in in for that :)

[BeachBoy]

I'm in too next year, I'll have the longest truck out there.. and will need dual lockers and way more tubing/armor, unless I remove all body panels prior to the trip!!!

[oriontaco]

amazing

I will be booking that week off next year forsure.

[FJ-Fidel]

Sweet. More pics please. I drool ever time I think of running that trail. got to wait till' my boy grows up a bit before I can drag him down there though

[apes4x4]

Nice long video Nathan! Thanks. Looks like a rad run out there!

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Some photo's in the meantime while the write up is being finished...

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If you're coming next year.... few things should be a necessity.... lower gears in the transfercase, lots of armor, 35's, and at least 3" of lift. We were only a group of three luckily as there were about 200 trucks coming through and we had to pull over (when we could) quite a few times to let 10 trucks to 20 trucks past us that cost some serious time.

My 32.8's and David's 33's just didn't cut it as we were running the smallest tires out there. Avg. tire size was bout 37-40"!

David's already talking about transfercase, long travel, 34's, gears, more armor and better sliders with kickouts.

We wheeled from 6am to 10pm each day... if there are more of us next year... build your trucks up over the winter!

look what Marlin has for us newer Toyota's

http://www.marlincrawler.com/sites/all/marlin/files/iw_leftymci640.jpg

[BeachBoy]

auto trucks don't need transfer case

and I have no clue how I could fit 35s on the truck without MASSIVE cutting...

so I'll have to get armor, dual lockers and prayers:)

Maybe put 35s and start trimming ahaha

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Auto's need transfercase's due to the torque converter not being able to hook up especially with rocks that big. Not only that though it's the control... the Tacoma was just a real handful to manage on the trail without the low gears.

David's clutch was smoking so bad it looked like his FJ was on fire the first day!

Marlin already makes the duals for Auto's and finally now one for manuals. Front locker isn't really a necessity as more so the rear.

Given your length ;) you're gonna want more height or bigger tires. haha... yeah just trim and do the body mount chop .....

At the beginning of the trail... everyone looked at us and thought we were nuts! The statement of the day was.. "you guys aren't bringing those on the trail are you?... you guys are not gonna make it!"

I got this PM on Marlin's Forum
"hey guys how was the trip home? i was wondering if we would hear from you afterwards, you guys really impressed us!"

Another post on the forum
Then heres the group of good people we where with for a while. These three rigs drove down from canada for MCR and wheeled the WHOLE TRAIL. Let me say, really good drivers, and really good people!

Everyone said to us as we went through... you're not gonna make it... that rig is gonna be pretty dented by the end... Man I wouldn't bring that out here if it was me.... haha.. it just kept coming... poor David (tent) he was not doing good the first day.

When we arrived at Rubicon Springs... 3/4 of the way where the BBQ was... we were a bit late and showed up right next to the stage as there was no parking and people started shouting during the raffle... "Hey those are the Canadians!".... "They made it... without any body damage!".... then the crowd started to cheer and applaud that we made it that far!

[Winch]

What a blast! Next year we have to go for at least 10 days, and yes, as Nathan said, this is not for stockers. Here is what I got: http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb128/Bluebull67/2009-09-12-Rubicon/

[uriedog]

great vid. the trail looks awesom. I'm in the same boat with the young kid thing, she'll be old enough in a few years.

[canadian bum]

Looks awesome. I knew Gary that if I went I would've been so disappointed with my truck, the truck has reached its limit so its time to upgrade. Come on Turbo Diesel Land Cruiser. I'm not doing anymore runs for a while to save some coin for the rest of the build.

[Skibby]

That is wild guys. Us Canadians are crazy.

[MotoChick]

6:30 am September 9th 2009 Nathan, David Enns, Gary Kruger and I met on the south side of Calgary to be joined by a beautiful sun rise! We only had about 3 hours of sleep that night due to last minute preparation, but we were ready to tackle the 2200 km drive from Calgary, Alberta to South Lake Tahoe, California! The destination being The Rubicon Trail and The Marlin Crawler 8th Annual Round Up!

