Marlin Crawler as told by his son, Mike Czajkowski in Episode 270

So many great stories about a great man!  Mike Czajkowski shares stories about his dad, the legendary Marlin Crawler. Don’t miss episode 270! Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

2:10 – People always know when Marlin caught them on the trail, where they met him.

18:28 – Paul goes, “hey, this my friend, Marlin.” And Christine gets up, throws the paper and storms off to her room! That was the first time they met.              

29:11 – There was a first gen Toyota mini truck in the church parking lot, my dad snuck out of church to leave a note – cool truck, call me! 

38:28 – How many revisions has the Marlin Crawler truck gone through?? Listen to find out. 

54:05 – he would experiment and learn and put seals in backwards on purpose, just do things in non-conventional ways

1:04:10 – Three boxes. We call that a triple transfer case, and no one had ever done this to go slow over the rocks.

Special thanks to Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:05.120] 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off road industry. Being involved, like all my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present and future legends as well as business owners, employees, media and land use warriors. Men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off road.

[00:00:46.460] 

Whether you're crawling the red rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread victoriously.

[00:01:14.190] - Big Rich Klein

On this week's episode of Conversations with Big Rich is Mike Czajkowski, known as Big Mike. Mike is the son of Marlin, Mr. Crawler Czajkowski, father of the dual case for Toyotas. We will be talking about Marlin's life, including family, education, the business, and also talking about Mike's life. Well, hello, Mike Czajkowski. How are you doing today?

[00:01:39.280] - Mike Czajkowski

I'm doing great, Rich. How are you?

[00:01:41.040] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. I'm looking forward to this interview. You know, I've been friends with your dad for a long time. Just met you recently. But, you know, I saw your dad out at events and everything and out on the trail for years. And I'm really looking forward to talking to you about not only your life, but your dad's life.

[00:02:00.340] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, this will be, this will be fun. I'm going to put you on the spot a few times. Where did, where did you meet Marlin? Do you remember the, the, where you were?

[00:02:08.420] - Big Rich Klein

on the Rubicon?

[00:02:10.180] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah. See, people, people always know when. Some people will even tell you they know like where on the trail they were. When, when Marlon like caught him on the trail or something.

[00:02:21.700] - Big Rich Klein

We were, we were hanging out. It had to be a little sluice or real close to that. I used to run with, with in the early 90s or excuse me, in the early 2000s after I moved back to California, I ran around with some of the pirates and can remember meeting Marlin on the trail.

[00:02:44.960] - Mike Czajkowski

So that's really cool.

[00:02:46.280] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. So let's start at the beginning and we'll start with your dad and then we'll work the timeline up. To when you came into the picture and your sister and all that. And so where was your dad born and raised?

[00:03:04.400] - Mike Czajkowski

He was born in Glendale, California, in Southern California. And he was raised not too far from there in Sunland Valley, like there in Tahunga.

[00:03:14.960] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And from what I remember talking with him, he. He grew up in a very. It wasn't an affluent way, you know, not even. I wouldn't even call middle class from a relatively. It was rough, poor background. Correct.

[00:03:32.980] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah. Yep. They had. I remember growing up going to see my grandparents, his. His mom and dad, and they lived in a mobile home, like a trailer that was permanently mounted, had no tires. It was just on, I don't know, bricks or some sort of foundation. And they had like, you know, you'd walk in the side door and there would be a kitchen right away, laundry room to the right, and then like the master bedroom through the laundry room, and then forward through the kitchen would be like a dining table, and to the left of that would be a very small front room that had like a bunk bed and then like a couch or something. But there were three. Three boys there. So my dad had a younger brother and an older brother. And there's like a wooden. Well, it's probably not wooden laminate or some sort of a post or some pillar there in the kitchen. And they would mark their heights. I remember seeing, you know, you know, age 10, Marlin. There's like a height marked mark there. And all the boys would have all their heights. So they. They live in that thing, as far as I know, his whole life.

[00:04:37.460] - Big Rich Klein

Wow. Okay.

[00:04:38.500] - Mike Czajkowski

Growing up and. Yeah, quite. Quite the experience. He has a lot of stories, stories where he really took care of the family. Like, his dad was a appliance repairman, so he would work on, you know, refrigerators, washing, you know, washing machines and so on, and quit because his co workers were making fun of. I don't know, I guess Pollock jokes and stuff were quite the thing probably there post World War II and so on. And he decided he wasn't going to put up with these jokes and quit. But he had like a family. He's got three kids. And it's crazy. His. My grandpa just quit. Stayed at home. He was pretty religious. Over the top religious. He would just. I do remember going there and I'd see him sitting on his bed, just watching Polish videos of, like, pastors or something, talking in Polish. And you. You couldn't really talk to the guy. He. He wouldn't want to be disrupt, you know, interrupted and whatnot. And so that was tough. They had no money there. My grandma, Marlon's mom was just like, she would take care of people who are shut ins. So she'd go around, do dishes, clean sinks and bathrooms and do that sort of work and just take the bus to get to and from.

[00:06:03.980] - Mike Czajkowski

And so, you know, my dad would come home sometimes and like the power would be out and he'd be like, mom, you know, what's up? And she's like, oh, you know, we couldn't pay the bill. And so then my dad would like ride his bicycle downtown apparently to go pay the power bill. He, he a lot of stories of that kind of stuff. He had multiple newspaper and lawn mowing routes that he would do to raise money. And then he always tinkered. Of course we'll probably get into a lot of that, obviously with his background in automotive. But he would start learning how a lawnmower worked and work his way up. And then he started helping friends vehicles in the neighborhood, even like as a teenager. And so he would get, probably raise some money that way as well. Just doing some service work on neighborhood or people in the church family or church member cars probably.

[00:06:54.440] - Big Rich Klein

So it was out of necessity your dad started to work early?

[00:06:59.490] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, I think so. And they did a lot of stuff. Like they did a lot of. They were always an outdoors family. They were always going hiking and backpacking. We got lots of photos of them with the full backpacking gear with the, you know, metal frame backpack, carrying all your tents and everything. And they, what they like to do is they would go to a destination where they wanted to hike after hours. So they would arrive like 10 or 11pm and the reason was that by that point the iron ranger or what, you know, the little station was closed and so grandpa wouldn't have to pay to park. You know, the rangers are gone home and are sleeping by now. And so they would go hiking. My dad, you know, he knew how to. So just, you know, astrology, reading the stars, hiking it by moonlight, watching trees. The guy was a genius when it came to surviving and hiking. They would eat food. You know, my grandpa would know how to. When I say genius, I was referring to Marlon. But I'm sure my grandpa was likewise a genius in his own right. But you know, they would find food.

[00:08:02.430] - Mike Czajkowski

They knew what berries and so on was poisonous, what wasn't. They would, my dad would, would find fishing string that would be left behind by their fishermen in creeks or lakes. And then he'd put in his pocket and they continue hiking. And then he'd Collect grasshoppers. And I don't know, he was keeping these grasshoppers in his pocket, something like this. And so he, he would then tie the fishing string around grasshoppers and they would fish in creeks and catch fish and then mom grandma would then make fish. And that's basically like, I think they would just show up to these hiking places with like hardly anything and they would just expect to live off, off of the earth on their way hiking. And to give you an idea, the first time he hiked Mount McKinley. Is that the one here in California? Everest, Not Everest. Whitney is Alaska correct? McKinley when he hiked Mount McKinley states he was only 7 years old and he would go on to hike it like six or seven times.

[00:09:04.080] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:09:05.360] - Mike Czajkowski

So when we go to different places, mostly like when you go to the top of Ducey Ursham here, above Fresno outside, outside of like Kaiser Pass. And when you're way up there at 10,000 foot elevation, you can look over the top of Lake Edison and see the backside of Yosemite Valley. And he'll talk about Devil's Postpile and all these different places where he'll, where he's hyped growing up. And he would just, he's crazy. He'll just point, oh, there's a trail here that connects to, to this lake and then Florence and blah, blah, blah. He just, he grew up just hiking all over the place.

[00:09:34.260] - Big Rich Klein

Well, one thing I know about your dad is he had an encyclopedia type mind. I mean if it was, if he read it, it was still there in his mind. If he met you, you were still there in his mind. I mean he never. Almost photographic amazing that what, what he could recall with, with people he met just once.

[00:10:01.990] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, it's, it's insane. His memory, I don't think he would ever describe it as being like a photogenic type memory, but incredibly sharp. He would pick up things real quick and learn them real fast. He got into trains, into steam locomotives as well, probably in his 50s, 40s to 50s. And he was actually engineer. I mean it's nothing too crazy. You can just go to different historic places. Like he would always go to Felton, which is a city that's just west of San Jose. So like between San Jose and Santa cruz off Highway 17, there's a place in there and there's a Shea locomotive, which is a pretty unique type of steam locomotive that is all wheel drive. So it's, it's like a 16 wheel drive or something. It's really amazing. The pistons are on the. There's usually Three upright pistons on the side of the engine. And you can see the crankshaft. Yeah, the connecting rods down to a crankshaft. It's all exposed. And then there are shafts that go forward to the forward trucks and track and a shaft that goes to the rear trucks. And you'd pay, you know, a few hundred bucks for the day, and then you could be an engineer for the day.

[00:11:17.480] - Mike Czajkowski

But Marlon would show up like at 4am so he'd show up when like the actual engineers were there because he wanted. He wanted to get in there and learn what's going on. And the guys would be amazed at, you know, the question and that. Like, I was gonna get to the point of questions. I think Marlon was like a guy who, even though we look up to him for being crazy smart with all things mechanical, he was never too proud to just ask even. Even basic questions sometimes. But then he would, you know, I think that's a real art in just asking questions. People who are. Maybe if you're too prideful or something, you don't want to be embarrassed. Maybe you just don't even ask. But then you don't. You. You don't take that opportunity to really learn from someone who's perhaps smarter than you. So he was really good at just asking and learning and. Yeah, I don't know. I mentioned the train stuff just because, like, he memorized everything so quick when it came to operating a train. It was pretty crazy how good he got even at just a side hobby like that.

[00:12:20.580] - Big Rich Klein

So after your dad, of course, went through school, graduated from high school, and then did he go right away to. To college?

[00:12:34.690] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, he did. I can. It kind of going back to his upbringing there. In growing up, they didn't have a whole lot of money. He went to a. I think he went to a Christian school. So who paid? Somehow maybe the church or someone helped pay for that. But they gave him a full ride scholarship. So during. During, like high school, he would fix teachers cars. And then the teachers, unbeknownst to him, had written a letter to a Christian university called Pacific Union College, which is in Northern California, up above. Up above Napa. And they wrote like a letter of recommendation and he got a two year full paid, not scholarship. Well, I guess a scholarship. So he was able to go to a two year university based on recommendations from his high school teachers, just due to how much the guy does. Because he was also doing like grounds maintenance at his high school. So he was helping with anything, changing light bulbs. And that's how he was trying to also earn Some extra income. And then at college, so right out of high school, then he went to college. He got a two year old degree, just like a technical arts degree.

[00:13:52.140] - Mike Czajkowski

And in college, in shop class, you know, I don't have a whole lot of memories of this, but the few stories, you know, obviously he, you know, you can tell, you can tell when someone knows how an engine works versus someone who just has no experience. And so the shop owner just knew like right away, oh my goodness, this guy's really smart. And I think within the second semester, Marlon was already teaching shop classes at the university. And then he got a key. So the, the professor gave him a key to the shops. So then he would like come in and open it up and he would supervise and do all that stuff there at the university. And then he became grounds maintenance guy at the university while he was in school. And he's got some wild stories where they had like one shoplift. I think it was like a pit style area to work on your car. And it would be, I don't know, there's some story about it raining and like he was there on the weekend working something or another. And a teacher, okay, you had to like, there was like a log, there was like a book that you would schedule your jobs and like the school would allow you to use their pit mechanics, pit area.

[00:14:59.720] - Mike Czajkowski

And Marlon, like would basically schedule out the whole month and he would just do all these jobs from anything, Clutch jobs, carburetor jobs, transmission jobs, rear end jobs, everything. And I remember he like got in trouble on like a weekend working in the rain because the teacher's like, you know, you're just doing too much. What do you, you know, other, other students need access to this facility too? And then Marlon was, I think the story was like, you know, he's just trying to raise money or something. I don't exactly remember the story like that, but I remember him, him sharing that, that story and talked a lot about mowing the grass and cleaning out gutters on the roofs and all this stuff there at the university while he was a student.

[00:15:37.520] - Big Rich Klein

It's pretty wild, you know.

[00:15:39.610] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah.

