Pit Stop for your High Performance Ambitions!

How do you improve an already awesome vehicle like the Raptor? Accessorize it! What is a Raptor? Here is my modified dictionary description:
raptor (rāp’tər)
— n
informal
1. A carnivorous bipedal dinosaur of the late Cretaceous period.
2. An Off-Road Ready Ford F-150 SVT Beast of a truck.

Raptors had hind legs that were adapted for leaping and large, curved claws used for grasping and tearing at prey. Incredible power and agility in a compact body.

Origin:
1600–10; < Latin raptor one who seizes by force, robber, equivalent to rap ( ere ) ( see rape1 ) + -tor -tor This post will start with the delivery of the truck and as we make a change or modification, we will up date it.

Day 1 – After tracking it on BNSF’s website as it made it’s way across the country it finally arrives. We sent it out for a spray in bedliner by Line-X (with additional UV protection). When it got back we installed a Bed-Extender. We also wired up an Escort 9500 9500ix radar detector.

Day 3 – The first thing we did was to change the setting on the front suspension. The RAPTOR comes with 3 different settings for the front springs. Mr. Wee had us put on some wheels and tires that he purchased from Addictive Desert Designs in Arizona.
Buff took the front suspension and moved the spring seat to the middle position. That lifts the front just about 2″ inches. The tires and wheels we put on are 17″ X 8.5 Method Racing wheels with a ‘0’ offset and a 4.75 backspace and the tires are 35″ X 12.5″/17″ Toyo Open Country.

Our next upgrade is a 55 WATT HIGH-OUTPUT DIGITAL HID Kit by Retro-Solutions.

These exclusive kits feature 55 watt high-output DIGITAL ballasts. At 55 watts of true power, these ballasts will offer more light (30 – 40%) than any 35W HID kit on the market! Ballasts are 100% digitally controlled, which allows extremely high efficiency, low starting current, and low operation current.

We will start by removing the headlamp assembly so we can mount the new ballast and wiring.

We install the new wiring harness that neatly plugs into the stock harness and into the ballast that gets mounted behind the headlamp.


Wow. That is bright! We had to lower those a bit!

Next up, exhaust!

Mr. Wee worked with the fine folks at Stainless Works (www.stainlessworks.net) and ordered up a setup they have for the Raptor. It is 3″ factory connect Y-pipe with Turbo S mufflers. The Raptor has a nice sound to it already, but this added a nice growl without a nasty drone inside the cab (like so many modified exhaust systems). The outside decimals did go up, but inside barely changed!

While we are under here, we will install some shields for the ABS sensors and the vacuum ports. These are produced by SDHQ (Super Duty Headquarters Off Road). If you offroad, it is easy to knock this stuff around.

Now that that is done, we installed an Airaid cold air induction system and uploaded an SCT 5 Star tune (for 92 octane).
Next up, awesome bumpers and more lights!

Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3

Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3
Phase II

During this phase, we will be adding additional lighting and changing the bumpers and adding a winch.
The front bumper is a ADD stealth design bumper with custom ‘SVT Raptor’ logo laser cut-outs. The bumper has a winch option and Mr. Wee opted for the Recon 10.5 winch with synthetic line. The winch comes with wired and remote control. The rear bumper is a ADD rear Dimple-R bumber with custom “SVT logo laser cut outs too.

For lighting the following lights were installed.
Rigid Industries 40” E-Series LED light-bar (white, dual spot/flood pattern). This one actually hurts your eyes (still felt it two hours later!).

Behind the front bumper we mounted Rigid Industries Dually D2 LED (amber, flood pattern) and Rigid Industries Dually D2 LED (white, flood pattern). In the back bumper we mounted Rigid Industries Dually LED (white, flood pattern).

Here we get ready to unpack the goods!

We start by pulling off the front bumper.

Now off with the back bumper.

We mount the winch to the ADD bumper. This isn’t just a bumper, this is heavy duty combination bumper, skid plate and winch mount! Now Buff mounts the light bar and light modules.


Next Buff mounts the lights on the rear bumper (also very heavy duty) and installs the bumper.


At this point Buff wires all this up. A really cool thing Ford has done for years is equip certain trucks with upfitter switches and pass through wiring. This way we don’t have to punch through the firewall and they terminate the wires next to the upfitter switches. The upfitter switches come pre-wired to the fuse panel. This makes the job much cleaner!

Speaking of cleaner, next we will change out the air cleaner and install a Airraid air intake system. We have already changed the exhaust and Mr. Wee wants to use 92 octane so we will also upload a different tune by 5 Star tune.

Here is the stock air box before the surgery.

The AIRAID air filter fits like a glove!
Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3