My Latest Toy... RCSB 5.0 XLT Build

[TN_Ryan]

Yet another amazing RCSB built thread, only this one is even more informative. I bookmarked that MaxJack lift page as this lift would work well in my garage which has a 11’-4” ceiling height but has a 13” beam down the middle so the net result is 10‘-3” clear. My garage is also finished, insulated, and heated. I have been wanting a car lift of my own for decades now so I’m saving up for one and when my kids are done with school in 4 years I will get one. I pay $32k in tuitions per year on mostly one income which really hurts!

I’m guessing you’re retired or you work from home because being a former technician (ASE A1-A8) from decades ago now I know how much time that kind of work can take. You are obviously not your average backyard mechanic either. Great find on that truck too. Pre owned RCSB trucks are hard to find especially in that condition with low miles and I think especially in New England too where I’m from.

I used to work from home, but I am back on the road these days. So yes, it made it easy to work on the truck after work.

I reckon I'm not your average backyard mechanic, I've been building and racing Mustangs for over 25 years. I build my own engines, transmissions, and rear ends. I also do my own tuning on either SCT, HPT or Holley. When I lived in FL, I was building engines and tuning other peoples vehicles on the side. It got to be too much to keep up with along with a full time job. So when I moved to TN 8 years ago...I stepped away from all the side work. Which has been nice...sometime I miss it, but most times I don't! LoL

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[TN_Ryan]

Update:

When I first bought this truck I had a specific list of options I wanted the truck to have. 1 was Push To Start, and the other was Passive Entry. Both of which I missed dearly. (I know, first world problems )

Since I bought the passive entry style door handles early on when I was paint matching the truck, I already had those installed and ready to go. I started this process out thinking I'd just add a few wires to the existing harness and be done with it. But once I started looking at how many wires were needed, on top of the fact that I wasn't really happy with the fact that you can't back pin the BCMC. I started to investigate replacing the entire harness instead, which meant replacing more than 1 harness. I began acquiring the correct OEM harnesses I would need, this included the door harnesses, the dash harness, the floor harness and finally the main engine bay harness. I bought all of the harnesses except the engine bay harness used. There are a couple recyclers on eBay that do a great job on removing harnesses from vehicles without cutting a single connector, they even remove the holding clips with the correct tools, which allows you to snap the harness back into place as designed. Which makes reassembly much easier. The harnesses aren't very expensive, in fact the main engine bay harness was less than what I paid for the aftermarket LED headlight harness.

By now I was pretty far down the rabbit hole, wondering what else I could add. Memory seats would be awesome since my wife and I share the truck. We have a Lariat 502A Crew Cab F150 that does the "work", like towing the toys and whatnot. But this truck is our "fun" vehicle...if I can ever get my Foxbody Coupe painted...that will be our "nice day only" vehicle. Anyways, back to the truck, so I figured, if I was going to add memory seats, why not add adjustable pedals and electric tilt/telescoping steering column as well?!?! Ambient lighting would be nice while I was at it...since I bought Lariat 502A harnesses, I had all the right plugs for whatever upgrade I could desire. I was just a matter of installing said option, and programming it via Forscan.

After 2 months of acquiring the necessary components, it was time to begin. And now seemed like as good of time as any to tear a perfectly fine truck apart to upgrade it!

The dash and door harnesses aren't difficult, getting everything out to replace the dash harness is the tedious part. It's not hard work perse, the dash comes out fairly easy in these trucks...there's just a lot of crap that has to come out first before the dash can come out. The engine bay harness wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was able to snake the harness from the drivers side to the passenger side wheel well, where I was able to remove it from the truck. Installation of the new engine harness was reverse of removal...with the wife's help, we were able to snake it back through and plug everything back in. The engine bay harness has several large connectors on it that make it a tad more difficult to install. Not terrible...but you do need to plan your route.

The floor harness was the "fun" one...since Ford never made a regular cab truck with all the options I was wanting to install, the only solution was to shrink a crew cab floor harness. I was able to layout the regular cab harness along with the crew cab harness and begin working on removing wires that are no longer needed.

After working on it for the last 3 weekends, I am happy to report that she is back on the road sporting her new upgrades! She now has passive entry, PTS, multi color ambient lighting, B&O DTS sound system, 12" cluster upgrade, memory adjustable pedals, and memory tilt/telescoping steering. Programming was no joke...I spent a few hours on the laptop in the truck getting everything to cooperate. Everything works, I don't have any DTC's and I couldn't be happier!

And finally, some pictures of her out on a drive yesterday

Next on the list is front park assist along with adaptive cruise...now that I have the correct engine bay harness and bumper harness, I just need to source the parts, install them and finally program it. Also on the list is the tailgate release, I still have the standard XLT tailgate unlock. I will be working on upgrading that to the electric release feature. After that...it will be time to install my 4 link suspension I have sitting off to the side patiently waiting

 

[Crashxx]

Wow! What a project. Looks great!

 

[HammaMan]

Memory seats are pretty easy but do require a DSM native driver's seat. Swapping out the whole driver's door harness does do this, but also adding in the 2 wires to the lock harness while moving from 4 pin to 6 pin connector also do it (the avenue I used). I didn't move to memory pedals as me factory pedals stay against the firewall. Love to see the effort put into adapting harnesses, not an easy thing to do tearing into factory harnesses removing the tape / etc.