[00:15:40.250] - Big Rich Klein

Being able to, to get to, you know, growing up like that, you know, I, I, I came from a different world. You know, middle class parents, worked hard for what, for what we had, but they, you know, they didn't come from a background like that. And you know, definitely not a wealthy background, but, you know, sound. And I find it intriguing when somebody can pull themselves up by, you know, what's the term, the bootstraps and Be able to, to make it happen and continue to make it happen. There's something special in a person that, that does that and not just give up and just go the way that, you know, that.

[00:16:30.530] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah.

[00:16:30.970] - Big Rich Klein

That stay that poor route, you might say.

[00:16:34.380] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah. And I think Marlon, he, his older brother, my Uncle Stanley, he's still, who's still around today. He. I want to be polite to my family, but Marlon does not talk so highly of his older brother. And the way that he would see his older brother be kind of picked on at school or also not such a good family life. Growing up with, with his dad, Marlon didn't want to be like his older brother. So I think he, he had a lot of things in life that were kind of motivating. He didn't like his dad. And the way the dad, you know, the dad was just. I, I bet he would just refer to his dad as just like a loser because he just quit his job, came home, wife did everything. And so I think those sort of things also kind of put like a contrasting thing for Marlon. Like, either you're going to go this way and end up like your dad, you know, like his dad, or he's going to, like you said, pick himself up and do something about it. And his, his best friend, gentleman by the name of Carrie, he would spend a lot of time over at Carrie's house.

[00:17:45.210] - Mike Czajkowski

And I don't, I don't know, you know, the percentage wise, but he would stay there for like, you know, weeks at a time and wouldn't come home. And over at, over at his friend's house, they had like a normal home, healthy, you know, family life over there. So he would kind of see that and as you know, kind of has something to aspire towards. So I think those sort of things in his life gave him kind of like that motivation to just be like, dude, you got to do this on your own. No one's going to help you. You got to pick yourself up like, like what you were saying. And I think these kind of early difficulties, of course, is what shaped, you know, the man Marlon came out to be.

[00:18:21.820] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And where did your, where did your mom, Christine and your dad meet?

[00:18:28.860] - Mike Czajkowski

So they met. I want to say they met in high. It must have been high school. So one day in class, Marlon's there in high school, and this guy came in who I think the way my dad would describe it, it's like the fawns from Happy Days, like this dude wearing a leather jacket, good looking guy with a mustache or whatever, and he sat Right next to Marlon. But Marlon Wood describes himself as a geeky kid with few friends, pimple faced, not so popular, but this, like, you know, cool looking dude who had like this aurora about him sat next to him, and his name was Paul. And they became really good friends. And one day Paul took him, took Marlon to his house and opened the door. And this is the story of how my parents met. And my Paul's sister, whose name is Christine, was on the couch reading a newspaper, like in a halter top or whatever. And Paul goes, hey, this is my friend Marlon. And then Christine gets up, throws the paper on the ground, and like storms off to her room. That was the first. The first time they met because she's, you know, embarrassed.

[00:19:40.900] - Mike Czajkowski

She's just chilling at home or whatnot. And then they would, you know, this must have been in college. This had to have been in college. But I know that they met in high school. Paul, Paul and Marlon met in high school. Later in college, Christine would end up going to the same college as Marlon. And so then. So then they met. They spent time as well in college. And Marlon again, to earn money. His college was up above Napa, some Northern California, but a lot of kids who lived in Southern California needed rides to and from. So Marlon had like a 19, 1956 Chevy Post, a 210 bell, not a Bel Air, a Post. And then he had put like a, you know, a 350 in there. He had a Muncie 4 speed on the floor, and he had like Corvette heads on it. And, you know, he raced it. And so that was like, what he got into early on was a lot of us muscle, muscle car stuff. And his brother was also. His younger brother was huge in Chevy. And so they were just big time Chevy lovers and building V8s back then.

[00:20:49.770] - Mike Czajkowski

And so anyway, Marlon had like this large car, had five seatbelts. And so he would charge people to drive them. You know, on spring break or in summer, he would collect money to pay for gas to take other classmates down home to go down south. And then one time he had. He took my mother as well. And so my. So Christine. Christine was like sitting in the front middle seat and then another person to her, right? And then there was like a married couple in the back who my dad was taking, getting some money to take these people. And I remember my dad's got the story where the. They stopped for gas and Christine gets out to go inside. And then the couple in the back said to Marlon, they go, hey, so when are you guys getting married? And Marlon's like, what? I don't even know this girl. We're not dating. And the people are like, oh come on, it's obvious you guys are a couple. And apparently that like really scared it like freaked out Marlon thinking like, oh no, does this girl think like I'm coming on to her or something? And so he gave her like a cold shoulder and started acting all different.

[00:21:55.590] - Mike Czajkowski

I remember he, he has that story and my mom, you know, likes to share that story as well. It's funny because they'll say stories. Marlon says it one way, Christine says it the other way. And it's, it's hilarious listening to the two share that story from different perspectives.

[00:22:12.280] - Big Rich Klein

I got to speak with your dad at the. Oh, it was a Toyota event at Katempse Rocks a couple of years ago. A few years ago. And it was. We were there, Shelly and I were there because the next weekend was our rock crawl, I think. And we sat and talked with your mom and dad for a couple of hours and I and I recorded as much as I could, but the wind was blowing.

[00:22:43.810] - Mike Czajkowski

Oh.

[00:22:44.770] - Big Rich Klein

And it was on the phone and it was just, it ended up being just a lot of phone noise or wind noise on the phone and couldn't make out what, what was. Do you recorded.

[00:22:55.980] - Mike Czajkowski

Do you still have that recording?

[00:22:58.380] - Big Rich Klein

I don't believe so. I don't think so.

[00:23:00.660] - Mike Czajkowski

Because maybe nowadays we. You could run that through some pat. Some filters. I wonder if you could clean it up.

[00:23:04.980] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I wonder if I'll see if I can find it. Because it was, it was pretty cool. We got enough information out of it to be able to write the article that we did in four low but not, not a lot, you know. Um, plus Shelley was taking some notes on, on her phone. So I'll, I'll check to see if we can do that. But it was pretty awesome.

[00:23:25.670] - Mike Czajkowski

Nice.

[00:23:26.870] - Big Rich Klein

So yeah.

[00:23:27.550] - Mike Czajkowski

So then, so then they was. They. They met and fell in love in college and yeah. Got married. Marlon there, he likes to joke about, about this. I love the joke too that Marlon, his birthday is in September, but they got married in August. And it's always they got married. I think it's August. Look, I'll probably get this wrong and no one can hold me against getting my parents anniversary on August 8th or August 11th. One of those two comes to mind. But it's always the weekend of, of Sierra Trek, a Cal four wheel drive annual event. So my parent, my dad typically misses Sierra trick to stay home for their. For the anniversary. But he, so he was, he was born In September. So he actually was 19 years old in August when they got married. Then he turned 20 one month later. But he loves to rub it in that he was a teenager when he got married, that my mom married a teenager. He loves that story. And I think that's hilarious.

[00:24:29.950] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty good. So they, they get married, they get out of college.

[00:24:38.510] - Mike Czajkowski

Yep.

[00:24:39.150] - Big Rich Klein

And they locate.

[00:24:41.790] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah. So my dad put out like, or maybe he looked around for some job openings and there was a Christian school here in Fresno, right in central California that was looking for a grounds maintenance man. And he, he took the job and he kind of became. Well, there's a lot to share about all of this. I kind of think of him as like Otto from, from the Simpsons. Because he was like 20 years old as a bus driver, but driving around, you know, 16 to 18 year old high school kids. And so he just became like the, you know, best friends with every. All these high schoolers and everyone, all the people here in town just like in church have all these memories. Marlon doing bus driving and the Detroit engine in the bus through a rod or something. So Marlon, Marlon rebuilds like a Class 3 like this whole school bus engine like on a weekend. It's just crazy. Like who taught him to do that? The guy just does it and just kind of self taught and just learns all these things, you know, repairing tractors at the school to mow the grass and all this kind of stuff.

[00:25:48.680] - Mike Czajkowski

And so he did that I think for just a few years. And they lived on, on the property there at the school. There was like this two story mansion kind of in the back of the school and they lived in one of the rooms on the first floor. And then they got a house right across the street. So there was no excuse for me to be late to school because I could walk to school. And even on. It wasn't fair, man. Even on. We have a lot of fog here in the valley. And so there would be foggy day schedules and you know, half my class couldn't. Would stay home because it's foggy day, too dangerous. But I, you know, I gotta walk myself to. I would still be expected to go to school.

[00:26:27.560] - Big Rich Klein

You could say, well, nobody else is going to be there.

[00:26:30.120] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, I don't know. I'd show up. So. And then, then I think he was only doing ground grounds maintenance for about a year or two and then he got a job as a machinist and so he worked for Dave Hyatt machine here in Clovis. And. And originally it was in Tarpee Village. Which is just like an older neighborhood in Clovis here. Just Clovis is a city that's adjacent to Fresno. They're connected. You know, you're in Clovis because the street signs go from green to brown. That's how you know you're now in Clovis. And he worked over there and did. He was a machinist for I think seven years. So probably from like 1979 through about 80, 1986 or maybe 85, he was a full time machinist. And so he worked on, on everything. Domestic imports, race boats. There's a few lakes here. Boating is pretty popular thing to do here in the hot Fresno weather. So, you know, guys would bring in race boats with like 454 V8s with a rod out. You know, they hydro lock the motor. Right. Because it's sucked up water. So he would work on all kinds of stuff like that.

[00:27:43.800] - Mike Czajkowski

And so he was completely well versed on, I mean, you know, like a flat, you know, f heads or like a flathead off of a Willys. Just anything going way back, 1940s, 30s, just all those kind of old school stuff and you know, like back. I don't know if you were, you mentioned early 2000s. I don't know if you were active in the off road world in the 90s, but there was a trail, Panamint Valley that we would winch up. Waterfalls. Yep. Panamint City and Surprise Canyon. And when you get to the ghost town, there's all kinds of just abandoned old vehicles from the turn of the century, early 1900s type stuff or from there to the mid-1900s, I guess. And you know, Marlon would. And it's all rusted. It's just junk. And Ryan's like, michael, look at this. This is the, you know, these are the, the contacts and can you see the points here? Look at this system. How, how this, you know, he's just trying to like describe all this old stuff to me and it's, it was amazing. Like the guy would know how to work on all that stuff, right?

[00:28:48.530] - Mike Czajkowski

So, yeah, and so he did that, he did that here in Clovis as a machinist. And so, so now the guy's like a full on machinist. So then he's got knowledge on how to do surfacing heads, valve jobs, line boring, working all the equipment, you name it.

[00:29:04.310] - Big Rich Klein

And when did he, when did he come about with the truck?

[00:29:11.830] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, it's a great question. So we would go to church here in Fresno and This was in 1983. Probably in the summer. And he goes to church and they park. And I was, at the time, I would have been two years old, my sister would have been five, depending on what month, four to five years old. And he sees a, I want to say it was a black first gen mini truck, so a Toyota pickup. And it was a 1983. So it was like a brand new pickup that had some different tires and wheels on it. And it was in the, it was in the parking lot of church. And that caught his eye. He takes the family in, we go through, you know, Sabbath school. And then during the sermon he's like, probably, hey, I got to go to the bathroom. But he goes out to the parking lot and he writes down on a, on a napkin or some piece of paper and says, hey, cool truck, call me. And like puts it in the guy's window or something. And this guy's name was Joe Beasley. And they became good friends. And that was when he first saw, well, that was when he saw like a.

[00:30:21.520] - Mike Czajkowski

The truck was kind of built, so maybe it already had like a bumper or something. So I'm, I'm saying it's 1983, maybe it was already a year or two old by that point, but the guy had already been taking it off road. My dad wanted to do it, so. So prior to this, Marlon had gotten in with Sandrails. And so he was a big time backpacker. And there's photos of my sister and I as toddlers on our parents backpacks. So they'd go backpacking, you know, like a week at a time with church members and carrying my sister and I, or even probably photos even before I was born. And then he decides to get a Sandrail. So he had this red dune buggy that was powered by an air cooled VW motor and rear wheel drive, two wheel drive. And I remember he, he would always get sand in the motor and so he would always complain about sand. He like, he liked mess around on the beach, but it was a pain in the butt to be in the sand. So he custom machined the outputs of the side of the transaxle where the, the axle shafts plug in and he installed two seals instead of one to double seal it.