The Rubicon Trail is 22 miles of endless death-gnar! The trail has been driven by Model T’s and Old Army Jeeps. Viewing this on the internet, we assumed we would have no problem. To add to this, stock FJ’s went through the pass just a few years back. Little did we know that we would spend the next 2 1/2 days, sunrise to sunset 100% focused on the continual obstacles of the Rubicon Trail! Ohh and those stock FJ’s, took 6 days to do the trail, we had 3.

DAY 1: As we moved along the trail we got a few words of wisdom and common statements from the roughly 150 various Toyota Rock Crawlers. The most common: “There’s a major spot for body damage ahead”, “You came all the way down from Canada!”, “Your trucks are too pretty to be on this trail”, “Can you pull over so we can pass you?”, and “The most difficult part is just ahead, then you will be fine.”

As we began the trail, we were beside ourselves in excitement although I think we could all agree that we were outcast’s. All the other trucks were roughly 1986 Toyota’s with 37’’ tires or larger and solid axels. Not shinny new Yota’s with IFS and 33’s!

The trail starts with about 200 meters of granite slab. We were all grinning and laughing, until we passed this first 200 meters. Immediately the stress began. By the time we got through just the first obstacle, we had more than 30 trucks waiting behind us to pass.

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The obstacles seemed to never end on this trail. As soon as you finished one you drove 20 feet and there was the next! The so called “By Pass’s” seemed to consume just as much time or more for us to pass though as did the main trail.

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It was about mid day, and we had just finished a crazy drop that all together was about 4’ down with a boulder just in front of the driver side tire when we had the Toyota 4WD Owner’s Magazine guys catch us. They were stoked to see us out there and immediately asked us to travel along the trail with them so they could shoot our trucks for the magazine. We were thrilled as we had never seen the trail before and hadn’t a clue where to go!

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We took off with the Toyota 4WD Owners Magazine crew to hit Walker Hill. This was one of my favorite parts of the trail. As we climbed the hill there were all sorts of granite ledges ranging from 1-6 feet at a time and a beautiful view of the mountains at the top.

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We stopped by The Soup Bowl and watched some guys crawling over the 6 foot vertical ledge. This by pass was one of our first major encounters with a chance of doing body damage. The bypass is filled with boulders but has a 7 foot rock wall on the driver’s side. We came out unscathed thanks to Gary’s phenomenal spotting!

By night fall we reached The Little Sluce with Ben in his 80 series Land Cruiser (one of the project vehicles for Toyota 4WD Owners Magazine). Ben spotted us down what had to have been one of the most gnarly obstacles of the trail. We came up a hill of granite slabs to find two trees we could barley squeak though, only to have a tight 90 degree turn, and a drop over a 10 foot rock face!

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We had one more major descent that night which took us well past night fall to finish. Although the destination for day one was Buck Island Lake we were too exhausted to continue, and the trail seemed trying enough in the day light. We didn’t dare tackle it in the dark! Poor Ben continued on about another 2 hours that night to catch his team at Buck Island Lake.

We pulled into the first camping spot we could find and rigged up our first meal for the day, other than a power bar at sunrise. We didn’t have the energy to wash dishes so we whipped out a can of tuna and dumped it on a wrap! It was so hot, dusty and dry that when we blew our nose that night, it came out black!

DAY 2: We were already behind schedule and knew it would be a busy trail, so we got startled at 5:00 am (before sunrise) with Gary pounding on the truck topper and yelling “Vooka Vooka” a.k.a “Good Morning, Get Up Let’s Go!” in Afrikaans.

Day two seemed to have much harder obstacles, however, we started to get a feel for how to move though the boulders. As well, we learned to hear the difference between sliders scraping on rock, bumper on rock, frame on rock, differential on rock, drive shaft on rock and of course body on rock!

We were quite concerned about The Big Sluce but passed it without even knowing! Buck Island Lake was a beautiful sight. Covered in orange silt, we were dyeing to jump in the portable shower that was set up, but we continued on knowing we had a lot of ground to cover to make it to The Rubicon Springs for Marlin’s Round Up Party.

