I did the inside too......

 

Yeah i love those wheels! Thanks for all the info on the torsion bars/keys, all the 4wheelin places(only 2) around here act like your crazy if you talk about cranking the stock keys. You ask them they say you gotta buy aftermarket. What brand of shocks would you recommend? So you took your flaps off?? How do you get the rear flaps off?

Does your truck have the 4.6 or 5.4 in it? do you have gears?

 

Man thats awsome! Its pretty unique too, I haven't ever seen that stuff on a regular F150 before. What year is it? Did you order the parts from SVT?

 

haha......4.2 V-6. With 3.30 gears!! Actually, the 4.2 is surprisingly strong. And the 3.30 gears wasn't THAT bad......with the exception of first gear being WAY too tall. It was pretty much like starting off in 2nd gear. What was pretty funny was the top speed. The truck would do 110 in 3rd gear, but wouldn't go any faster if you shifted to 4th. And if you tried to shift into 5th, the truck would actually start slowing down!! I bought Auburn electric lockers and 4.56's and stripped the truck down for some much needed paint and body work. But due to various issues, I haven't gotten it put back together yet.

One of the reasons is I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted to do with the truck. There were issues with the truck (shocks, ball-joints, cv-joints)......and I couldn't figure out whether I wanted to try to find solutions to keep the truck like it was. Or do the easy fix and put a 6" lift on it.

Some of the problems I had was with the shocks. I run Bilsteins on everything I have, and have a trick for extending the studs. This little trick works great on the pre-98 coil spring Rangers..........which is what I've always owned until I got my 99 F-150. Well, after I exploded my factory shock, I ordered a set of Bilsteins. The Bilsteins had a slightly shorter stud for some reason, and I wasn't able to extend them long enough. I had to remove the upper rubber bushing from the upper mount and basically mount the shock metal-to-metal. Not the best solution, but the only way I could get enough down-travel. I quit driving the truck, before I could come up with anything better. You need a longer shock, but I don't know exactly where you could find one the correct length.


Other problems you'll have are ball joints. OEM ball joints are the only joints that will survive running at that angle. But if you still have OEM joints on your truck, they will fail shortly because the rubber boots have started to dry rot and will crack from the additional angle. Aftermarket joints have boots that won't work at that angle at all, and will rip the rubber boots even when new. Unless they are the really cheap joints that don't have a tight fitting boot. In that case, they'll just open up a gap the size of a quarter every time the suspension flexes.....letting in all kinds of nice things inside your ball joint.

And, not very long after cranking my bars, my CV Boot ripped open. I replaced it with another OEM CV joint. Several months later, it split again. Followed shortly by the OTHER side.

You sure you still wanna crank your torsion bars lol!


Yeah, I had to pull the flaps off. The front ones rubbed. Not the flap itself, but the metal brackets that mount them. I was able to cut and grind on the brackets to make the front work. But one night while playing in the mud.....one of the rear flaps got in an argument with the rear tire. The tire won. So I pulled them all off. The flaps are held on by plastic push pins and small screws. But the brackets are held in place with bolts and rivets

 

Oh yeah, forgot......I bought the wheels online from a company that sells alot of Ford Racing stuff. And then I bought the entire interior from a wrecked Lightning on EBAY. I have ALOT of other cool stuff that I've bought for that project.......maybe one day I'll get to finish it. It's a shame to see it just sitting with all the stuff ripped out of it.

 

You got me scared a little bit, but I'll still probably do it when I get extra $$$. So what kind of gas milage did you get in it if you remember, just curious? Mine has the 5.4 in it.
Do you think I would have to regear with the big tires or ya think it would be alright? Oh-yeah...I had both my upper and lower ball joints replaced in February. Maybe they'd last for a while since there pretty new. My truck won't even do a 100 unless your going down a hill or you have about 5 miles of wide open road!!! If I get a chance to get some good pics of my truck, I'll post em.