[00:31:28.440] - Mike Czajkowski

And then he would still drain his oil and still get sand in the crank case. So I remember that kind of just led to our whole theory of sand is fun, I guess, but hope maybe it's in someone else's vehicle. I'll have fun doing it in my own vehicle. I don't enjoy ruining my vehicle. So that's just kind of our stance is mud and sand. It's a mess. You know, I'm working on a customer's vehicle and you're hammering on the frame and then a stinking dirt clod, petrified dirt clod, falls out from the frame and then it's all rusted in there and it collects moisture. So yeah, just my dad, he just kind of taught us all, you know, stay out of the mud, stay out of the sand, parts will last longer, last longer, things shift better and so on. So he did all that with sand and then I think he was just getting tired of it and wanted to get a pickup. And he liked American domestic applications. But I remember him talking how applications would change very frequently. Like you would have a Buick V6 or a GM V8 or something and then for two years they'd have a certain distributor style and then the next three years it would change to something else and then the next three years it'd be another style.

[00:32:38.430] - Mike Czajkowski

And the consistency seemed to be all over the place. American designs. Back then like in the 60s and 70s, everything was just larger, heavier and I don't know, somewhere along the line my dad just was drawn towards smaller efficient things. And I remember with Toyota, he liked it that Toyota would do like 10 year cycles. So if you take a look at like the 22R 2.4 cylinder, about 2.4 liter, 4 cylinder, right from 1981, that motor went all the way to 95. So it's over 10 years. You look at the 3RZ, the 2, the 3 point, the 2.7 Tacoma motor, that motor went from 95 to 04, you know, 10 years of model year, you look at the 30 or the 3, 4, there's just Toyota would keep a motor and it would be the same design, the same part numbers and it's very consistent. And I remember my dad always liking how Toyota was very consistent. And he would contrast that. He'd like to share the story of a Nissan. Like it's kind of weird. We don't see a lot of Nissans out there and even your, your listeners who are Nissan owners, you know, there's only, there's only a few.

[00:33:45.660] - Mike Czajkowski

So you know, it's not that big of a deal, right? There's just, there just aren't many Nissans out there. When you think about the different engines, they're always changing and always everything is different, nothing's compatible. And I remember him just being really drawn to Toyota, that things kept the same compatibility of the same style of engines or Transmissions or transfer case bolt patterns for much longer. And he was just really like that. And so I remember that was why he originally wanted to get a Toyota. And so, yep, he saw that guy's truck, got all excited, looked, started looking into newspapers. And it was out of Lancaster. So my mom, mother's family is. Was living in Lancaster, Palmdale area, kind of north of the LA basin, like north of San Bernardino, over the Angels Mountain range before the Mojave Desert. There is Lancaster out there. And yeah, my dad found it in the paper. A 1980 mini truck. And this would have been in September of 1983 was when he found it. And it was. It was owned by a lady who worked on a farm. And I, the lady had said that it would what had never been shifted into four wheel drive is what I remember.

[00:35:00.590] - Mike Czajkowski

And my dad being excited because that meant no one had abused it.

[00:35:04.550] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:35:04.830] - Mike Czajkowski

Is what I remember from that. And it had no power steering. It was a 20R with a four speed because it's 1980. And so pretty cool. He got his first truck. And yeah, there's a photo of me that fall. No, the very next year. 1984. Early 84. So I was now four years old. No, I was three years old. And he went to Rubicon that very next spring. So he bought it in September and probably by the next May or June he had already taken it to Rubicon. And it was on, you know, probably 30 ones or 32s with a double, double roll bar, the Smittybilt bumpers. He bought all that on a President's day weekend sell. February of 1983, same roll bar that is on it today. Wow. And yeah, that's. That's how that all started with get with him getting the red truck. 1983.

[00:35:58.950] - Big Rich Klein

Interesting. So what the story I remember him about the truck was that he talked to the lady. The lady wanted more money than he had and wouldn't lower the price. But then eventually called him back.

[00:36:17.740] - Mike Czajkowski

That's. I don't know that part. I'd have to ask my mom about that.

[00:36:22.540] - Big Rich Klein

It was that he. He really wanted the truck. And after talking to others that wanted the truck as well, the lady thought that Marlon would take care of the truck much better than the others would.

[00:36:38.620] - Mike Czajkowski

Huh. That definitely sounds like Marlin to tell someone. Thanks. I'll think about it. Because that guy, when we would go to like swap meets, we went to swap meets like almost every weekend growing up, mostly for tools. He would try to find snap on and Craftsman tools at swap meets because they've got a lifetime guarantee, so even if they're rusted and messed up, you can get the tool replaced. And so he would tell me, okay, Michael, we want to get a 14 millimeter box by open. And we need a 38 ratchet with a swivel head. So I'm like, you know, six years old. And so I'd be out there walking all around looking for tools, and then we'd find one. And I'm like, dad, I found it here. You know, here it is. A 12 millimeter snap on. And my dad would be like, hey, what do you want for this? And the guy would be like, oh, you know, 25 bucks. And my dad's like, oh, okay, thanks. And he'd walk. And I'm like, dude, like, what are you doing? That thing's going to get sold. And my dad would just be like, it's okay.

[00:37:28.040] - Mike Czajkowski

Don't worry. We're coming back. And, you know, he would come. He would wait till like, closing and come back, and sure enough, it's still there. And my dad, you know, I'll give you like five bucks for that. And the guy would just be like, okay, fine. Because, you know, they don't want to haul that stuff back home.

[00:37:40.880] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:37:42.390] - Mike Czajkowski

He was such a. He's so good at wheeling and dealing. So it doesn't surprise me that he maybe was trying to get the price down. Told the lady, okay, I'll think about it. I don't know, he just had this way about making deals when it came to that sort of stuff. So that story wouldn't surprise me.

[00:37:59.190] - Big Rich Klein

So then that truck has become synonymous with. With Marlin. It's. Yeah, he's had. He had it forever. And it's. You know, it's still the. The. I. I guess it's the. The. The. The fleet vehicle.

[00:38:17.720] - Mike Czajkowski

The crawler truck.

[00:38:18.520] - Big Rich Klein

The crawler truck, yeah. For Marlin. Yep, yep, yep and yep. So how many. How many revisions do you know that it's gone through?

[00:38:28.440] - Mike Czajkowski

I. Actually. So of all the photos that I have of it, I started a list probably like 10 years ago where I would look at an event that we went to. And it's hard to remember all these different years and dates, but you can kind of see clues where you could see a sticker on the truck that says monochrome are 470 gears. Well, we came up with the 4.7 gears in 1996. Right. Or you'd find the truck still has push pull steering on it, but we came up with the crossover steering in 95. So you can get Those kind of clues from there and start. Start putting together, like, a timeline. And I got this text file on my laptop where I've. I've just kind of started tracking all the different modifications down to the truck. It's mostly from, you know, the mid-90s and up, is what my knowledge is. Is more centered on. We do have photos of the truck when it still had, like, chrome bumpers, going to, like, mud in your eye. Frolic. This is a TLCA event put on in the Bay Area. Who is it? The. The Topper. Mountain Toppers.

[00:39:36.880] - Mike Czajkowski

The Mountain. Oh, man, I haven't thought of this a long time. The Mountain Toppers or mta. The Mountain Transit Authority. These. These clubs out of the Bay Area. And we go to Hollister and, you know, just a lot of. Just different event photos. And when you mentioned. When you ask for revisions, that's, you know, I don't know all of our vehicles. I always say, is any of. Is any of your projects ever fully finished?

[00:39:59.930] - Big Rich Klein

No.

[00:40:00.250] - Mike Czajkowski

Is your truck. Is your truck ever done?

[00:40:03.130] - Big Rich Klein

No.

[00:40:05.210] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah. I don't know. It's. It's always been evolving. I remember he installed a locker, and this is before ARBs existed. There was a locker called a Gleason, and it was a. Like a limited slip or may have even been like a spring pack, like a posi track. And we were up on a local trail here called Bald Mountain, and it's a lot of exposed granite that we're on and at the top. And so Marlon was doing really good because he didn't tell anyone about this, and he's just killing it and all. And back then, everyone was either in jeeps or Land Cruisers. It was, you know, 30 jeeps to one mini truck or worse, maybe 50 jeeps to one mini truck back then. And so no one ever. No one had mini trucks. And then you'd have people with your. With Land Cruisers, FJ 40s. And of course, everyone would put a 350 swap in there and put like, a Chevota or some sort of, like a Chevy emblem on their grill, Right? And Marlon would be in his mini truck, and it was a long bed, which was even worse because you can't even make corners.

[00:41:04.490] - Mike Czajkowski

And I remember Marlon would talk about. People would. Would come into club meetings, and they would brag about how many times they had to back up on a trail. And so these Jeep guys, like a CJ5, could do the whole Rubicon without backing up. And this was like a badge of honor, apparently. And so, you know, Marlon did like Marlon, how Many times did you back up, they'd make fun of him because he had to make three point turns in his mini truck because of the 100, you know, 8 or 110 inch wheelbase.

[00:41:31.710] - Big Rich Klein

That and, and 18 degrees of steering.

[00:41:34.510] - Mike Czajkowski

Yes, that's right. That's right. And so, so back to your question revisions. Oh, so we had this Gleason locker. He was killing it on the trail, never getting stuck. And he gets to the very top. And at the top of bald, it's, it's exposed granite. And so he makes like a U turn to swing around a park and the truck's going like in, in the back. And people like, marlon, what. What's wrong with your truck? And that was when everyone found out the guy had this thing called a locker. And they're like, what? What do you mean, huh? So just a lot of that kind of stuff. He was always trying to be the first to. First to the table to do things and tinker and, you know, I think that's just how a lot of the company started back in the day was you'd have guys at a campfire and they're just hanging out and the campfire light is glistening off the truck parked 20ft away. And you just kind of sit there, right? It's like a shower thought almost. And you're just like, man, you know, I wonder, instead of a push pull with a horseshoe arm, what if we mounted like an IFS type box and we had a longer tie rod?

[00:42:41.020] - Mike Czajkowski

You know, you just come up with these ideas and you're like, oh, I can eliminate bump, steer. And then, you know, it's not like it had never been done before, but on a mini truck platform, it had never been done before. So just those kind of ideas. Marlin just kind of became like the first to a lot of this stuff. A lot of ideas like breaking an axle shaft and the shaft would go inside like a. If you have a Detroit locker and there's no center pin when you break your shaft, you can't get the axle shaft out from the diff because it's inside the carrier now. And so my dad, they would do what we call a martech. And you would weld, just put a, just put a booger. Just weld like a, just, just hit the shafts so you can see how deep the spline engages into the side gear of your carrier. And so you know where the wear mark is from the, from the differential. And then so you'd weld just like a little tack on the spline itself. So that way if you ever broke an axle shaft, the splines could never go deeper into the, into the carrier because the tack is there.

[00:43:46.920] - Mike Czajkowski

And so you could use like a magnet or some, some way to fish that out without having to drop the third member or just leave the trail into, you know, in front wheel drive and whatnot. Or if it was like a front end, let's say. So he would, he would just come up with all these little clever ideas. He was always carrying spare parts. Having a long bed afforded him that possibility. You can't do that in a 40 Series Land Cruiser or of course a Jeep, even like a CJ7. It's just where you're going to put everything right. And like he would, he would carry spare clutch disks. Like this is how bad it was pre rock crawling is that you have these mini trucks that only had carbureted four cylinders with on a good day, maybe 95 pound foot of torque. And then you, you know, you air down, you run 33s and 35s and you throw your family in there and you try to go up hills and so you have to rev it, but then you're only like a 38 or a 42 to one final drive. So you're, you're just screwed.

[00:44:43.160] - Mike Czajkowski

You got to rev it and, and smoke the clutch. And people would literally cook their clutches. They would, they would, they would get them so hot that all the fibers would fall off the disk. And so Marlon being a mechanic after being, after being a machinist, he then wanted to have his own business. So I'm sorry, I'm jumping just a bit here. He, he started his own like garage out of his own garage. So his, his home garage. He started doing like side jobs. And he even had like this, there was like this large metal pipe in our garage. There was like, there was no attic space in the garage. There was just like exposed rafters and, or some beams. And he put like this humongous rusted pipe across the beams up there and hooked up, you know, like a come along, like a cable pulley system. And he would, he would pull engines out by hand, you know, like basically just like an overhead hoist, just like a come along, right? And along the side of our house there was just engine blocks. And this is all Chevy stuff, just a bunch of Chevy heads, real long camshafts from like inline sixes, you know, big old 262s and all these different V8s.