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By mid afternoon we came around the corner to the Tree and Rock which is a boulder field descent with a tree in the middle. At this point we were sitting in a line up of well over 25 Toyota’s because two Toyota’s had broken down. We got Gary’s truck though the section with a near roll over incident. Luckily, there were so many people watching all the guys jumped on his truck to counter balance it! We decided to move aside and let ALL the trucks pass though before we tackled the obstacles in the FJ and Tacoma. We probably sat for 45 minutes while they all passed. Finally it was our turn again! An hour later we finally had the FJ down this section of about 300 feet with three major obstacles. Unfortunately, we did our first body damage to the FJ at this point. Our Tacoma seemed to move a little quicker and passed without any body damage.

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It seemed like we were the last on the trail by this time. Most people were at the Round Up eating dinner while we were still inching along at a turtles pace. Finally we came up to The Rubicon Springs River. I have never been so excited to see a sign! But there was a sudden sense of accomplishment that went along with being at this spot in the trail.

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Nathan loves to get front row parking, so of course he pulled right up front where The Marlin Crawler event was happening. I was a bit out of it as I had one of the worst bloody nose’s that I have ever had from all the silt in the air. When we arrived there were well over 200 people sitting in the open park and at the front there was a stage with Big Mike giving out awards. From the truck I heard one guy yell out “Hey, these guys are all the way from Canada! And they have stock rigs!” Suddenly the whole crowd turned to look! Many of the drivers had seen us on the trail and the crowd began to clap and cheer! I don’t think any of them actually thought we would make it without substantial damage.

The person from Seattle who received the award for traveling the furthest to get to the Round Up came over and handed Nathan the award. Before I knew it, we were up on the stage getting a photo taken! David was no where to be found during the photo. He was out searching for our next meal (beef tip),

That night, we were warmly welcomed into Marlins camping spot where we got a chance to meet Marlin, his wife, Big Mike (his son) and the Marlin Crew. They knew that people were coming from Canada but weren’t sure if we had made it! We even snapped a few photos with them but then it was straight to bed.

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DAY 3: We got up again before sunset on Sunday as we knew that there were about 200 Toyota’s in the area. We wanted to get a good start on the day. By far Cadillac Hill was one of the most difficult areas. People kept telling us the worst was behind us but it wasn’t! We didn’t get any photos of Cadillac Hill, as our camera’s were dead and we had a line up of Toyota’s behind us further than we could see so we were frantically stacking rocks to make the obstacles do able!

Thanks to Big Mike who helped us keep trekking along.

On Cadillac Hill one of the obstacles is a S turn (two 90 degree turns) with huge boulders on each side and a slight side hill. Cadillac hill was the second spot where we did body damage to the FJ.

We had an incredible time, and we can’t wait until next year! The trail was much more difficult than we had imagined. We will definitely have different rigs next year and plan more time for the trip.

The damage to the vehicles was fairly minor. We some body damage due to rocks and some due to Jeep drivers! The armor on the vehicles really took a beating and the Tacoma’s drive shaft was totally out of balance! Luckily we stopped in a small town and met a guy by the name of Ron Fly who spent 3 hours re-balancing the drive shaft. It nearly jumped out of the balancing machine when he first put it in!

It took some time to make it the 2200 km home. We only had to take out and install the drive shaft 3 times! What surprises me more is that we lived off of two Power Bar’s and one can of tuna for a whole weekend!

Special Thanks To...

Chris Forrest
David Wakely
Everyone at Marlin Crawler
Marlin Czajkowski
Christine Czajkowski
Big Mike Czajkowski
Toyota 4WD Owner’s Magazine
Ron Fly

[canadian bum]

Sounds like a great story. Hope to be able to experience one of these one day. What got banged up on the FJ?

[Brazenhead]

Sounds like a great story. Hope to be able to experience one of these one day. What got banged up on the FJ?

X2, Have you guys posted pics of your body damage?

I have to hand it to all three of you, you've got some serious balls (Meghan included).

