Motorsports One

The catalyst to the transformation of my '15 XLT Sport FX4 was a picture I saw last winter of joshuakline's truck in the Blue Flame thread. His truck had a GalaxyMoto grille with perimeter and FORD letters painted to match. Since I wasn't a big fan of the letters and wanted to give my mod a factory vibe, I chose a Super Duty emblem, the largest blue oval available at 13 inches wide.



Note that I had worked on a PhotoShopped picture of joshuakline's truck to see what my concept would look like, at least 4 or 6 weeks before Ford revealed pictures of the '18 refresh of the F-150. The promo shot of the blue Special Edition truck was almost an exact copy of my concept, here it is compared to my truck.



The grille mod is one of a few elements that make my truck turn heads with other F-150 owners. One guy told me he thought it was a special package he hadn't heard of.

I got the GalaxyMoto grille from "autopartskingdom" on eBay and it came with amber LED lights. Great paint work by Jeff at E-Coating Solutions in Odessa, Ontario (Canada) gave me the same result joshuakline got with his truck. Note the smaller emblem I initially got, which would not have looked as good as the Super Duty emblem.



I had asked Jeff to try and find a way to mount the large emblem, but everything he tried to fabricate was too thin and brittle due to the curve of the grille not being quite as pronounced as I initially thought it was. So my next idea was to find the original mounting surface for the emblem from a Super Duty grille. These grilles are super expensive as a whole unit (close to $1000), but I found out that the upper trim grilles have a "skeleton" of a grille with the background mesh and emblem mount, while the chrome or brushed pieces mount onto that part. I was lucky to find an eBay seller with that part for only $130.

I cut the emblem mount with a Dremel and trimmed to just the mounting surface and the bezel to the emblem.



Following Jeff's recommendation for an adhesive that would be strong enough to hold the emblem on the grille, I used PL construction glue. A lot of it actually, applied to the grille before installing the emblem mount, but also adding more through the back of the grille in lots of places where there were gaps. I made sure to not use PL near the 4 mounting tabs that hold the emblem to the mount, in case I ever need to replace the emblem.



I think the end result is a grille and emblem that very much look like factory parts and make the front end of the truck look more aggressive.

To complete the look, I got the lighting parts with either a black background or a smoked lens.

- Special Edition style headlights from eBay
- Recon smoked lens LED taillights from Stage 3 Motorsports
- Smoked lens third brake light from Amazon

To eliminate the amber glow from the front turn signal bulbs when the lights are off, I got chrome coated dual-filament amber bulbs.

I thought LED reverse bulbs in the taillights instead of incandescent bulbs would be brighter, but I find that is not the case. Maybe I need to find a different style of LED bulb. Philips makes a bulb that has just a few LED lights in it, but they say they are located in the perfect spot to match the position of the filament in an incandescent bulb. However, that 921 bulb doesn't have the same base as the factory 3156 bulb. Even though the socket is supposed to take either bulb, I found the 921 bulbs didn't work out so well and returned them for a refund.

The third brake light is nice, but the black housing doesn't reflect the light from the LED lights like the chrome housing would. Deceptive picture on Amazon's listing showed a bigger glow around the 5 lights, but in reality only the actual LED lights shine with some gap in between them.





Other items that went into my build are:

- AVS Aeroskin II hood protector / deflector from Jegs
- Syppo 8-pin towing mirrors
- '08 FX2 Sport wheels, inspired by SVT's Shelby GT500 wheels
- Tonno Pro soft tri-fold bed cover
- DeeZee bed mat
- WeatherTech tailgate protector

I also trimmed my air dam to a nicer height, as I didn't like seeing the lower A-arm mounting points and frame after I removed it entirely.

JAMADOR

Those wheels look great on the blue.

SixShooter14

looks nice.

my preference would be the factory size oval, and smaller Coyote badges. But overall, it's a sharp looking truck.

Stage3Motorsports

Great creativity, love the larger logo! Will you be making anymore modifications to it?

Motorsports One

Thanks! Not thinking of doing any more mods at the time, just swapping the reverse LED bulbs for brighter ones I ordered from F150LEDs.com and have been considering widening the stance with 1.25-inch wheel spacers, just not sure about that though.

Wicked12

Looking really good. I almost bought my new truck in that color but ended up going a different route... damn kind of regret it now

Motorsports One

About a year ago, I thought I was done with modifications... So, here's Phase II of the "SVT / Special Edition" build!

Performance modifications:
- K&N cold air intake (about half price from a Facebook group member)
- Flowmaster 50 Series Delta Flow muffler (from TDotPerformance.ca for a little over half the price of muffler shops)
- Tailpipes from an MBRP kit previously owned by forum member mcbagpiper
- Go Rhino black tips from Amazon

Appearance modifications:
- "Powered by Ford" coil covers reminiscent of the old Ford valve covers
- "Ford Performance" Raptor door sill plates
- Raptor rear bumper from forum member gintyfab, painted-to-match
- .50-caliber bullet replica radio antenna

Lighting modifications
- OEM LED Raptor headlights, with harness from Ryan B
- Morimoto XB LED fog lights
- Super Duty LED licence plate lights
- Dually-style rear marker light bar

ForScan modifications, with assistance from Ryan B and Livnitup
- Modifications needed for OEM LED headlights
- Lane change signal from 3 blinks to 5 blinks
- Panic button requiring 2 pushes to help prevent accidental activation

Motorsports One

Before and after...

Firerunner

iTrader: (3)

I saw in another thread where you mentioned that there are slight differences between the SE & Raptor LED lights. Would you mind sharing what the differences are?

Motorsports One

The difference is in the lamp bezels. Here is a Special Edition unit, you'll notice the bezels around the two LED lamps are gray. Likely the color Ford calls Magnetic and it matches the perimeter of the Sport grille with the red accents they put on the Special Edition trucks.



Sorry I don't have a better picture, but here's the Raptor unit I installed on my truck. The headlight housing is the same in every way, except the lamp bezels are gloss black. Another way to differentiate the two is the label on the back of the Raptor unit will say "Phantom" and it has different part numbers from the Special Edition units. Strangely, those part numbers don't seem to come up in searches to match them up to the Raptor trucks.