[00:45:56.080] - Mike Czajkowski

And I remember him working on. And they're all rusted. There's valve springs everywhere in the Backyard and I'd like play with all this stuff growing up. And then eventually he started Marlins Automotive. So he resigned from the machine shop he was working at. And one of his students, so he was the grounds maintenance guy at this Christian high school, he was the bus driver and he was the shop. So he became the shop instructor. And one student, his name was Tony, him and Marlon just hit it off. And Tony graduates high school. Tony goes off to college, gets his, you know, two year arts degree or something, and then came back to Fresno and Marlin and became Marlin's first employee at Marlins Automotive. So this would have been like in the mid-80s, 80s, 6, 80s, 7, somewhere around there. And so Marlin was a, was a general mechanic. And so he worked on everything. Buicks, Chryslers, you name it, Hondas, Nissan's, everything under the sun. And he had an automotive garage with a couple lifts hearing sound. And so he would do like clutch jobs on Toyotas. And the clutches wouldn't be completely wasted, right?

[00:47:07.360] - Mike Czajkowski

The rivets were only partially worn. And so he would just keep the clutch disk and bring those as trail spares. And so there's stories of just. He says this would happen often on the Rubicon. You, you have to drop the transmission and you would R and R, you'd swap out a disk right in the middle of trail, like right on the big sluice somewhere. And because back then everyone would just be cooking their clutches. So he had his long bed. I don't know, I'm just kind of bouncing around. But when you mentioned revisions, that's just kind of what Marlon did. He used his truck as a way to both help people because he just had this knack for just trying to, trying to always be there when people needed help. And he always wanted to be the last one in the line. So he was always the caboose, the very end of the group. He had a good CB radio, you know. And then we learned like I got to learn all the, all the mannerisms and what's the word I'm looking for? How to operate a CB radio, how to communicate with the trail leader, how to be a trail leader, how to direct, how to spot.

[00:48:10.510] - Mike Czajkowski

So even when I was just a teenager, I was spotting rigs and I had an understanding how to direct people, how to keep traffic moving, you know. And then when someone breaks down. So I just, I got to witness all that stuff with my dad and he would be in the back and that way when someone would break down, well, no problem. The red truck, right? The ubiquitous red Truck would. Would come up the trail and so many stories of people meeting Marlon for the first time where the, the red truck, they'd just get rescued. And people would say, oh yeah, Marlin's, you know, he's at. He's at Loon Lake. Don't worry. And you know, people would camp out overnight. And sure enough, by morning, he would come the little red truck up the trail. And before he got involved with the. With transfer cases, he had created his own welder. And this predates everything. This predates Moby Arc. It predates premiere. There were, there were, there was no products. And again, he wasn't the first, you know, person in the world to turn an alternator into a welder. But I think for here on the west coast, I think off roading, maybe you could argue with Rubicon maybe, maybe got its roots here and certainly rock crawling with, with my dad, it started here, but maybe there was someone on the east coast or somewhere else in Appalachia who was, you know, who may have been out welding.

[00:49:28.790] - Mike Czajkowski

But I think he was maybe a true forerunner with a welder on the trail and repairing people. Because this would have been early 90s. So 92, 91, he already had a welder. And so, so many stories of people just being shocked. Like what? He has a welder? Huh? Like, what are you talking about? And so he'd carry a bunch of just like junk metal, metal scraps, drive line tube so you could repair a driveline. You know, it's not balanced or anything, but it'll get you off the trail. And tons of stories. So many memories. Welding in the rain, welding at night, welding, you know, frames cracking. Just know because a guy, it was rusted or their link mounts broke and just on and on and on. So many, just endless memories I have. And you know, running the, you know, my dad would say, michael, give me some more throttle. And so he had like a. What's the word? A veneer. Veneer. So he had like a hand throttle that was threaded and you could slowly increase or decrease the engine speed because he had connected that to his carburetor or. And later on his throttle body when he, when I, when I converted that truck to a fuel injected.

[00:50:37.040] - Mike Czajkowski

And yeah, you know, he'd be with the welding helmet on and say, Marlon. Or you know, Michael, you know, a little hotter, right? You'd raise it 200 RPM, you know, okay, a little colder. And you know, and he'd say, I need some more 6011, you know, some rod, some 7018, right? And I'd run to the back and grab rod for him. And I'm like whatever. I'm 12 years old helping my dad weld on stuff. So a lot of those kind of memories and always having seals and, and bearings and tie rods and. And then just his background of working on domestic applications. He had everything for like Dana 44 is Dana 60s corporates, you know, 12 bolts, 10 bolts and just everything. Dana 300 parts and even parts to rebuild an atlas and you know, advanced adapter parts and just. He had like three different packers just full. And he would take old one quart engine oil bottles that are plastic and then you would cut them in half or maybe three quarters of the way up. And then that'd give you a nice free plastic organizer that you could then drop into a larger tote.

[00:51:43.380] - Mike Czajkowski

And we would use these Rubbermaid totes that you'd buy from, you know, Walmart or I guess Sears. Right? You made a joke to me about Sears. Yes, I remember the other day, I remember going to Sears. And so yeah, he would have everything organized like a, a plastic engine oil container just full of seals and another engine oil container just, just full of just anything. Brake lines and solid lines, hard lines, flex lines. He would braise. He also had a brazing kit. So we would braise radiators. People would go through water crossings and you know, back then a lot of people had fixed engine fans that they didn't have a clutch because you're like a V8 on there right in your Land Cruiser. And you go through water too fast and you rev it and all your blades, because they're metal, they would tweak and go forward and just gouge out your radiator. So we would, we would braise. Ready or. My dad, not me, he would, he would, he would straight up raise radiators. We'd pull the whole radiator out and he'd braze it, fix the whole radiator core. This is crazy, the stuff that this guy would carry.

[00:52:48.910] - Mike Czajkowski

And then his alternator. So he would take, he, he first took a Ford alternator, converted that, and then later he took a GM because the GM housing was larger. And I don't remember all these names. A10DS, trying to think by memory. A12 D, D, N S or DSI. I remember him mentioning these things. I never got into it. I never understood all that stuff. He's not an electrician, but he could make three phase power off of a 120 volt two phase. So he would take a motor so you could, you could take an engine, you could take an electric motor, turn it on and then you could simulate an additional field to create a simulated third phase winding. And this is how we actually ran a few devices in our shop before we wired in a proper three phase. He would just do this, he would, he would just do this crap on his own. And so you'd flip a switch for a motor and there was nothing attached to this motor. It was just like a whatever, like a quarter horse electric motor that was just free spinning and you'd flip a switch and the motor would just go like whatever 1200 RPM and then you, and then you could flip the switch for the larger CNC machine and then you hit the button and you know your iron worker or your mill would turn on.

[00:54:05.960] - Mike Czajkowski

You know that's like a 243 phase which the shop doesn't have power for this. And it's just like this guy was just like, just a genius and he was just doing this stuff. He wasn't even reading books. He would just sit there and just, just like stare at, stare at parts and just experiment. And this would, this would kind of also get him in trouble where he would, you know, he would take a cylinder head that was partially cracked, but then he would think, well you know, it cracked by the exhaust gasket, but not the water, you know, not the water jacket. And he'd put it on there on an engine and of course, you know, two months later it would start. You know, you'd get water in the radi, in the, in the engine, in the crankcase. You know, you pull the, you take the oil cap off and there's mayonnaise under the cap. It's like well duh dad, you got a cracked head. But he would, you know, he would experiment and he would try to learn and he would put seals in backwards and like, like on purpose just, I don't know, maybe the seal wore out.

[00:55:00.580] - Mike Czajkowski

Let's flip it around. Like he would just do these kind of just non conventional ways. And I think that's just truly how he came up with all these ideas. And I, I certainly, my wife tells me I certainly have that mind that I got from him of just even some teachers in school. One of my Bible teachers, he described it the way that I just kind of just thinking out of the box. Most people think more linear. They just think in a more logical straight line. And my, I remember my Bible teacher would tell me that I think just like I'm over here on the right and the left. And then like I'm moving my hands up in the air, you guys. People can't listen and can't see what I'm doing with my hands. But I got that from my dad just the way he would just come up with all these just really cool ways and just kind of unorthodox means of doing things. And he would do that with, like I was mentioning clutches. We would machine flywheels. You know, the factory calls for 20,000 stepping for where the clutch cover mounts to the flywheel.

[00:55:58.760] - Mike Czajkowski

But it's a 20,000th raise where you want the disk to then have the friction surface on the flywheel. Well, we had a clutch, we had a flywheel surfacer, of course. And we would notice that when you install a brand new clutch, the clutch pedal would start to grab already like an inch or two off the floor. Well, you know, we want that to grab sooner on the floor so you can get more life out of the clutch. So we would, you know, he experimented 24 thousands, 26, 28, 33, 2 to the point where you couldn't even. The clutch wouldn't engage. So. So, you know, you start it in neutral and even though the clutch pedal's all the way down, you can't engage any gear because the synchros are already, you know, they're under pressure. The truck's trying to move forward. So we found the sweet spots, 26,000ths. So we would machine our flywheels at 26,000ths. And of course that would gain a reputation for our clutches lasting longer because we do things not to the Toyota book, not the Toyota way, not the way. You know, we've hired mechanics over the years who worked at, for instance, gm.

[00:56:57.020] - Mike Czajkowski

We had a gentleman who was a great, great employee, but he was trained by the corporate way to do things the corporate way. But we have the Marlin way. And you know, we kind of have to train that out of. Out of people and train them the Marlin way to do things. And that's just kind of how my dad just grew his reputation, you know, to, to what it is and how he would translate all that stuff to just doing trail repairs and fixing people and carrying spare parts. And I guess that's just one way how the evolution, how you were asking transitions to his. To the 1980 crawler truck. Little by little, he would just do different things. We had Smitty built. We called them Nerf bars. Did you around when we had. When Nerf bars were a thing.

[00:57:41.150] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:57:42.830] - Mike Czajkowski

So a Nerf bar, you know, it's only like. It's probably not even 120. No, it's not. It's like a 87 wall or worse. And you would, you know, those things would get dented over nothing. So my dad would cut his. He cut his Nerf bar and sleeved it on the inside by putting like water pipe through the nerf bar. But it was hard as crap. You know, it would never get dented. And you know, he just did all these just weird things. And I guess that's just. This is my long story to explain just how the crawler truck kind of evolved and how Marlon just tinkers with one thing. And we don't really do stages. Stages is kind of a cool thing like overlanding or. I've got a tech background, so doing programming, you know, you got, you got versions and revisions and people love to have like a stage one. Right. Stage one exhaust or, or, you know, I'm involved in the aftermarket tuner world. So, you know, stage two turbo. I don't know. We didn't really have that with the crawler truck.

[00:58:38.850] - Big Rich Klein

We just had it just.

[00:58:40.930] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, a never ending continuation of improvements. Yeah, it's like the Kaizen, the Toyota way.

[00:58:47.830] - Big Rich Klein

So when did the dual cases.

[00:58:51.510] - Mike Czajkowski

So dual cases came about. My dad found. He saw a magazine article in a four wheeler magazine of these guys in Iceland. Benny's Auto comes to mind. This place is long shut down in Iceland. And they were building, you know, arctic trucks that go travel across glaciers. And these are humongous vehicles with huge tires even back in the 90s, probably the same way as what they are now, and very wide and very large tires. And so you need like a V8 because you gotta have a lot of torque and you're gonna have an automatic, but then automatic is heavy, so then you need stronger suspension. But then the, the truck becomes heavier and then you get a stronger frame and then, you know, it's a slippery slope. And that's kind of the way I think how we're kind of drawn to the Toyota mindset of less is more and being lightweight and more simple, less things to go wrong. And this guy over there in Iceland kind of had that shared mindset as my dad and he had a Toyota mini truck. I think it was like a third gen pick up. I don't know, I really don't know what he had, but that comes to mind.

[01:00:06.840] - Mike Czajkowski

And he had figured out that you can take the reduction portion off of the Toyota RF180 case and duplicate it and make the vehicle go a lot slower and they were using this on glaciers, on, on the snow and the ice. Because when you go very slow over ice, you're not going to dig down, you're going to go very slow. But they were just two, two, eight, you know, just duplicating the stock low range, and that's all that they needed. And when my dad caught wind of this, he's just like, oh man, we could use this for rocks. We could go slow over rocks. And so he tried, I think like he tried to get one, he couldn't get one. Then he tried checking with local machine shops to manufacture his own. It's a long story. Working with advanced adapters and finally having his own marlin crawler made with advanced adapters. Doing the casting on our first MC01 Marlin Crawler in the spring of 1994. And he figured out the way to go to get gearing. Incredibly low. Way much lower than what they were doing to the point that now when you have a mini truck with, with low torque, you're so incredibly low geared that you can just go incredibly slow.

