Ford SVT Official Response to Frame-a-Geddon

Good info, thanks for the link.

Well handled by Jamal. Maybe I'm not experienced at this enough, but I can't see how anyone can logically argue with his points.

BigJ said:

Well handled by Jamal. Maybe I'm not experienced at this enough, but I can't see how anyone can logically argue with his points.

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I totally agree but you know it will happen. Some people cannot accept the fact that they could be responsible.

Great article! Some comments:

* Thanks Tim, for posting this

* Very cool of Jamal Hameedi to go on record in great detail about the issue

* It must suck for the handful of whiners to get their asses handed to them so publicly

* I'm sure the whiners will claim that Ford sucks, they didn't over-drive their Raptors, they know what they're doing (they have lots of experience in parking lots and detailing their vehicles, etc.), "frame design flaw" and "yes, they RTFM but that's just legalese the lawyers put in there to protect Ford", etc., etc.

* Good to see SVTO get "mentioned" by Jamal, "We monitor all the blogs – I think there are three or four different versions of Raptor online forums."

* Great explanation of the issue by Jamal, "Basically, the core – the root cause – is that the vehicle is traveling too fast for the obstacle, and the truck is running out of travel. By a large margin. They're going too fast for the obstacle by a large margin. The frame is not the first item to yield in that condition – despite what's been theorized, the first thing when you do exceed the vehicle's travel capability [is that] you have a certain safety zone where you will hit the bump stop and nothing will happen. If you hit that same obstacle at an even faster speed, then you will yield the jounce bumper cup – that's the little piece of steel that holds the jounce bumper. If you hit that same obstacle at an even greater speed, then the next thing to go is the frame."

* It was helpful of Jamal to go even further and explain the issues with simply making a frame more stiff (stronger): "If you had an infinitely stiff frame, then what that would do is, the rear of that vehicle – the suspension – when that axle is going up so hard, so fast, it would 'donkey kick' the rear of that truck really high into the air. That's a very undesirable condition."

* He even went so far as to talk about the jounce bumper design and gave a real-world example from the Frame Bending Run, ", the truck performed flawlessly through there – it didn't do anything crazy from a vehicle dynamics standpoint. It didn't put the truck into an unsafe condition and it didn't strand the driver. If you hear their voices [on the video], you can hear them go 'Argh!!' when they went over that. That's not a good thing for any vehicle when you hit that hard, that fast. The other thing is that we run microcellular jounce bumpers that are progressive rate – this is why we run that kind of jounce bumper."

* And Jamal said what many of us have been saying from the day the whining started, "There's a learning curve with these new enthusiasts and the organizers – of how to properly run an off-road, high-speed event like this. This is part of that learning curve. One of the things that we state in our owner's manual is that you need to do a low-speed reconnaissance run – you can't just find an off-road trail and barrel down it at 100 miles an hour."

Note: I am not disputing Outlaw's claim that they pre-ran the trail; I believe they did. But the group did not and they (1) didn't all have radio communication to know what was ahead, (2) they all didn't have offroad GPS to know what was ahead and (3) the trail's obstacles weren't marked.

* "Big Brother is Watching" - "We've heard sound bites from other people on that run that they were going 110-125 mph in certain parts. From the factory, the truck is speed-limited to 100 miles per hour, so all of these guys would need to be removing the speed limiters on their trucks [in order to achieve those kind of speeds]."
Note: If you post it on the internet don't even try to deny it happened! If you say it happened (even if you didn't post pics as far as the world is concerned you did it. :blam:

* They even addressed the Deavers some of the Raptor owners installed on their trucks, "The other thing that's going on... we've had some reports that there's an aftermarket company offering aftermarket springs, and instead of the two or three-leaf of the production truck, they offer a multiple stack leaf, and what that does is, it actually deletes the jounce bumper landing pad, which is kind of critical. AB: So were any of those vehicles on the run equipped with that setup? Hameedi: Yes. We don't know how many – if it's all of them or if it's a fraction of them – but we know some of them were running those multiple leaf springs with the jounce bumper landing pad deleted. Obviously, the suspension was designed to work with all of its parts intact."

* And again it comes down to (1) knowing what you're doing when you're driving YOUR vehicle on or offroad and (2) RTFM to LEARN what the manufacturer wants you to know (and what is also good-to-know): "The three key points in high-speed off-roading that we mention in the owner's manual are... number one, you have to do a reconnaissance run – a prerun. Every desert racer, they'll go and prerun a trail and they will mark all of the ditches and obstacles on their GPS, so that when they're coming upon an obstacle like that, they will know to slow down. Also, a race organizer would probably mark that ditch with a big red X or something like that, so that people know what they're driving. You can get yourself into trouble very easily if you don't know what you're doing or if you're driving above your ability or those of the vehicle. It's not very different than a very capable, very fast sports car on a road course."

