Ruby Red

[Epiccreation]

Figured I would start a post around my truck. This is what started as a 2013 f150 I bought with the intention of towing around my foxbody project car. Well as all things in life my priorities changed and now this truck is my toy to go play in the sand.

Some old pictures first.

August 2019 when I got the truck. It is a 2013 fx4 5.0 with basically every option you could get at the time (it’s a lariat without the chrome. Nav, heated and cooled seats, sunroof, leather seats). Its got the 6.5 foot bed which I liked at the time because it allowed me to keep 4 spare wheels flat with the tonneau cover on it.


First offroading trip was a week later after getting the truck. I live in Michigan so me and a couple buddies took a trip up to st. helen to hit the orv trails up there.

As you can see I already smashed the running boards on this trip (the passenger side was smashed too don’t worry). This trip left me wanting to do the basic mods most guys do when they get a truck, level the front and put some bigger tires on.

Which I promptly did.



I went a little overkill on the shocks because I did way too much research and a puck level wasn’t really something I wanted to do (I had no real clue what I was doing lets be honest) so I got a way too nice set of fox 2.5 dsc coilovers



This is how the truck would stay for the rest of the year in 2019. I put a set of fox 2.0 smooth body shocks on the rear to replace the totally worn out stock ones.


To be continued…

 

[D.Reilly582]

Welcome! It's awesome to see another Michigan build on here!

It's better to go overkill on shocks than underkill.

How often are you up at Silver?

 

[Epiccreation]

Welcome! It's awesome to see another Michigan build on here!

It's better to go overkill on shocks than underkill.

How often are you up at Silver?

while this is true those shocks were ultimately a waste of money with the direction I took the truck in which ill post about later today.

My wife and I are usually up there a hand full of weekends out of the year. We will be back up there at the end of July!

 

[Epiccreation]

we now flash forward to march of 2020.




I started to look into doing a lift in the rear and getting more performance out of the truck but did not like the idea of rear lift blocks. So I got these. Icon RTX leaf springs. I liked these over deaver springs at the time because it came with an additional spring you could add to the pack to give it a little more loaded capacity and height.


Stock fx4 leafs next to the icon leafs



stance after putting on the leaf springs. returned some of the factory rake. I wanna recall it was like an inch or two higher than before.

Fast forward to April I got a set of method wheels to replace the factory gen 2 raptor wheels I had on the truck. These were zero offset which I knew I needed because I had discovered at the time that with the lift, you could install gen 1 raptor rear shocks and they would be the correct length but the wheel backspacing needed to be changed.



I also at this time added some rigid pod lights.



May 10th I put gen 1 raptor rear shocks on the truck to replace the smooth body 2.0 shocks I had previously on the truck.



Now somewhere around this time I made a devastating (to my wallet) discovery. A Facebook group called "Raptor Swapped F150's" see at the time I really wanted to get a raptor as my truck to tow the mustang around but they price was just too high for what I could spend at the time. This was awesome to me because I could get the performance of a raptor without having to pay the raptor tax. So over the course of the next few months I gathered up the necessary parts to do the raptor suspension swap to the front.



all the parts for the front gathered up.



A little in progress build picture.



driver side done. I remember having a hell of a time getting the lower control arm bolts out because after 7 years of Michigan weather they had totally seized inside of the bushings and did not want to come out. Other than that and needing a couple pry bars to get the cv axles out of the housing, it went off without much fuss.



a comparison between the 2.5 f150 dsc coilovers coming off the truck and the raptor length 2.5 shocks. At the time I thought these were the biggest shocks on earth (little did I know....)



here is the truck completed after the front suspension swap. The truck was now 6 inches wider than it was before.



Now as you can imagine I was probably going to have to some trimming to get this thing to turn properly right?



Nah I said screw that and just took the front bumper off and drove around like this for a while lol.

knowing I would eventually have to put a bumper back on it I looked around on marketplace for fenders and a bumper. Some guy near Indiana had a set of raptor fiberwerx fenders and a valance so I went and grabbed those from him.



at this point she was a solid 20 footer. My goal was to get the glass on, not necessarily make it fit like OEM.

Around this time I was looking for a raptor bumper as well. My girlfriend at the time lived on the other side of the state and I was visiting her when I saw on Facebook marketplace someone was selling a gen 1 raptor bumper for like 100 bucks so I convinced her to take her jeep compass and drive to Wisconsin which was like a 3 hour drive 1 way from her apartment. I wish I had the picture but I didn't think the raptor bumper would be THAT big that we would have issues putting it in her jeep compass. The thing ended up being so long that it damn near touched the windshield and the back glass. We drove home without being able to see each other. As you guys can imagine she was THRILLED by this lol.



but I got the bumper on.

this was about the middle of 2020 at this point.

To be continued...