[01:01:23.570] - Mike Czajkowski

And no one ever said crawling. Rock crawling wasn't a word. I did a poll once on our website trying to figure out if anyone had ever heard of rock crawling. I've done Google searches, we've tried all this stuff to see if this was ever a phrase. Prior to 94. Someone found like a newspaper clipping in a, I think it was a 1978 newspaper of these two brothers who took their Jeep into Rubicon to crawl over the rocks. And so that was the earliest we, we could find something. But you know, these were like stock T cases, you know, like, I don't know, Dana, 18 something, right? You know, they're like, they're like 30 to 1. That's not crawling. So, yeah, he, he started then doing dual cases and then he, he wanted to go lower with the gearing, found a machinist. The machinist made a design for the low range to, to make a 2.28 lower and came up with like a 3.3.5 somewhere around there. And the guy claimed this is the lowest ever possible. And my, I think he had made four of them for my dad. And, and then my dad met another machinist out of, I think it was West Virginia.

[01:02:42.010] - Mike Czajkowski

I think he had met him at a Land Cruiser event. And the guy's like, oh, Marlon, we can do better than this. And so then the 4.7 ratio, my dad designed it, he was asking what ratio did you want? And we analyzed the gearing where if you go any lower than a 4.7, the strength just drops off. Right. Exponentially. And any other ratio it wouldn't be a, a whole number. So the 4.70, when you divide up the teeth, it's like a 4.706 on and on and on. So it's truly, it is like the, the to the second significant digit, it's going to be a 4 0. And that's what my dad really liked. He didn't want to be like a 4.41 or a 4.62. And so, yeah, he made his. Then, so then he made his own low range. The 470 was born in 1996. And I remember my dad put three, he put three transfer cases in the 1980 truck with three 470s and it was 2,256, I believe to one with 529s and a L52 Toyota 5 speed with a 393 first gear. And yeah, it was, it was so stupid. You know, he just idled it out of his truck, out of the shop, and then idled it back into the shop.

[01:03:59.570] - Mike Czajkowski

And it was so stupid low. Then he took, he took one of the four sevens back out because it was too low.

[01:04:10.000] - Big Rich Klein

Yep.

[01:04:10.240] - Mike Czajkowski

Three boxes. We call that a triple transfer case. And so no one had ever done this to go slow over the rocks. Marlon was the one to pioneer that. There was other. Okay. So he took this idea to a guy in town right down the street from us. There's a Jeep shop there. There used to be called Stan the Man. And my dad installed it and took it down there to this Jeep shop. And he was so excited and he's like, stan, you gotta come see this. And Stan goes out the parking lot with my dad and my dad, you know, starts it in gear with the truck, not in the gear. He just reached in the door and fired it up. And the truck is, you know, doing like a.36 hours per mile is, is the speed of the truck in first gear. So it's, you know, in these terms it's hours per mile, not miles per hour. And this guy Stan told Marlon, what are you doing? This is stupid. No one's going to buy this. It's a. You're, you're a small four cylinder. Your truck's too stupid. Long is dumb. And I remember my dad being a little, a little disappointed or what's the word?

[01:05:10.330] - Big Rich Klein

Offended.

[01:05:11.210] - Mike Czajkowski

Discouraged, I guess. Discouraged. Yep. But you know, he, he held through to the dream because, you know, we're out there changing clutches on the trail and people are, you know, we're kicking rocks and you have to gun it and you're bouncing. And then here in California, we've got a lot of people who like to protect the environment, which we're all for, you know, if, if it can be done practically. But the crawler also saves the environment because we're no longer digging. You're not, you're not digging in holes. You're not having to dump the clutch. Your tires don't come off the ground. You're not, you know, when you get airborne and your foot is floored and you land and you've got all that inertia in your drivetrain and gravity, pulling your truck down, loading the suspension and, you know, the friction at the tire spikes, that's when you break stuff. And so by having a crawler, you avoid all that. And so my dad knew this was. He had something and just, just changed the world, changed the way everyone goes off road. There was a company in town called the Something, the Duck. It was like a Bronco.

[01:06:16.910] - Mike Czajkowski

This guy had made it for a Bronco early on after my dad made his dual case and the something duck, the orange duck or the, the something duck, and it piddled out, didn't do anything. And then a guy, you know, there were people who would put dual transmissions together. They'd make like an adapter plate in their garage and crudely put two. I think what was popular was like an SM420 which has like a 7.2 to 1 first gear. And you'd put two of those back to back and then you could run first gear, first gear, but then you're still less than 80 to 1. So in the late 90s, to share with your audience what I mean by when I say rock crawling in 97 or 98, Peterson's off road did an article where they interviewed people in the industry, whoever was around then, you know, or the worn, worn winches and arb. And it could have been anyone if Jen Wright was around, you know, those sort of companies, right? And they asked the owners, what do you feel is a low enough gear ratio to be considered rock crawling? And everyone gave their opinion.

[01:07:33.450] - Mike Czajkowski

And the opinion in it was just, it was in the late night, mid to late 90s, and the opinion was double stock low range. And so a stock low range at the time was about 40 to 42 to 1, even for jeeps. And so the article concluded that you have to be 80 to 1 or lower to be considered a rock crawler. And so that's like a kind of a golden number. And when you look at a Jeep Rubicon today, of course there, nowadays we've got automatics which are very popular. But back in the day, I mean, I don't need to share to you, you're older than me, you grew up probably with stick shifts and. Yep. And so an automatic is nice because you got the slip in the torque converter. Depending on the pressure and the temperature, you can probably get about a 2 to 2 to 1 torque, a gear ratio equivalent from the torque that's created from the torque converter. You know, idling, it's not going to be a lockout. But barring that, or I should say even with that, you want to be low 80 to 1 or lower. So if you, if you're an automatic and let's say you're, you got a 30 to one final drive, well, when you multiply that by about two to one with your automatic torque converter, well, you're only about a 60 to 1.

[01:08:49.600] - Mike Czajkowski

So sure enough, if you take like a stock 3 liter 4 runner with a 3.0 V6 automatic, the thing's a dog. It's just a turd on the trail. Even though it's an automatic. You roll into a rock, the torque converter stalls and your tire stops. Then you gotta put your foot in it and your motor revs right, you flex the calf just a little more and now finally you've generated enough torque to overcome the load at the tire. But now you're at 1800 RPM. So now you've got the wheel speed of say 10 mph. But you don't want 10 mph because you're trying to climb up like a three foot ledge. So now you're going way too fast. So then you lift, but then the moment you lift, the torque comes out of the torque converter and the torque converter stalls. But you know, you take a Jeep Rubicon that has a 4-1-T case from the factory and sure enough, you put it on paper. Even if it's a stick shift, a six speed manual or an automatic, it's lower than 80. You look at the new Bronco. Even a stick shift Bronco has now a seven speed with the gear C.

[01:09:55.370] - Mike Czajkowski

They call that for crawl. My dad truly should have trademarked crawl. Even Toyota, Toyota calls their crawl control right in their Tacomas and late model vehicles. But that's not crawling because my wife, my wife has a Toyota Yaris and it's an automatic. I can go Just as slow as crawl control can by just riding the brake. And even if I have a tire that slips, I can. You know, if you've ever had a truck that doesn't have lockers and you've got one, one wheel that spit that is slipping because it's open, open, well, you can slowly lay into the brakes while also increasing engine torque. And so such that when the brake caliper equalizes the torque across the axle, the differential will send torque down both sides and then you can proceed forward just like that's what Toyota is doing now. Of course it's got electronics and individual wheel speed cylinders, sensors. So I get it. Draw control does have its merits. But to truly crawl, that's where the industry has labeled it as being 80 to 1. Was the census in that article. And when you put in our, our most basic product with stock gearing for 11 ring opinions with a 470 ring modern crawler low range, you become 82 to 1.

[01:11:13.590] - Mike Czajkowski

So that's kind of like, like how my dad just, it just worked out and, and rock crawling was born.

[01:11:20.560] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome. So Marlon Crawler is a family operated business. It's you, your mom and your sisters there too.

[01:11:32.080] - Mike Czajkowski

She was for a short time, but she finished college and then got married. She moved down south. She's currently living close to the Bay area. She is a English teacher and it's a special needs instructor as well as administrator. So she, she's got like a role where she also teaches teachers.

[01:11:53.130] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, so.

[01:11:54.090] - Mike Czajkowski

So she trains teachers.

[01:11:55.530] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[01:11:56.810] - Mike Czajkowski

But yeah, family ran business. It's been my parents, of course. My mom did work for a couple different companies. She worked for like a telephone company here in town when I was growing up and then overhead door company and then when the business started really taking off, we kind of needed like a secretary slash accountant. She doesn't have any formal training for that, but she worked, you know, filled, filled the role nicely. And she's, she's been working for us, you know, full time since like the turn of the century, like 2000 era, 2001, 2002. Somewhere around there, growing up, of course, being around my dad having the truck in school, you know, you'd come home from school and the teacher would ask kids, what did you, what did you do for the weekend? You know, kids would say, oh, I slip and slide or I went to Chuck E. Cheese's and then I would say, oh man, I watched my dad weld a Jeep on the Rubicon. I always had all the coolest stories. And so it was kind of just My way of life. And I helped my dad do make our first catalog in the.

[01:13:02.670] - Mike Czajkowski

In 1996. It was just a paper catalog that we took a hand stapler and stapled the center right. And just a black and white paper we printed on a home inkjet printer. And I did all that like in Microsoft Word, did all the work for my dad and helped print all that stuff out. And then I built our first websites, I made our first forum. I started doing computer programming. That's what I thought I would do when I went to college. So I started off with like an IT degree. But then I thought I don't want to be stuck behind computers my whole life. I want to just look at my hands. So I followed my dad's dream of, of me doing mechanical and became a mechanical engineer. Got my degree in that. And then now what do I do? I sit behind solidworks. I'm behind a computer computer all day. But yeah, just myself. I've been around since the very beginning. Since we started. We would. In 1994, I would, I would have to. So my dad would print out flyers for the world's first rock crawling dual case. And we would print these out on really bright like fluorescent green, fluorescent pink, fluorescent yellow sheets of paper with just in black ink to save money.

[01:14:15.010] - Mike Czajkowski

And we would put them under people's windshield wipers. So you know, you've probably gone to the mall and you came out and there's some annoying thing under, under your wiper. That was us. We, we, we did that back in the 90s.

[01:14:29.600] - Big Rich Klein

Guerrilla marketing.

[01:14:31.360] - Mike Czajkowski

Yep. We'd go to California Drive events and Toyota Land Cruiser events. And I'd have, I would be so short, I'd have to crawl up people's tires to reach the wiper blade. I remember doing that. And my dad and I would just hit parking lots or campgrounds and late at night we would just put these flyers under people's or through their window if the window's open. And I, So I was just kind of involved all along with my dad from the get go. The first thing I helped him with was on our 4.7 gear set. I helped create the total spline technology. So we had inputs to these two cases and they would break and I would tell my, I was looking at my dad where they break. I'm like, dad, what if we just covered, what if we just took the spline and we just ran the splines all the way to the seal surface? And he's like, you know, I had that same idea. Let's do it. And so I, we kind of co developed that was kind of like my first thing I helped him with was in 1997. I was, I don't know, freshman in high school or middle school.

[01:15:29.960] - Mike Czajkowski

So yeah, I've just been involved since, since the beginning with the business. Marlin's Automotive still is around, it's still family owned. Marlon ended up selling it to Tony and Tony still runs it today. And then Marlon Crawler is here and I've been the president since I graduated high school. My parents, I'm sorry, graduated college. My parents could have retired. They probably should have retired. But you know, my dad, you've seen his work ethic and he's just a workaholic and those kind of people, you know, for stories about people who are workaholics their whole life and then the moment they retire, they just, they just kind of have health problems and become weak and so on one hand it was great, my dad kept working. But on the other hand that did kind of lead to his demise and him not taking care of his health, which we'll probably talk about eventually.

[01:16:22.380] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:16:22.740] - Mike Czajkowski

But yep, family owned business. And so every day I'm there, my mom's there. So that's the two people running of the family still there. And we've got 10 employees right now. We were like 14 with Marlon and my sister and a few other employees that have moved on. So.

[01:16:40.700] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, so then let's talk about one of your dad's passions, I guess later in life was, was going on cruises.

[01:16:52.550] - Mike Czajkowski

Was that correct? Yeah. So he, we do. Are we okay on time? I'm, I'm really long winded, but I can try to keep this shorty shorter.

[01:17:02.550] - Big Rich Klein

No, anytime.