If you upgrade the mirrors to folding, the 'seat' memory works on their position as well. Not sure if you replaced the harness that connects to the rear view mirror, but the mirror dimming will also work if the harness to the door is populated to the rearview mirror.

 

[NavyChief]

Holy cow, now that’s a mod. You have to throw up the harness part numbers as I already did a lot of the interior but passive with PTS is awesome. I’m lucky in that I got adaptive cruise and 360 camera with the truck.
I’m moving to Atlanta for work for a bit. That puts me couple hours from you. Don’t make me bring my truck up there.

 

[lrb_35128]

Ryan, 'tis time to change your username. I suggest, The_Merry_Masochist"...

(Great work. Excellent write-up.)

 

[JCsTruck]

Wow, nice writeup which by itself must have taken you a lot of time and effort. The amount of time, money, risk, skill, and effort that went into that truck build blows my mind because I understand it, having restored some vehicles myself. You completely ripped out the interior of a brand new 40k truck! Just the research alone; very good job!

Now maybe you can help convince Ford to keep the regular cab with 5.0 v8 in production and maybe even convince them to make some higher trims in the RCSB version like the ELT they used to offer. I recently saw a 2024 extended cab (not 4-dr) XLT with the painted STX like grill and man I couldn’t stop looking at it and thought maybe I should just get that instead but I really want a RCSB.

 

[513Mugsy]

First Class!! Well done!

 

[NavyChief]

Did you have part numbers for the harness’s that you sourced?

 

[TN_Ryan]

Did you have part numbers for the harness’s that you sourced?

I ordered the harness based off the VIN number from the donor vehicle. I'd then use the VIN number to decipher what options the truck came with. Usually, I could get what I needed based off auction pictures from the sale of the wrecked truck. Below is what I used on my truck, I'm sure there are other harnesses out there that would work. It just all depends on what options you want to add. I don't have the door harness part numbers, I bought those for a 502A Lariat.

Dash Harness: ML3T-14401-DAD
Center Console Harness: ML3T-14B079-MD
Floor Harness: ML3T-14A005-LDG
Under Hood Harness: ML3Z-12A581-CBA

Keep in mind, the dash, floor, and door harnesses are not engine specific. But the under-hood harness is. The part number above for the under-hood harness is for a 2021 F150 with the 5.0 engine.

For Push To Start, you will also need the appropriate BCM, the PTS BCM is different from the key-in ignition style BCM. You will also need the external antenna's. There are 3 total, but you only need 2 in order to make the PTS to work. The 1 antenna is under the center console cupholder, the 2nd antenna is mounted on the cab back wall, and the 3rd antenna is built in with the tailgate release handle assembly. I currently do not have the tailgate antenna since I have not upgraded to the electronic release tailgate operation yet. Your best best is to find a used BCM and buy the key that went with that particular BCM. Most recyclers will sell you the key that came with the truck. This will make programming much easier...if not, you will have to jump through many hoops in order to get FDRS to PMI a new BCM that never came in your truck. You will need 2 keys at minimum in order to program the PATS system once you are done. And of course you will need the PTS button and the trim that it mounts in. The trim piece that goes across the middle of the dash is different from the key-in ignition style trim piece.

Passive entry will of course need the correct door handles, once you have added the wiring via whichever method you choose, it just requires some minor programming to enable. Hope that helps!

 

[White95]

Great job and sweet truck.

I like your style

 

[TN_Ryan]

Made some recent modifications...started a different thread in the suspension forum for any interested. Have about 1000 miles on the 4-link suspension and couldn't be happier! 4-Link

Truck now has remote release tailgate and Tremor LED tail lights. It was cheaper to get the proper harness from Ford than it was to buy the aftermarket adapter harnesses for the tail lights. Biggest change was the 4-link suspension install. She is also on a new set of wheels...LoL

Just picked up a set of XLT 17" wheels...going to drop them off at the powder coater tomorrow. I'll be throwing a set of Hoosier tires on them to see if we can get this baby in the 10's on pump gas. Next on the list is some exhaust work, thinking about some long tube headers and a true dual exhaust. I built the 3" dual exhaust for my last Harley Davidson F-150 and it turned out awesome. But buying one ready to go also sounds appealing...so we'll see!

 

[1slo5oh]

Truck looks great. I've been wanting to snag a rear bumper and do a true dual exhaust as well. Think it would sound so much better with long tubes and an x pipe instead of the y

 

[TN_Ryan]

Truck looks great. I've been wanting to snag a rear bumper and do a true dual exhaust as well. Think it would sound so much better with long tubes and an x pipe instead of the y

Not to mention flow a lot better. 800 HP flowing through a single 3” exhaust is far from ideal! I’ve been tempted to put a pressure tap on the stock Y Pipe and see exactly how much back pressure there really is at 7000 RPM with 10lbs of boost.

 

[1slo5oh]

Not to mention flow a lot better. 800 HP flowing through a single 3” exhaust is far from ideal! I’ve been tempted to put a pressure tap on the stock Y Pipe and see exactly how much back pressure there really is at 7000 RPM with 10lbs of boost.

No doubt! Well if you decide to build your own, make 2 lol

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