2012 Silver Crew build thread and journal

[JTRATX]

I'll be adding to the thread with updates, mods and journaling about my experiences with my Raptor.

Day 1 with 10 miles on the odometer when I picked it up.

I was sure surprised how large the truck was when I picked it up, I had never test driven one or even seen one up close in person.

It's going to take some time to get used to driving, but I look forward to the challenge.

 

[NickPic83]

congrats and nice choice! love the silver screws....as u can see

 

[JTRATX]

My first mod:

Today was time to install my Valentine V1 radar detector. I had a mount from another car so I thought I'd try in the Raptor and it fit. The mount is a little loose, but doesn't move much and I'm OK with it.

I don't have a sunroof and wanted to tap existing wires so I found the wire harness that plugs into the light and rear window switch provided the necessary connections.

Just use a pry bar like the pic and the panel will pop right out.

Blue wire is the 12v and the black wire with yellow stripe provided the ground.

Pics of install:

Pry the panel out gently:







Tap the blue wire for 12V and black/yellow stripe for ground:



Use inline wire taps and turn key to make sure it powers off and on, there is lots of room to fit the extra wire, just tuck them up in the roof panel:



All put back together and ready for speeding:



---------- Post added at 09:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:11 PM ----------

congrats and nice choice! love the silver screws....as u can see

Agreed silver is the best, hell all our cars are silver!

 

[JTRATX]

Next mod is the RPG stage 2 rear frame support and bumps.

I did this in my garage, was kind of a pain in the ass, very tedious trying to tighten all the bolts properly.

Notes from my install:
1. You will need jack stands and 2 floor jacks, one for raising/lowering the diff and the other for jacking the front of the diff so the pinion angle is correct when you tighten everything down.
2. You will need a grinder
3. Have a metric tap/die set handy, you may or may not need this
4. Dead blow hammer
5. Can of spray paint
6. Die grinder with straight burring bit
7. Drill with various sized bits
8. Lots of patience


I removed the spare tire also to make more room under the truck, but I couldn't get the rear cross bar to install under the truck in a diagonal fashion like the install video, the stock exhaust gets in the way.
SO....you must slide in from the side and it will get bound up as it's not a straight shot, so I had to hammer the bed a bit on the seam weld to make it slide in, scraped a lot of paint off so this is where the spray can comes in.



Another pic to show how the bed seam is bent.




The rest of the install is pretty straight forward per the instructions with a few exceptions.


Here I had to drill and tap the hole for the factory exhaust hanger, the RPG bracket was drilled and tapped, but the hole didn't line up with the hole in the frame, so I had to drill and tap, I believe the tap was a 8mmx1.25, I also used a longer bolt.





In this pic get your grinder and grind out the corner of the factory exhaust bracket to get a nice fit without any binding.






Next is the install modification of the factory leaf blocks, per RPG there is variation in the manufacturing of the blocks, they have little nipples on them and those are supposed to align the diff housing with the leaf springs.

Well when you add the RPG bump pad the little nipples are too short to align into the diff housing.

RPG sends some bolts for this to create a longer nipple so that alignment is possible.

But.....you must perform some grinding and drilling for install.


Factory block with nipples:




Now flush cut off the nipples:




You must now find dead center of the nipples you cut off and drill holes big enough for the supplied nuts/bolts that RPG sent to you.



Block modified with nuts/bolts.





EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!!!
The factory blocks say "front" on them, make sure the block is facing the correct direction.

From here follow the instructions for tightening all the bolts etc.. pretty straight forward. Use the two floor jacks to help make things easier and line things up.


The final step was to actually install the Fox bumps.

Well....the bumps wouldn't sit flush inside the tube, which I was a bit frustrated about, so I shined a flashlight inside the tube and could see a bunch of powder coat caked up on the inside not allowing the bump to sit flush in the tube.

This is where a SMALL die grinder with burring bit comes in, shove it up in there and grind out the powder coat. Now the bump fits properly.

All ready for the Texas Raptor Run, I sure won't worry about my frame!

Final installed picture:

 

[nold]

congrats

 

[NickPic83]

nice write ups!

 

[Raptor Retrofit]

Nice installs. Very clean on that radar, Ill be remembering that one for getting power.

 

[JTRATX]

Next up was setting the front shock to the middle perch.

This is pretty easy to do. No need to remove the shock, can be done on the truck without removing anything.

Just go rent an external spring compressor from Autozone (there will be two) and position opposite each other, compress the shit out of the spring and it will give you enough room to adjust to the middle perch.




Then be sure to get the front aligned, your toe will be out.

NTB was charging $70 for a 1 time front end alignment or $195 for a 5 year alignment, where I can bring the truck in as many times as I want within the 5 year period.
DUH, no brainer, signed up for the 5 year plan, I plan to off road and I know for a fact I'll get the front end out of alignment.

 

[JTRATX]

Tonight was time for removal of the sway bar. I wanted to remove this for this weekends Raptor Run.

Removal of the sway bar will allow the L or R suspension components to operate individually instead of being tied together with the sway bar. In an off road environment this is what I want.

The sway bar is great for street driving and I'm not sure how it will feel on the street for the 4 days before his weekend, so we'll see.....

Removal is a 5-10 minute job and just requires basic metric hand tools.

This is the top of the sway bar end link, just stick your head inside the wheel well and you will have room to remove the nut.





For the rest of the removal jump on the ground and slide under the truck.

Now remove the lower sway bar end link:

On the passenger side you can loosen the sway bar nuts, don't remove them all the way, you don't want the sway bar to fall.


On the driver side remove both nuts, there is also a heat shield that must be removed too to revel another bolt to be removed.



Remove this heat shield bolt, it will help make the shield move around easier and not bind up.




Remove the heat shield or move to the side to reveal the last bolt that holds the sway bar on.



Re install the heat shield on the driver side and your all done.

You can also remove the sway bar bolts on the passenger side, they slide right out.

Now you have a pile of parts that look like this:

 

[JTRATX]

I made this bed cage for the Texas Raptor Run to hold my stuff while out on the trail.

I used 1 1/4 square tubing 1/8" thick, the cage weights 70-80 LBS.

A cut, a weld, a grind and some paint and ****: bed cage!