[01:17:03.990] - Mike Czajkowski

Okay. My wife will be the first to tell you, I, I talk, I talk too much in her opinion. But that's, that's her, her own. That's just her opinion. Perfect. Great. So we've, we have an annual event called the Marlowe Crawler Roundup where we've raised close to $300,000 for the Rubicon Trail that we've donated to both the Rubicon Trail foundation and El Dorado county, which is where the majority of the Rubicon Trail lives. It's El Dorado county as well as Tahoe county on the eastern side. And in 2000 and 2012, somewhere around there, we decided to do, I think it was my idea to do this thing called a vip, VIP run. And so what we do to raise money is we, we have a raffle. People buy tickets, obviously, and then we have a ground a Grand prize raffle where we raffle off Marlin Crawler products only. So like a built dual case or a completely built transmission or a 4, 7 gear set. So we would have like 4 to 5 different items and that way we would give people 4 to 5 chances to win a grand prize. And we would lay this out on stage and call a number and the first person to come up could pick any of the items remaining.

[01:18:27.980] - Mike Czajkowski

Right. It's kind of cool too, from a marketing standpoint to see what would people pick as the first item, because sometimes they would pick like a 30 spline chromoly output shaft over a rebuilt transmission. But a rebuilt transmission, you know, that value could be like a supra single turbo race transmission, you know, like a $3,000 transmission. But they would, you know, a guy would go for like the $300 item because, oh, you know, that's what the guy want needs. So it was just neat, you know, the human psyche to kind of see that aspect of it. And we did this thing called a VIP run. And that's where the winner would win a trip on the Ducy Oum, which is a. Have you ever ran the Ducey? Are you familiar with that trail?

[01:19:12.440] - Big Rich Klein

Nope.

[01:19:12.880] - Mike Czajkowski

You've got to get that off your. That's got to be part of your bucket list.

[01:19:16.920] - Big Rich Klein

It is, sure. Absolutely.

[01:19:19.240] - Mike Czajkowski

It's a unique trail that runs between two United States wildernesses along a 300 foot wide corridor. So it runs between the Dinky Lakes National Wilderness and the John Muir. And it's pretty cool because there's nowhere else in the country where you can take a motorized, any, you know, device into a wilderness like this. And it's a really long trail, 32 miles, 36 miles, depending on if you include Voyager. This section prior to the trail starting. And it goes up to 10,000 foot elevation. You can see the backside of Yosemite. You can't identify things like you can't see Half Dome or whatnot, but beautiful, really beautiful vistas. And so we did this VIP run where you would join the entire Marlin Crawler crew. So we would shut down for like half a week. You get to Fresno and we pay all the rest, provide food and everything. We did it for three years. It was really fun. And the first winner to do this, and I was kind of nervous too because we're putting out these five or six grand prize monoclonal products. And then we put out this trip on the, on the, on the juicy ocean.

[01:20:27.700] - Mike Czajkowski

And I was like, man, you know what? No one's going to pick this VIP run and it's going to look embarrassing because no one wants to ride with Marlon. Yeah, you will get to ride with Marlon in the crawler truck. So that's how it was. So my mom would not come, so my dad would have, he would have his passenger seat open. And that was, that was the deal. And then we also don't know who's going to win it. You know, it could be like an 80 year old guy or. You don't know. And so the first, the first person to win it, we called, I called the, I don't know, I used to, I used to do the MC for the raffle. Maybe it was my dad calls the number and this guy runs up and he was wearing shorts and had like a fanny pack on and he was a middle aged guy and he was so excited and he just beelined it straight to the VIP table where we had like, you know, it was like a complete built tooth case on one small table. We would set out like these small kind of like stools with like a red tablecloth.

[01:21:24.440] - Mike Czajkowski

And that's how we kind of like put out the, the prizes. Yeah, he went straight for the VIP run. The very first person to win the grand prize could have picked anything out there, any monoclonal product. And he grabs the VIP run. And when I, when I mentioned the story, people are, you know, it's a different perspective for me as a business owner. It's like, you know, take the, take the dollar value. But then for someone from a different seat, it's like I will with my dad my whole life, someone else, you know, few people have ever gotten to experience that with Marlin. And so it's all people experience. Yep, that's right. And people will tell me, Mike, I would get, it's priceless. I couldn't put, you know, this is what people tell me. You can't put a price to Will of Marlin. And it's, you know, it's very humbling also that someone would just grab that. And we did it for three years and every the, the next two years same thing would happen. The first person to win would immediately go straight for the ticket over all of our amazing fancy products, you know, billet aluminum products out there, chrome olive products made in Japan that we import from Toyota's gear cutter in Japan.

[01:22:28.450] - Mike Czajkowski

And it's, it's really humbling that people would like rush, they would like sprint to grab that, hold it up and people would cheer and it's really cool. And so the first winner, his name was Larry. And Larry would go on to become not only Marlon's best friend, but Larry's wife, Debbie, would then become Marlon's wife's best friend.

[01:22:49.940] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[01:22:50.300] - Mike Czajkowski

And so it was really, really cool, the friendship that these people had. And Larry did a ton with my dad and for the industry, and he got involved in all the clubs with my dad and all the trail openings and would go with my dad to, you know, where they would do public hearings at, you know, what am I thinking? Forest service meetings and public opinion sessions. And, yeah, Larry just jumped in with my dad and would do all this stuff. And Larry is a really good welder. So then he would help do stick welding with my dad using my dad's welder. And, you know, my parents would go up to their house and stay the night. They live near the Rubicon. And then they. Then they could drive into the trail together. And Larry is just a hell of a great guy, Just a complete family member. Just turned into, like, just. Just an awesome uncle to me. Well, Larry's. I mentioned all this because Larry's wife is a cruise travel agent.

[01:23:52.090] - Big Rich Klein

Ah.

[01:23:52.810] - Mike Czajkowski

And so she can find all of these deals, kind of like, if you ever have a friend who works at an airline, you know, works for Delta or United, they find, like, a airplane that's full except for a few seats, and the airline is going to lose money if they can, you know, they would rather sell them for 20 bucks. And so they'd get all these great deals from my parents, and so they would go, like, twice a year, probably they've gone three times a year, and they'd go on all these really good deals. And so because these deals would just kind of pop up, they weren't really planned. You know, they would. My mom would just say, oh, we're going to be gone next month. I'm like, what, another cruise? You know, you just went on a cruise. But, you know, they're. They're doing these cruises. They're getting sweet deals. But it ended up being just a place for Marlon because his phone. There's no cell service, because Marlon, if you call him, he always answers his phone, even if he's at a family dinner. It's incredibly rude. But that's why Marlon's such a special guy, because he's just always there to help people, and he can't say no.

[01:24:55.750] - Mike Czajkowski

And the first thing to learn in business is you need to say no. You're not a charity.

[01:25:01.350] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:25:01.710] - Mike Czajkowski

And none of us are formally trained in business, and so we've just had to learn all the hard knocks and, you know, learn all from making mistakes myself. Just exhibit A. Just the biggest one to learn running the business. And so. But on a cruise, Marlon could just unplug. And that was really the only time for him to unwind. Because even if he just went wheeling, everyone recognizes him. He's just a superstar. Everywhere he goes, someone. Something's happening. Someone broke down. And Marlon would never say, no, we just cooked dinner. No, you freaking leave. You get in that truck. Who cares if it's dark? Who cares if you just warmed up your dinner, eat it on the trail? And I would just hop in my truck with my dad, and we'd freaking go back up the trail. We got to get back to, you know, it's 8 o' clock. Okay. We could get back to Little Sluice by, you know, in two hours. There won't be any traffic on the trail, right? So I'd help my dad do all these kind of stories doing trail rescues in the middle of the night. We would leave town, we would drive to the trail and bring parts in for people because, you know, this.

[01:26:09.270] - Mike Czajkowski

This is cool to do, but it, you know, it's caused contention at our business because, you know, you pull apart off the shelf that was sold, right? And then Monday morning, that part's gone, and then the customer's there to pick it up. You know, we. My dad would get in trouble a lot like that with business, or we would rescue a truck and bring it back on a trailer. And, well, you know, our fabricator, you know, we had three other jobs lined up. You know, you can't, you know, you know, we've had to learn as we've grown. When we were smaller, we could do those things. But when you grow as a business, you need to be a lot more professional, and customers expect professionalism, and they're paying a premium for the quality service, and you need to deliver that premium service. And that's always kind of just been that. My dad was definitely at. I don't know if at odds or just at battle to those things because he wanted to help everyone on the planet. But stuff. You try to help everyone, you wind up not helping, you know, not being able to help everyone.

[01:27:11.150] - Mike Czajkowski

There's some quote there I remember, but. But that's what also made his legacy, too. So would we be as successful as we are now if it wasn't for our giving back to the community? If it wasn't for the Marlin Crawler roundup and going to club meetings and my dad being president of club meetings and A lifelong member for TLCA and Cal Four Wheel Drive and than being inducted to multiple hall of fames. And you know, these are just like intangibles that you can't put a financial number on. You've. You've got more business experience than I do. I don't know if I know a little bit about your background from what we chatted about the other day. If Sears, if you ever went to like business training, business summits, if there was ever anything in the line of work that you did, if there was ever some sort of charity work, it's hard if you've got experience trying to translate that into dollars. And maybe shareholders want to see X, you know, ones and twos. But at the same time, you need to get back to the community. You know, there's, there's that line there, right?

[01:28:16.190] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely.

[01:28:17.470] - Mike Czajkowski

Yep.

[01:28:18.350] - Big Rich Klein

Yep.

[01:28:19.790] - Mike Czajkowski

So it's tough because we, we want, even today, as the owner, the president, right now, I want to give back to the community. But then we have times where we can't even pay bills. And it's like, you know, how can I go get gas to go do something for an event when. When we've got people posting negative things on us online because we couldn't get their order shipped out. And it's gotten tough too. There's Amazon, you know, things. People expect things to be delivered same day. And now you can just get on Yelp or Google and leave a one star review and bad news travels fast and. Yeah, that's the life of an owner nowadays.

[01:28:55.850] - Big Rich Klein

Very true, very true. So the, when you're, when your dad passed, he was, he was on a cruise and he was getting, they were getting ready to do a heart procedure, I believe.

[01:29:13.530] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah. So I could, I don't think this is too personal. I don't, I don't mind sharing these details. Okay. This kind of goes back to 2013, was the earliest I found out about this. And I'll just outright blame my parents. Not that they need to hold any, like my mom doesn't need to have any guilt over this, but we're the kind of people who, we have a, we're Christians and we think things, you know, God, things happen for a reason. So we accept the outcomes in life the way they are. So we don't, you know, we don't hold grudges and things like this. So I don't feel any problem bringing this stuff up. But I had taken my parents to Japan to meet my in laws because my wife is Japanese and I've done some studying and some work in the Japanese communities and so on. And took my parents over there to meet my in laws. And I stayed in a hotel room with my folks because they don't speak Japanese. And sleeping in a hotel room like I've done countless times growing up with my parents, right? And my sister. You get one hotel room with two queen beds to save money, right?

[01:30:21.040] - Mike Czajkowski

Right. My sister and I sleep in one bed, parents in the other. It's easy. So I did that with my folks. They're in bed A, I'm in bed B and trying to sleep and someone is like almost killing themselves. Like they would snore slightly and then get louder, louder, louder, and then stop breathing for like 10 seconds. And then they would just gasp for air.

[01:30:45.840] - Big Rich Klein

Sleep apnea.

[01:30:46.560] - Mike Czajkowski

By now you might know what I'm talking about. Sleep apnea, yes. And so I was so freaked out. I'd never experienced this before. I don't know what the heck they're doing. And like, if, like I spoke to my wife about this, like, if I did that even once, she better handcuff me and drag my ass off to the hospital or the same. I would do the same to my wife, you know, like, get that thing fixed. We have insurance. My parents have full medical insurance. Like, what are you doing? So, you know, that morning I went downstairs, talked to a Japanese guy, got some earplugs, went to sleep. In the morning, I remember I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd wake up and someone would just be blue, they'd be cold and they'd be dead. And so I'm just like, what the crap are you guys doing? And then my dad goes, oh, my. Your mom's got the problem. And my mom says, oh, your dad's got the problem. And it's just like. And then, you know, life goes on. I don't, I'm not living with my folks and I know I don't experience this anymore.

