Marlin Crawler TacoBox for our 5th gens

[4rNCMTNs]

There is nothing better than a technical down hill section and not using the brakes at all. The level of control and confidence is fabulous.

 

[zothen]

What are the pros and cons of this versus an Atlas?

 

[bigdaddy2021]

What are the pros and cons of this versus an Atlas?

Good question

I didn't consider the Atlas very long for our project for several specific reasons (one of which is just me being lazy and looking for the path of least resistance to 100:1 or better crawl ratio's) - Here's some of the things I thought about:

Cons

• Cost: No matter how I configured it, an Atlas Tcase was more than the tacobox. I paid +/- $3300 for the Tacobox and Atlas's always add up to around $4600-4800 for me. Both require new driveshafts, so add on $1000 to both. This was an expensive mod, but Atlas's are expensiver, in my opinion.

• 
  application: I would assume that the atlas could be adapted to our application, but it wasn't originally designed for it. I know they can come with "toyota" flanges on the outputs, and maybe the bolt pattern could work with our auto tranny but I felt better about buying a product built 100% for Toyota's using Japanese gears on par with our OEM Tcase and diff gears.

• 
  Loss of our stock Tcase/traction control: As I understand it, the Atlas would have replaced our current tcase, removing the features that we like about our 4runner for moderate trails. Our current Tcase works great for terrain that 33:1 an ATRAC is good for. Ours has been very smooth and trouble-free over thousands of miles in snow, sand, packed gravel, etc.

• 
  Long lead time!: Atlas's seemed to always have a couple to many month lead time.

Conversely, and probably somewhat obviously in some cases - here's what we liked about the Tacobox option:

• 
  100% bolt on with minimal mods other than extending vacuum lines and wiring harness. Tacobox's are built for Tacoma's, FJ's and 4runners. The only custom fab was bending the shifter to suit our particular center console.

• 
  ATRAC Leaves ATRAC/MTS and stock t-case intact and functional

• 
  Shifting: shifter is 100% mechanical and direct to the box. Fits unobtrusively into our center console. No wires to route or adjust.

• 
  Allows for a wide range of gearing options (Does Atlas offer this many? I don't know for sure, since they have some new units with more features..):

2wd Hi (13:1) (normal daily driving)
2wd /Crawler Low-3rd gear (24.5:1)
2wd /Crawler Low- 2nd gear (35:1)
2wd /Crawler Low -1st gear (61:1)
4wd hi/ Crawler Low-3rd gear (24.5:1)
4wd hi/ Crawler Low- 2nd gear (35:1)
4wd hi/ Crawler Low -1st gear (61:1)
4wd Low/ Crawler Low - 3rd gear (63:1)
4wd Low/ Crawler Low - 2nd gear (90:1)
4wd Low/ Crawler Low - 1st gear (157:1)

 

[bigdaddy2021]

Short clip of our first test run - nice to have some land to do our testing in case we break down. FYI, this was in 3rd gear, I think, so about 64:1. 2nd gear would have been 90:1 and first gear is 157:1 which is significantly slower.

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[04run&gun]

Howdy everyone. Just curious....I was reading a debate between manual shift levers vs knobs lol. All I could think while reading it was how (a few years ago) so many 4th gen guys were trying to get FJ manual t-cases in there rigs. Less actuators the better I say, especially cuz my 03 v8 is stuck in 4h lol. Anyway, future mods kept going through my mind during my read cuz I'm thinking you need a manual transfer case to add a Taco Box. Correct me if I'm wrong.