* And Jamal was very thorough as he even addressed the marketing videos, pics, collateral materials that Ford's marketing group used: "AB: This is probably more of a marketing question. You've got videos and ads that show this vehicle bombing through the deserts at very high rates of speed, and obviously you've pre-run under those conditions... Hameedi: I know we've done videos on the Raptors with people like Rob Maccachren, and we've explicitly said that it's a vehicle that's highly capable, but you can break anything – you can even break a trophy truck – so you have to be responsible and sensible about the way what you're doing to the vehicle and the way you're driving it."

* He even offers instructions to owners on how to inspect for damage related to offroading: " It's very easy to inspect the jounce bumper cup – that's really easy to look at and see if it's yielded in any way, shape or form. The easiest way to tell if you've gone far beyond the capability of the vehicle's suspension is if there's the V-margin on the cab to bed."

* I take pride in the numerous runs we did in which no one did any damage to their vehicles (except for a broken axle which Ford was very prompt and interested in inspecting it and promptly fixing under warranty). I took pains to bring copies of a few pages of the owners manual on several runs handing them out to participants and taking time to talk about the goals of the run (safety, fun, watching out for the rest of the group, not over-driving their vehicles, and having fun). I'm glad to see Jamal agreeing with me :mrgreen: and expressing an interest in teaching/communicating with other run organizers: "Well, I think one of the things that we're starting to really look at is starting to step up our communications with the organizers of these trail runs and how to conduct them safely and responsibly – things we would do internally at Ford or with the media. Maybe teach or communicate with some of these new organizers on how to conduct these events safely so the vehicles don't get damaged or people don't get damaged."

* I like that he addressed how well the vehicle performed and how much worse it could have been, "We were anxious to have our side of the story told because our impression of what happened is that the vehicle performed very well in that kind of extreme maneuver. They didn't lose control – the vehicle was very stable. Some other things that could have broken – like shock mounts or spring perches or axles – those have grave, grave consequences when they fail at 80 mph off-road. [They can] potentially cause a lot of damage to the vehicle. These guys could still drive their vehicles – they weren't stranded with a busted suspension out in the middle of the desert. As you can imagine, if your suspension breaks out in the desert, it is not a trivial matter to get that vehicle extracted."

And the last item in the article shouldn't be left out:

"On the flip side of the coin, at least one forum member, Outlaw Raptor, one of the event's organizers, sees things differently:
"The bent frame issue is happening all across the US, not just on the Raptors on the run. All 10 trucks did not bend their frames on the run but there were a few that did. I know my 2 Raptors had bent frames before the run. Four of the Raptors already had bent frames and 3 had no problems at all."

"Outlaw Raptor also argues that the course for this event was both prerun and well-organized. He notes that he has personally driven the course for years and says that emails were sent to participants recommending that they download the course on GPS with all of the obstacles marked. It is not clear how many participants took this step, nor is it known if the cattle crossing that is being blamed for bending frames was included in this data. He also says that CB radios were provided (noting that "reception was horrible") and cites the presence of support vehicles and paid mechanics – this was a organized event in which Raptor owners paid money to participate."

The statement that "the bent frame issue is happening all across the US not just Raptors on the run" may indeed be true but then again, Jamal addressed all the issues related to it so it's clear he and Ford (their official position) see it as operator issues rather than design/product issues. I understand why Outlaw Raptor has said this (claiming others have bent their frames) and why he "argues that the course for this even was both prerun and well-organized."
And, in my opinion, the fact that he says the event was organized and Raptor owners paid money to participate seems, to me, to possibly open him up to, dare I say it (?), lawsuits (maybe that's something that the whiner(s) are contemplating?).:blam:

I'd like to see Outlaw back up their claim that Raptor frames are bending all over the country.

Until that hard evidence is provided, it's all anecdotal and deflection.

Of course they are going to say anything to deflect the fact that they put on an event and almost a dozen people who attended (and relied on Outlaw's expertise) ****ed up their trucks. (the drivers have nobody else to blame but themselves, especially NOT FORD!)

This is bad press for all of them. This is NOT a situation like Firestone tires on the Explorer failing or gas tanks on Chevy pickups.

I applaud Ford and Jameel for the professional, informative response.

The F150 has the same\similar frame as the Raptor. There are many more people with that truck (and many more stupid people potentially abusing them) and I don't remember reading about widespread (or any) frame issues with the base vehicle.

All the morons out there saying Chevy this, Dodge that, Asian etc would survive in those conditions are ignorant and uneducated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huS-X0USuq0&feature=related

Anyone notice he said the raptor was limited at 100mph from the factory, and these guys must have modified there ecu to go faster?

Is it really limited at 100? Seems a little low for this type of truck.

Yup its true Kruat. But they don't limit it because of the truck; they limit it because that's the max speed rating of the tires.

Hey Thanks guys for this thread.Now we have an official "root cause".

BigJ said:

Yup its true Kruat. But they don't limit it because of the truck; they limit it because that's the max speed rating of the tires.

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HA HA - Maybe they limited it because of what could happen when knuckleheads are behind the wheel :mrgreen: (half-joking here) - present company excluded, of course!