[01:31:39.190] - Mike Czajkowski

And when we go camping, I'm in my own tent and I never think about it again because that was, that was 2013. And so then fast forward, covet hits. And then what? My dad, what was it? He had art, he had blood pressure. He got like diagnosed with hypertension or something like this. Hypertension. And so he went in for just like a regular checkup and stayed in the hospital for four days. And we weren't expecting that. We. They just like, my mom and him just went in just for like some chest pains. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. My dad was working, so he had started a side Shop. Because Marlon is the guy who, if. If your listeners haven't figured out by now, he just can't stop tinkering. And at work, we. With me as president and trying to become a more professional business, we can't be doing all these weird side jobs. Like, we would come to work Monday morning, and Marlon would have, like, a Land Cruiser FJ40 in there with a 2F torn apart and pistons. You know, six pistons and rods in our pressure washer and then a carburetor half torn apart on a workbench.

[01:32:56.060] - Mike Czajkowski

It's like, look, nowhere on our website do we offer any services for like, 2F carburetor rebuilds and lapping of a 2F crank. You got to stop this dude. Like, Marlon, you're. You can't be doing this here at. Even though you're the owner, you can't be doing this because we got, you know, we need that lift. We got. How do you know there's not a job? So I ended up getting my dad to have his own side shop, and we paid for it. Moncrawler paid for his little garage. We got him. I think it was 1300 square foot across town. And he moved in there, took all his tools and all his stuff that's not related to us, like valve surface or valve grinders. We don't need that stuff at Marlin Crawl. We don't offer valve services.

[01:33:39.020] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:33:39.420] - Mike Czajkowski

Of course he would do that all the time. He's. He's down there all the time doing valve jobs for people, just helping folk on. On the weekend and stuff. But that's in our way, when we start growing and becoming, like a professional company. We. When we were two employees, three employees. That was fun. But, you know, we've got, like, 13, 14 employees. We can't. We can't have this stuff anymore. So got him a shop right around Covid time. And probably after two or three years of working at a little shop and that's why his blood pressure went up, is he's just. He just took on too much. He's trying to help everyone. And the guy was initially only charging 40 bucks an hour. And the thing is, he wanted to help the person who. Who couldn't kind of help themselves. Like someone whose truck was just like a turd. And I'm just like. So he would keep. You know, I take my folks out to lunch every Thursday, and I'm. And he would just be bragging about Pipel. Look at this. This guy had this leaking power steering pump, and I took it apart and and then rebuilt his steering box.

[01:34:33.870] - Mike Czajkowski

And can you believe. Look at this seal. And like, I'm like, dad, what. What the crap are you doing, man? Just replace his stupid. Replace the pump. Charge the guy for a pump. You know, what's book time? And he's like, you know, my dad would have spent all weekend tearing apart this guy's pump to figure out that, oh, if you put in a seal off of a Buick V6 seal, it's 3 millimeters wider. The ceiling surface would. I'm just like, okay, man, you can't. Okay, if you're gonna do this work, you gotta charge these people. So I was telling my dad, charge 200 an hour. Literally, this is just like four years ago. Charge 200 bucks an hour. You're only going to get one or two people who can afford that. But those are gonna be the people who respect you, respect your time, and can pay for your work. And you're gonna only do a job like, it takes two weeks, and then you're done. In the other two weeks, you've already paid your whole month's rent. Then you can tinker, then you can clean your shop. And my dad didn't do that. He ended up.

[01:35:27.590] - Mike Czajkowski

I think we convinced him to charge 80 bucks an hour. And it's just ridiculous. Like, where else can you go to find Marlon, this genius of a guy? You can't. And then. So he was obviously selling himself short, but he did that because he loved to just help the less fortunate. And I think that sends back to himself his upbringing. He himself, his family, they didn't have any luxuries in life. And he liked taking a turd and polishing it. And, you know, he would always brag about, look at this bolt. This is a B. They put the letter B. This is a Honda bolt. And you can identify the way that the heat treating is done, the grade marking on bolts. And, you know, he had all this stuff memorized. You know what, look at this, Mike. This is obviously like a alternator bolt put in the power steering bolt bracket. And I'm just like, okay, dude, that's cool. What are you doing? You know, how are you paying your bills over? Yeah, this is what he's doing. And so he got to the point where he was just taking on too many jobs. Blood pressure is going up.

[01:36:24.890] - Mike Czajkowski

And he was doing a clutch job on a 2RZ 2.4 liter Tacoma on a Sunday. And the guy was drinking Rockstar energy drinks on a Sunday. And he's 67 years old and he's working every Day till like midnight every day, working seven days a week. And this is also optional work. Like Marlon Crawler. He isn't even there. So he. I got him down to only two days a week. He was working Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the rest was his own time to just go tinker. But we can pay my parents salary. Just quit. Go, go, go on cruises. Go try. Go get an RV and drive around the country. But you know, he wanted to work, he wanted to do things, he wanted to stay active. And again, that's fine. As I mentioned earlier, I've heard stories of people who are workaholics and they stop and then they just, they die. I've heard those stories from friends where their uncles and grandparents experienced that. So on one hand it's kind of like, oh, cool, cool, you know, keep my dad's mind sharp. So on one hand I want to encourage him to do all these weird projects.

[01:37:28.260] - Mike Czajkowski

But on the other hand too, it's like, you don't have to be beating yourself up, Marlon. You can just chill. But instead, he's trying to help everyone. And that really, that was horrible. And yet he was under this truck doing a clutch job. His chest starts hurting. So I remember he called my mom and he's like, I got chest pains. My mom casually drives over, picks him up, they casually go to a clinic, and then they immediately put him in an ambulance and code three, I guess his heart rate was like 200 beats per minute, which is way higher. His age, 220 minus your age. He should be like 160 max or something because he's not cardio. He doesn't do any jogging, right? Yeah. Came to the hospital. He was there for three nights, four days. And I remember later he told me he was scared, thinking he'd never get out of the hospital. That really scared him. But it was a. It was a weird thing because they needed to get his blood pressure down. But then he's got these heart pre existing conditions with his heart, so they want to give him some heart medicine here and there, but then it thins your blood, so then you can't work around machinery.

[01:38:29.600] - Mike Czajkowski

Oh, do you work around anything that's sharp? Well, yeah, I work on trucks all day long. Okay. So you can't use this prescription. So it was like this cocktail that was never ending. And they would give him the cocktail medicine and then it'd make his. His legs would swell because the body would. Would retain sodium and then that would attract water. Oh, it was just like a nightmare. And my dad would try One medicine to the next, to the next, to the next. And yeah, you know, you could see his condition was just going downhill. He'd get tired. We'd walk across a parking lot. I'd take my folks to lunch, and he would feel winded just walking through a parking lot. And this is a guy who would hike, like, a few years before. He's hiking to, like, Lost Lake on the D at, you know, 9,000 foot elevation, and he's like, out hiking. People half his age, the guy would just never slow down. And now he's, like, winded walking through a parking lot. And it's just like, geez, dude, like, you got to slow down. You got to take care of yourself. But Marlon's a very stubborn guy.

[01:39:31.140] - Mike Czajkowski

He was really tough. You would tell him something. I'd get him oxygen tanks. These. I went to Big five and I'd buy him these tanks of oxygen that you could have, like a little face mask in case. Because we had one guy with sleep apnea who couldn't breathe. We went to. We went to Coyote Lake, and we're like at 9, 500 elevation. And I think they had to leave at the middle of the night. It was scary. Like, you could, like, these, you know, people are getting older. I'm not to that point yet. But you gotta really take care of your health. Especially, like, how are you. How are you ever gonna make it to, you know, 80 if you're already struggling in your seven, you know, 60s, you know?

[01:40:08.890] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:40:09.850] - Mike Czajkowski

And if we're fortunate to make to our 90s, how are you gonna make to your 90s if you're struggling? Yeah. So I don't know. I've got the ability of foreknowledge, I don't know, to see these things. And so right now I'm. I'm in my 40s, and I'm already panicking. Like, how am I gonna make it age if. If I'm not already taking care of myself right now? So my dad just working and not. We're the kind of people where we don't go to the hospital. Growing up, I never. We never had a family doctor. I never went to a dentist. And probably my parents couldn't afford it growing up. So we're the kind of family where, oh, you broke your arm. Shake it off, you know.

[01:40:49.110] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Okay.

[01:40:50.150] - Mike Czajkowski

Rub some. Rub some ketchup on your wound. And then the next day, you know, we're kids, you know, fall off the roof of the house. Oh, he'll be fine. That's always, like, the mindset in our family. But that didn't translate. When my dad's now 60s, he, you, you, you get to that age where things don't heal like they used to. And so I, I think my dad just kept that stubbornness for way too long. Never took care of it. Had all these things that he ignored, ignored, ignored, and then they all just kind of snowballed and multiplied. And then when he was having these issues with this heart issue, it had all just become, you know, too little, too late. He had been scheduled to do a pacer installed. Obviously, if you've got sleep apnea, why not do this? But the problem is when you're around a high voltage and my dad does a lot of welding, the doctor was really worried that it would trigger the device and create afib at the shop. And if you don't get there in time, you would pass out, right? You would, you'd get lightheaded. And then that could happen at any time.

[01:41:54.310] - Mike Czajkowski

So, you know, there was just a lot of things where, yeah, it's, it's obvious. Why don't you do xyz? Oh, well, you can't do that because of abc. So there was a lot of that going on. And this was like, for two or three years where these doctors were trying to work along with what Marlin's doing, but also try to provide the care needed for the ailment. And then it just, yeah, he was on the cruise. I think, you know, the Lord works in mysterious ways. And the guy could have passed away any, anytime. It's easy for me to talk about this now. I've, you know, we've had a few years and I've shared this story many times. And with my faith, I believe that there is a possibility to see him again. And that's all I need is just a, a chance. And even for myself, too, I, I still need to live a good life and, you know, by God's grace, make it one day perhaps to see my dad again. So I guess that's why it's easy for me to talk about these things now, thinking that, you know, given we have a hope, I believe there's a hope.

[01:42:55.490] - Mike Czajkowski

But I, I, the guy could have, you know, this could have happened on the trail. We could have been a Rubicon. This could have happened. He could have had a heart attack. There's a lot of people in much worse situations. People driving and they have a stroke and they run off a road, or he could have been working thousands number of times where he'd be down there till 1 or 2am and a truck could have slipped off a jack stand, crushed him. Right. We could have come to work Monday morning and there would be a blood stain and, you know, I would have to come to work every day thinking, wow, that's where my dad died. So luckily I don't have any of that. And for Marlon, there's also stories of people who, you know, you get dementia. Right. We just went to Mike's memorial. Mike Hendricks, who suffered of dementia. He could have had cancer. My dad could have gone through years and years and years of chemo where he could have lost all his strength. You know, you count your blessings and I believe things. God does things the way he does them.

[01:43:54.980] - Mike Czajkowski

And I think the way Marlon's life was, growing up in such a rough environment and giving and giving to the world that God had already in mind such a gentle out for my dad where he was on a cruise, they had already done all their excursions and it was on the final day, Thursday, where they were just out at sea on their way back to whatever. What is it? Long beach, probably LA somewhere.

[01:44:23.260] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[01:44:23.980] - Mike Czajkowski

And he was in his sleep. He woke up, my mom got up, he got up, she was getting ready, doing her makeup, whatnot. And so there was nothing on the agenda, you know, hey, why don't you sleep in a little? So my dad's like, okay, I'll just relax a little. And that was it. He fell asleep. And so, you know, he could have gone any other way. For him, it was completely peaceful doing the thing he loved with his best friend, with their best friend friends, with Larry and Larry's wife in the state room next door. So, yep, a lot of blessings I think can be given for how gentle that was on Marlin. I think a lot of people aren't fortunate to have to have such, you know, such an ending like that to, to this life, in this life.

[01:45:17.900] - Big Rich Klein

Anyway, so one of the things that I was that, that I wished was that he could have gotten inducted into the Off Road Motorsports hall of Fame and known that he had done that. But being on the board of directors and having the gala last year and having that induction and your mom being there and yourself was, was outstanding and I really, I'm glad I was part of that.

[01:45:56.820] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah, that was, that was really, really special that he got inducted into that. Thanks to you and Amy and many other people who helped make that happen. Yeah, it was even, I'm sorry to say one thing, just to share an opinion, it's a short sighted, cold opinion, but I think from my experience, I would share. It is just that when we were trying to get him in, we had, you know, he wouldn't make it in. But then other people who had passed away had made it in. And I remember thinking one day, like, oh, man, you know, these people pass away. Well, of course they're going to get in. They've, you know, and I'm just like, wow. And then he makes it in. But again, it's post, you know, he passed away too. So it's like, ah, it's. To what you're saying, it's. I'm sure everyone who has been inducted who had already passed away. It's a bummer, A huge bummer to everybody else. Everyone before Marlon and even Ken Block in the same graduating class. He didn't get in until after that tragic accident. It would have been great for just all these people to have gotten in.

[01:47:18.910] - Mike Czajkowski

And then we awarded that old lady who had done all the dune buggy. She was there in her wheelchair.