 

Here are a couple, but they're no good I'll have to try to get some more.
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Mileage?? ha......about 12mpg. And that was with the 265/70-16 tires that were on it when I bought it. I never really calculated the mileage with the 35's. But it probably wouldn't have been much different. The truck got nearly the same mileage no matter what. I once towed a car on a trailer for about 500 miles on I-10 at 80mph and averaged 11mpg. The mileage was the same both loaded, and with an empty trailer. The best mileage I could get....on the highway, not pulling anything was 13mpg. And it didn't matter what gear you were in.......4th and 5th gear got the same mileage on the highway. This was with the 31's of course. 5th gear was out of the question with 35's. And for comparison, my 05 Supercab FX4 5.4 averages 12mpg with a best of 15mpg at 80 on the highway(it would probably get close to 18 if I could tolerate driving 65mph)

You'll do fine with 3.73's and 35's. People do it all the time. But, it will have less power, won't tow as well, and will get worse gas mileage. Would it help to re-gear it?? of course!! Are most people willing to spend the money to re-gear?? probably not. It's just a matter of what's most important to you.

You sure your truck is that sluggish?? It's gotta have more power than that?? Now I know my truck has a top speed limiter on it. When I said it would do 110, that was correcting for the 35's. At 110, the truck thinks it's only doing 90. The truck would hit the rev-limiter at 110 in 3rd gear. But that was it....shifting into 4th wouldn't make it go any faster!!!

 

Oh, I see the pics now.....I didn't refresh the page before I posted my reply. How'd you bend the tow hook?? =P

 

Ooh, they're not bent just needs to be lined up and retightened. But the left side does have some damage because I only have liability. I was getting on the interstate and I should of known that it was some really old people (crown Vic). we were about to merge in and we had gotten up to around 55mph. I turned around to double check and when I turned back around they had slammed the brakes so I don't know how I avoided them, but it almost rolled and I couldn't get the control back so I did a 180 and smashed my passenger side into the center gaurd rail cables. Not too much damage for those speeds. Did you know the sides of the bed are fiberglass?
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No the truck has alot of power and I raced it down Thunder valley because we got thursday night street fights and I raced a cummins 2500 turbo diesel, I won by a pretty good distance too. I ran a 16.2 at around 85mph...., and it had the lift and 33's on it. but anyway it loses all pwr when i get to about 60 it seems to me, but for abig truck it aint slow. (i don't think so). It just stops pulling any when I get to about 93mph. but seriously I was going down a hill and that is the only time the truck has ever seen 100mph. I just want more power in the lower gears.

 

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The damage really irritates me and the old people just drove off. I don't even think that they knew what happened!

 

Hey that sucks about hitting the guard rail thing. I'm in central Florida right now, so I can really relate to the old people thing!! Yeah, I'm aware of the bedsides being fiberglass. That's actually kinda a sore subject for me....... I went off-roading and flexed the frame so bad that the bed corners were driven into the back of the cab. It cracked my bedsides and dented the back of my cab pretty good. I pulled the bed off to repair the fiberglass and repaint the sides. I got the bed repainted, but never had time to finish the rest of the truck. So it's still sitting, halfway disassembled........

16.2 is a pretty good time considering the size of the truck and the tires. Funny how it runs out of power at higher speeds. Think there's a problem? My 3v 5.4 is just the opposite. Very slow in fist gear and most of second.....but very impressive for it's size from 80-100.

 

I thought that a 16.2 was pretty darn good, and my friend was driving it because I forgot to wear jeans and that is one rule to race down at Bristol, he had never even driven it before and I'm not sure if he even staged it up any?! Well, the check engine light is on because it does need a new EGR sensor, but I don't know if that would make the truck have less power in the high gears?? It does make it idle rough sometimes every once in a while I think. I knew that the 3.73 would be alright with 35's, but It seemed like everyone was trying to tell me that it would be unbareable slow trying to get up to speed. Thanks for the info Hillbilly!