[RedApe]

Excellent write up...and pics to accompany!
I foresee a mini truck, flat deck and exo'd in my NEAR future... :)

[freeze]

haha... well balls aside... here's the list of damage:

09 Trail Team FJ
- Bent rear Lower link
- Dented front skid plate
- Front fender below headlight
- Driver's suicide door dent
- Driver's body panel behind suicide door
- TRD wheels slightly modified by rocks

07 Tacoma TRD Off-Road
- Rear Bumper
- Rear lower quarter panel near bumper
- Bent and dented driveshaft
- Pro-Comp wheels slightly modified by rocks
- Passenger Headlight (deer)
- Passenger Fender (deer)
- Passenger access cab door (deer)

02 Tacoma TRD Off-Road
- Passenger Fender Dented by a r-tard Jeep Driver

[Winch]

And don't forget:
02 Tacoma TRD Off-Road
- Fairlead slightly modified by more powerfull winch from the 09 Trail Team FJ :)

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oh right... haha!

[canadian bum]

Ouch that is quite the damage list. I'll probably be bringing spare parts with me for the next one when I take the 45. I'm getting pretty excited that it is getting closer to being done.

[freeze]

haha... we didn't fair that badly as we still were able to drive another 2,200 KM home no problems... well except for a deer

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Photo's have been added to Meghan's write up....

[874runnersr5]

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll41/wilmerding90/rubicon/marlincrawlerroundup09/DSC02567.jpg

found this on the net!

[freeze]

Awesome! This guy was super nice... he walked this one first time in his life. He drove with us the next day for a good part till Buck Island.

[Wellsy]

Looks like you guys had a blast, man I miss that trail.

And ya first run on it is always soo stressful - you have to keep concetrating on everything you are doing the entire day (My first run I was still IFS, and a semi working arb in the back)

Trust me though when you go back it gets much easier ;)

Gary did you try the Soup bowl? Its awesome.. I made it up no prb - I expect you should of been able to do it.

Man all this is soo making me want to get the yota running again

[Winch]

Hey Scott. No, we were so pushed for time and had to keep moving all the time, so I didn't try it. I also thought that my knuckle bearings were going (ended up being something else) so tried to keep a low profile on the trail (kinda wimpy). Plus a jeep drove into me while we were watching other's trying the 'bowl. But would like to at least give it a shot when I go back, even though I think I might have some issues with wheelbase, approach angle etc. Well, we won't know unless I try, eh?

The guy above (post #29) just crawled up there in low low. Didn't spin a tire and made it look so easy (but he's on 42's). You can see me in the background trying to pay attention on how it should be done. :)

[Wellsy]

Some Jeep drove into you? WTF???

Ya soup bowl is interesting - I think you'd be ok - It all really about the proper line at the bottom then running that crack correctly - took me a couple tries and I did er no prb - but a guy in our group with a similar rig (3rd gen SAS) - couldnt do it - About the only difference at that time was rubber and I was a little wider.

I'll have to get together with you guys one of these days so we can swap rubicon stories

Cheers man

[Winch]

Some Jeep drove into you? WTF???


Yeah, we were parked, waiting for traffic to clear in front of us and this guy tried to get by me and slid right into me. I don't thinks he's ever been off road before. When I got the winch out to winch myself off and away from him, he wanted to wrap the cable around the tree. Go figure.

He was all good about it, though and said he'll pay for the damage and gave me his number, but the damage is so minor, I'll just pop the dent out myself one of these days.

[Wellsy]

Ok well at least he was nice enough to offer to pay - Sorry to hear about the dent..

[freeze]

It was pretty "interesting" seeing how the Jeep ended up half way up the bank trying to get around Gary! It was pretty strange.

[Winch]

Just got my November copy of the 4WD Toyota Owner Magazine today, and Ben has a great article about us on the very first page. No pictures in this edition though .... probably in the next one.

[freeze]

ooooh the wait is killing me! haha. I still haven't got my issue yet.

[Winch]

Well, I thought I'd copy this here as well. You'll probably have to save the picture and then use windows to zoom in.

[freeze]

Hey thanks Gary! I think I kinda made out what it said. My issue still hasn't arrived yet, gonna maybe call and see if my subscription is still valid. Can't wait for next year!