[01:47:25.070] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:47:25.430] - Mike Czajkowski

I'm sorry, I don't remember her name. And she passed away after that. I believe I'd heard she now has passed on. Is that correct?

[01:47:32.260] - Big Rich Klein

Correct. Well, John Reddy, but the photographer.

[01:47:35.260] - Mike Czajkowski

How cool that is. She was there. That's really, really neat that she was there for that.

[01:47:39.060] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. John Reddy, the photographer. Chris Collard, he got inducted after he was. Chris let him know that he had gotten, you know, the voting committee had. Had picked him as one of the inductees and within a day or two passed after he was notified. Yes, so he did.

[01:48:05.690] - Mike Czajkowski

I heard that story.

[01:48:06.650] - Big Rich Klein

He didn't have. He didn't get to the gala, but at least he knew, you know, I think.

[01:48:13.650] - Mike Czajkowski

I believe I spoke to Chris because Chris Collard and us go way back to the mid-90s. We've known Chris for a long time. I think he was told that he had won an award, but they hadn't quite told him what it was for. Had you heard that?

[01:48:30.320] - Big Rich Klein

I just knew that he was. That. That he had been. All I heard is that. That he had been notified, but I don't know the specifics.

[01:48:40.720] - Mike Czajkowski

I think Chris had told me that he was notified that he had like gotten accepted for a prestigious, like, like a really high honor. And. And it was like by radio chatter, he was out pre running or something. He was busy doing something. And then the guy was, okay, I'll talk to you about it later. And then later never came. Something like, this is what I think I heard.

[01:49:01.710] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Yeah, it's. It would be. It would be great if we could somehow be able to foresee the future and be able to get somebody inducted before, before they pass. But it's, it's not always meant to be. The, the way it works is with all the, you know, there's 21 people that are, that are, you know, chosen throughout the industry to be on the voting committee. And you know, they, those people may know the person that's, you know, that's, that's got an application in or they may not know. And it's, it comes down to how, you know, what kind of research they can do and then how well the application is written so that it really puts forward the reason why. And it's, it's difficult because sometimes there's, you know, the class that may be being voted on is super strong and, but with, you know, people there that may know all of those very strong candidates, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's difficult. You know, it's not always the possibly people that deserve it slip through the, slip through the boards, you might say. So I, I think we've touched on pretty much everything that, that I had on my list.

[01:50:37.480] - Big Rich Klein

Is there anything that you can think of that you want to include?

[01:50:41.400] - Mike Czajkowski

Maybe not particularly. I don't. I definitely like this being for, for my dad. I don't really need, have any need to go into our company business. I could, but this is cool. If it's, if it's for Marlin, I'm perfectly fine with that.

[01:50:59.650] - Big Rich Klein

Well, Mike, I want to say thank you so much for spending the time and talking about your dad and you know, his legacy and what he's brought to the four wheel drive industry, especially to those Toyota guys. It always cracked me up. He always used to go, rich, it's the Jeep guy. And then one day, one day in Moab, I said, but I own a Toyota. And he goes, what? And so I told him that, you know, I got this series 60. Oh, Cruiser, 1982 or 84, forget what it is now. And he was, you know, he proceeded to go on for the next half an hour telling me everything about that car. And I'm like, Marlon, when I, when I, I will call you when I need something, some information.

[01:51:47.090] - Mike Czajkowski

Yeah.

[01:51:47.650] - Big Rich Klein

Because everything you just said went right in one ear and out the other because I don't retain that kind of stuff. But he just wanted to give me all the information about it. It was great.

[01:51:58.140] - Mike Czajkowski

There's. If I, if I could add one more thing.

[01:52:01.900] - Big Rich Klein

Sure.

[01:52:03.660] - Mike Czajkowski

On that topic, is that Marlon always, he would always say that he wants to get respect. I Guess I have two things to say. He always wanted to get respect for Toyota and he wanted to put Toyota on the map. Because I even from my own memories growing up, there were Land Cruisers FJ40,40 series, but there weren't that many. Just everyone had Jeeps, Jeeps everywhere. And like I'd mentioned, you know, 1 out of 30, 1 out of 40, depending on what trail you're on, was Jeep to Toyota ratio. And even I'm pretty sure Marlon would, would say initially he carried all the spare parts for himself. Because if you break down the trail in a Toyota truck, who's going to have spare parts? Like, who's going to have anything for a Toyota mini truck? Especially back then, like, you couldn't even find these parts, like at an auto parts store, right? So, yep, he really, like, one of his missions in life was to, to get respect for Toyota. And I think he absolutely accomplished that by having dual cases, which is only possible using the Toyota transfer case. No other transfer case ever made in history is designed like the gear drive t case in a Toyota.

[01:53:18.880] - Mike Czajkowski

That's what made this whole thing even possible for, for rock crawling, right? And then when, you know, talking about his knowledge with, with your 60, by the way, does your 60 have four headlights or two headlights?

[01:53:33.400] - Big Rich Klein

I think it's two.

[01:53:35.400] - Mike Czajkowski

Two round. So they're not four square?

[01:53:37.760] - Big Rich Klein

No, they're round.

[01:53:38.360] - Mike Czajkowski

Two round.

[01:53:38.840] - Big Rich Klein

Two round.

[01:53:39.440] - Mike Czajkowski

So this, so this is the early one. That's pretty cool. That's. That's a more rare cruiser that you've got, huh? But it's got the weaker engine, which no one wants. But it's stick shift.

[01:53:49.450] - Big Rich Klein

410,000 miles.

[01:53:52.490] - Mike Czajkowski

That's awesome.

[01:53:53.290] - Big Rich Klein

And it created a rod knock. So I parked it.

[01:53:55.810] - Mike Czajkowski

Oh, wow.

[01:53:56.730] - Big Rich Klein

Two years ago, Marlin has.

[01:53:57.930] - Mike Czajkowski

Years ago, Marlon has. Oh, that's a rod knock. That guy would, would do valve. He would adjust valve lash with the valve cover off and the engine running on, on those motors. This guy's crazy. But yeah, just real quick on, you know, his, his knowledge about, about being, being a general automotive mechanic. He knew how to work on Jeeps or early Broncos or Chevy blazers, right? Or you name it, a Suzuki Samurai. Anything that's coming out, coming down the trail. He, he's already, he's already rebuilt like a, like I mentioned, a flathead. What's it called? A Dizzy Devil. I think I get this wrong. The four cylinder in a, in a Willis 19.

[01:54:41.020] - Big Rich Klein

Like it's go Devil, Dirt Devil.

[01:54:43.980] - Mike Czajkowski

Go Devil. Okay. He's probably rebuilt a few dozen of those. And so myself, like, I'M more of a late model fuel injected Toyota guy. Like, I would have no idea what to do if I came along the trail and a Go Devil is not running. Or you know, because my dad has worked with a four barrel double pump Holley carburetor. You know, you come along and there's a guy with a Ford Bronco and the thing won't start and my dad's like, oh, you know, he just looks real quick and he's like, well, hey, did you know your, your Weber carburetor? These lines are wrong. And they're like, aren't you a Toyota guy? Like, how do you know about this kind of stuff? Right? Like, how do you know about a 5.0 Ford motor? And so that was a real unique thing with my dad. And maybe that kind of ties in with the off road Motor Sports Sports hall of Fame and his standing in organizations like Cal Four Wheel Drive, which is predominantly. It's a collection of four wheel drive clubs, but it's predominantly Jeep clubs.

[01:55:38.070] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:55:38.430] - Mike Czajkowski

But your yourself being a quote unquote, Jeep guy, respects and knows Marlon because Marlon, I think a guy who treats everyone the same and has that knowledge and if your Jeep broke down, Marlon could just work on that thing without even hesitating. There's not many people, I would say, in our Toyota industry, I mean, there's probably no one, I'll just say there is no one in our Toyota industry who had that broad of knowledge. And you know, that's what got Marlin. Like, there's so many Jeep clubs. He's a member of the Victor, the Victorville Victor Valley four wheelers.

[01:56:14.460] - Big Rich Klein

Yep.

[01:56:15.260] - Mike Czajkowski

And Marlin was the very first Toyota ever to complete a hammer's trail. You know, and this is a bunch of Jeep guys in Jeeps. And so, you know, there's just so many endless stories about his relationships with all these people. And I would, I would meet these people. Like, I don't know any of these guys. And my dad's like, they like know him like, because my, I don't know, they must have stayed at my house when I was really young and because my, they were driving through town and my dad helped work on their, whatever, you know, on their C10 Blazer or something. So, yeah, just, just a couple more tidbits there to share. But, you know, before we go, can I share one of my favorite stories.

[01:56:55.590] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely.

[01:56:56.150] - Mike Czajkowski

Of Marlin? I love sharing the story. And at my dad's memorial last year that you were at, this is a story that I did not share because I'VE I have shared it before, but I would love to get this included. This is my favorite story of my dad fixing a vehicle, and it ended up being his own vehicle. He. There in the Appalachia, Appalachian Mountains, over in Tennessee. I have not been there myself, but there's a area over there called Tell. Oh, there's the letter T. Telecom. Teleco. Yes, Teleco. And then they would do a Land Cruiser event, which the name evades me right now, but it was over there in Tennessee in Teleco. And the Gilmer. Not Gilmer, but some area over there. And my dad would drive his 1980 carbureted mini truck all the way to Tennessee. And he had gone there maybe once, maybe twice before. I think he went out there three times. This would be a 95, 96, and 97. And one of the trips he was heading out there, and I wasn't with them. He had just taken, like, a customer. And the two of them were just driving out there.

[01:58:09.640] - Mike Czajkowski

And it was, I think Bevin, a family, a church friend had gone with him. And they're driving, and all of a sudden he starts seeing a bunch of smoke coming out in the mirror. You just see blue smoke coming out the exhaust. And you know what that means. Oh, I lost. You know, my engine just took a dump. And so sure enough, he had most likely blown a hole in the piston. You know, engine shaky, no compression. You know, you pull a plug, it doesn't change the idle, and it's just drinking oil. You know, the rings are bad, or there's a hole in the piston. So. So he limps off the freeway. I. I think I remember he says it. It took like two quarts of oil just to get to the next freeway exit. And they park at a town. He goes into an auto parts store, and he says, hey, I need a piston for a 20R engine. All right? Maybe by this time it was a 22R because my dad had made this hybrid 20R, 22R motor. And the guy goes, something along the lines, son, you're. We're in Oklahoma. You ain't gonna find a piston for that motor anywhere out here.

[01:59:15.040] - Mike Czajkowski

Right? And. And so my. They had to mail it in. So my dad had to stay the night. And the next morning he wakes up and he sees there's a. There's a garage nearby. And so he goes over this auto garage, and my dad says, hey, would you mind if I use your lift? I need to work on my truck. And the guy says, because I'm. I'm Going to have a delivery coming in here this afternoon. And the guy goes, you know what? If you can do some work for me this morning, I'll let you use that lift. And my dad says, sure, no problem. I'm a mechanic. What do you got? And so, you know, there's a, there's a whatever, right? There's a Chrysler, a K car there. And then there's a. After that he works on a minivan. And then after that he's, you know, changing a timing chain on a Honda Prelude. And then the next day or the next job is this and that. And then finally the UPS whoever shows up, and here's his new piston. So then my dad's like, okay, cool, here. And, you know, they push a car out, and then my dad pushes his truck in there and he drops the pan, rotates the crank, you know, takes off the cap, pulls the rod out the side with the crank out of the way and drops the piston out the bottom and, you know, swaps over the, the rings or whatever, and up goes a new piston.

[02:00:30.830] - Mike Czajkowski

And he puts his whole thing together and he's firing it up. And my dad's like, all right, man, thank you so much. And my dad and this guy at the shop offered Marlon a full time job offer. Apparently he's never hired a guy that good who can just hammer out jobs and then do a whole piston swap without even pulling the motor out. And he's already ready. And my dad still made it to the event without being late and, you know, had that story to tell to people and did the whole event, you know, donated to the raffle and spent money on raffle tickets and then still drove all the way back home in this carburetor long bed pick up with, you know, just all old school.

[02:01:14.650] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. Yep. That's Marlin. That's Marlin. All right. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for spending the time today and it's been a pleasure and I, I look forward to seeing you again.

[02:01:29.530] - Mike Czajkowski

Cool, Rich. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity to share about just the greatest man I. I know. So thank you very, very much.

[02:01:37.650] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. My pleasure. Take care.

[02:01:40.130] - Mike Czajkowski

All right, thank you.

[02:01:41.010] - Big Rich Klein

All right, bye. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest. Please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.