2018 SCrew: Early Experience
Recently took delivery of a 2018 Magnetic SCrew Raptor after 10 years and 200,000 miles of driving Tundras. The Tundras were the model of reliability, with only one unscheduled maintenance item in 10 years (covered as a warranty item even though the truck was a year past the warranty expiration). But, I wanted something with more “sporting” performance and appearance. The Raptor is my only Ford in 50+ years of buying and owning motor vehicles, and only my second vehicle produced by a U.S. headquartered manufacturer. Overall, my experience with the Raptor through the first 700 miles has been excellent, with no problems to date. The few problems I thought I had all turned out to be pilot error; perhaps not unexpected for a vehicle in which the owners manuals total 800+ pages. This is a far more sophisticated vehicle than the Tundra, and the features/capabilities are impressive.
What I like:
Overall comfort/ride: With the off-road orientation of this truck and the OEM tires, I was expecting a crude, noisy ride on-road. Nice surprise here, as this vehicle is far quieter and smoother on-road than the Tundras. This is important to me as the closest to off-road this truck will see is my gravel driveway.
Sync 3: far more user friendly and capable than the OEM nav system in the Tundra; night and day difference. Found the Sync software easy to update via USB thumb drive; not available in the previous Tundras.
Distinctive appearance: nothing else quite like it, plus large range of aftermarket accessories/enhancements available.
Performance: not fully explored so far, but still impressive.
Range: 600+ miles with large capacity gas tank.
Aux/upfitter switches: makes adding electrical equipment (lighting in my case) easy.
Lots of nice design details: well thought out, quality that shows.
What I don’t like:
Auto Start/Stop “feature:” has no place on a vehicle like this; I currently disable this on each start with the button, but will soon get into Forscan to disable permanently. If Ford finds it necessary to include this feature, the button should be setup to turn it on (IOW, its off unless you press the button), and the selection of off/on should remain through start cycles.
Exhaust note: at least inside the truck, it sounds like a wet fart. I own two other vehicles with twin turbo engines and they definitely don’t sound like this!
Lane keeping system: a bit of a toy as far as I can tell so far. Useful only when lanes are well defined and not obscured by surface contamination, which is not the norm where I live.
OEM bed divider option: pretty useless as it can be installed in only two positions (only one position if the bed extender option is also installed), and neither position is useful. The tundra bed divider can be easily adjusted to any location in the bed.
OEM folding soft tonneau cover: if I could do it again, I’d get an aftermarket roll up cover, as the OEM folding cover does not allow full use of the bed without removing the cover; doable but a hassle compared to the roll up variety.
Overall, I am more than pleased with this vehicle so far. What could change this are reliability problems and a poor service experience. My local Toyota dealer is very good re routine and warranty service. My closest Ford dealers have terrible online reviews for service. This could be a deal breaker for me. My patience with reliability problems combined with poor service is close to non-existent. I’ll be back in a Tundra if this turns out to be the case.
