What did you do TO your F-150 today? 🙋🏻‍♂️

[SWONT2.7]

1800 Canadian. Couldn't find a scuff mark on a tread block so I figured the guy wasn't lying when he said they had never been used. Been searching for a long time, well before I bought my truck on January 29/24. Prices vary from 1600 to 2300 here . Most are advertised as "new take offs" however after speaking with the sellers they had always been used for a few months and a few thousand kilometers. I got a great deal in my opinion, probably could have waited a few more months and possibly saved a hundred dollars. Unfortunately not a ton of these available in my immediate area, they were abundant in Toronto but that's a 250 mile round trip for me. Luckily these were about a 3 minute drive from me.

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[DMAR2007YO]

Rough country 3” suspension lift with N3 premium struts and shocks ready to have it done. I imagine it will be a couple day process. Not something I want to rush.

 

[crazywayne311]

ordered something...possibly controversial haha
now i wait

 

[Los150]

ordered something...possibly controversial haha
now i wait

Gonna take a guess here:
Are your truck's testies finally gonna drop down, below the hitch?

 

[crazywayne311]

Gonna take a guess here:
Are your truck's testies finally gonna drop down, below the hitch?

one has already dropped...still waiting for the other. then again, one will get the job done i imagine

 

[Gord0]

Put Bilstein 6112's on the front to go with the 5160's I put on the back earlier this week. Also gave it a bath after some high speed dirt road driving to test them out. Some AT tires are in her future, probably this fall.

 

[diambo4life]

I vacuumed it.

 

[Lricaud81]

Finally got rid of the yellowish halogen heads and fogs on my stx.
Put h11 in Lows and 9005 in high and fogs . Sylvania silverstar ultra bulbs. Looks so much better.

 

[03 svtvenom]

Tore apart the boring XLT grille and had it painted Agate black and Lead Foot. Came out pretty good.

 

[SWONT2.7]

Thanks for doing that, been considering something similar. Looks great! Did you do it or a paint shop?

Tore apart the boring XLT grille and had it painted Agate black and Lead Foot.

 

[03 svtvenom]

Thanks for doing that, been considering something similar. Looks great! Did you do it or a paint shop?

I took the grille apart myself and had the local paint shop paint them. They charged me 400$.

 

[MJG44]

Gave it a quick winter wash to get the grime off.

Looking forward to warmer weather so I can swap wheels and get new headlights installed.

 

[Eskram]

Washed and threw some more 303 Graphene on it. It was the first wash since just after Thanksgiving and she was disgusting... I even cleaned the inside.

No pics, because it was covered in pollen again after 20 minutes, but I tried at least..

 

[Mouse51180]

This weekend I...

1) Emptied my catch can... pics can be seen here:
https://www.f150gen14.com/forum/thr...-5l-powerboost-f-150.17018/page-2#post-436825

2) Cleaned up the wiring on my LED Hood Light Strip. Cable now run through a plastic wire loom. I think it's a much cleaner look. Forgot to grab pics of this.

3) Lastly I installed the 60" Putco Freedom Tailgate Light Bar. I wish I had happier things to say about this product. It advertises as a plug and play installation...and it is...for the most part...
The plug and play part is the connection to the tail lights which was super easy and simple, but the rest of the install was an utter nightmare for me.

For the cost of this light bar I really would have expected better instructions for installation. Let me say I am a computer guy...not a car\truck mechanic guy...so I don't know how much of this plays a part of my troubles.

Here are the issues I ran into...
-The instructions have a lot of pictures that are so zoomed in...it hard to locate where the picture was taken on their sample truck. For example... please locate these screw locations...

The only description for these location is " If you can find a bolt that is already attaching a wire from the trucks wiring harness to the sheet metal of the engine bay,". Why they couldn't provide a second picture further away showing the entire engine bay and showing an arrow where these locations are is a mystery to me.

