Hello Timmah,

There are many “experts” out there.

If you know a person with specific experience, as you mentioned, and he has proof of experience with a specific Toyota part, then I’d accept his knowledge and opinion.

When I had my W56 transmission repaired, the very reputable tranny shop owner was very experienced and answered all my questions and gave me his 20+ years of experience rebuilding that transmission.

He told me what synchros he only installs and why. He told me what clutch discs he installed and why.  I believed him.

I do research as a hobby and I read books and watch 100s of videos and posts in forums, YouTube, and receive 100s of emails a week from multiple high-level sources.
What I know after about 50 years of constant research on many subjects, there are different opinions and levels of knowledge.
It is not always easy to decide what is factual based upon some level of proof and well-supported data and what is Bravo Sierra.

Someone at Marlin Crawler should be able to provide a valid expert opinion on your original question.

By the way, the incident of component failure on a rockcrawler has more to do with the driver, lack of maintenance, and improper application selection than an inherent design failure by the Toyota engineers.

That’s just my worthless opinion after 20 years of serious rockcrawling and owning 14 Toyota vehicles.

Gnarls.