-They specify that the wire of the light should exit the driver side. With the fuse box being on the passenger side...I think this should have been reversed. I don't know how other trucks are, but all my other vehicles in the past have all had the fuse box on the driver side of the vehicle. I am curious of these instructions were copied from another vehicle and not really written for the F150, but this is just a guess.

-With the wire exiting on the driver side...this ended up making the power cable running from the engine bay to the rear of the truck too short and I have to create an extension. If I were to do this again I would probably ignore this part of the instructions and flip the cable to exit the passenger side of the truck, but I ran it the way the instruction said because " Failure to follow the installation process step-by-step may result in malfunctions" and I figured this orientation would make more sense later in the install processes...it did not.

-They provide heat shrink to seal these power contact running from the engine bay relay box to the rear of the truck. The problem is...is the heat shrink is 1" heat shrink and too large to create a proper seal. The photos of them applying the heatshrink are them doing it on a table. You will have try and heat shrink this while laying under your truck and around a 4" cable pigtail...so good luck not cooking any of the other wires or anything else close by to this cable. They also claim " This heat shrink has adhesive on the inside which will create a permanent, water tight seal."... this looked like just normal heat shrink to me. I did not notice any adhesive or anything inside, but it didn't fit...so it wouldn't have worked if there was anyway. I used electrical tape to seal the ends around the heat shrink.

-To mount the controller box, they say " Try to use at least three of the four mounting holes to secure the driver box. " I could not locate an single spot that I could mount this to using screws without having to drill holes in my truck. I am currently just using the 3M tape that is on the back of the box, but feel I need to at least find some way to zip tie the unit to the truck just as a secondary security method.

-To program the unit (without paying another $80 for the wireless controller)...you have to tap an orange cable to a grounded surface. This is an ...ok...method of programming, but for $600+ light...they could have made this a button on the controller box. With the orange wire method...you have an exposed cable just dangling around. A button would have allowed the exposed wire to not accidentally tap something while driving and reset the light bar. This is an easy fix with a piece of electrical tape. I hope to replace this with a Wago connector eventually. Even with just the exposed wire...they could have provided more than 2" of cable to try and reach a grounded contact point. Yes you can program the unit and then tuck everything away, but if you ever want to reprogram the unit...good luck having enough cable length to reach anything other than disconnecting the four pin connector and grounding the cable there.

-After getting everything installed and hooked up and plugged in and before zip tying everything together...I ran a test on all the lights. To my suprise... my left blinker flashed the right side of the light bar and visa versa...So I removed the tail lights expecting there would be a sticker showing "driver side" and "passenger side" of the cable that I missed seeing. I pulled the quick connect cables out and noted that there was NO indicator for cable orientation. I re-read the instructions and found NO instructions on a driver\passenger side cable orientation. I found a question posted on their website of someone else who apparently installed the cable in the wrong direction as well. I still might have missed this in the instructions somewhere, but I was now 12hr into what I expected to be a 2-3hr project and was not happy I was having to remove and rerun wires....again... because of poor instructions. FYI... the wires on the light bar need to exit the same side of the truck that the larger bundles of wire coming out of the controller box comes out of.

-I finally got everything in and secure. Still holding my breath that I zip tied everything appropriately to the body and nothing will catch while the truck is running. Mainly worried about the cable going from the fuse box to through the engine bay to the bottom of the truck. Could not really find a path I was super happy about running, but think I found a path that would work.

As mentioned in some earlier post, the lights look and function great. They do not function 100% to the way the advertisement videos show on their website, but not far off enough that you could try and call them out for false advertising. Mailing some timing issues\lag.

Am I happy with this...I dont know. If the price was $300 I might be more accepting of the issues I ran into, but for $600+ after tax and shipping. It was a hard pill to swallow to begin with, then to add the extremely poor instructions on how to install the product...I think is unacceptable from a company as large (and I thought as reputable) as Putco.

 

[Micho523]

Added back the deleted advanced security pack.

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