I'm shopping for a new truck and I watched this video about the off-road capability of the various 1/2 ton pickup trucks.


At about 2:20 into the video it talks about the F-150 and shows it grounding out on a telephone pole while driving over it. Comparing different trucks, I see that the F-150 advertises a 8" ground clearance while the Titan and Tundra have about a 10" ground clearance.

how big of a deal is this? will the F-150 really scrape like this? if so, would a 2" lift fix the problem? even with a lift, won't the frame still have the same ground clearance?

 

if you do a suspension lift, level or full suspension kit, you will raise the frame and larger tires will always give some lift as well

 

theyre one sided. they put the titan with no running boards and the ford and gmc with em. take the running boards off the ford and there ya go. and as for the lift yea man that will help get over obstacles like that. the ford probably has more ground clearance than the others with the running boards off anyways

 

with a suspesion lift your frame will b higher not your rear end... for that the larger tires will give you more ground clearance for the for the diff

 

i guess i don't know very much about lifts in general. so a suspension lift will raise the front of the frame but not the rear? what is the difference between a suspension lift kit, a leveling lift kit, and a body lift kit?

many thanks...

 

A body lift just raises the body off of the frame, a suspension lift will raise the whole frame, a leveling kit will pick up the front to make it level with the back, and neither one will make your axle any higher off of the ground. When you add larger tires you will get more clearance for your axle, but just out of curiosity why do you want to drive over telephone poles?

 

A leveling kit raises the front 2 to 3 inches to make the truck level. Due to the load capacity of the truck they use a lot of spring in the back that will compress under load so the truck doesn't drag it's bumper. Safer to over spring it than under spring the suspension.

A Body lift raises all the sheet metal, nose, cab, and frame off the frame, doesn't do much for ground clearance IMHO

Suspension lifts if not done right just tear the living crap out of the front end suspension components, driveshaft pinion angles, etc etc etc. It will give you ground clearance, and room for bigger tires that will give you even more clearance, but be prepared to drop big money to do it right, and that includes shims for the axles to get the pinion angles right, money for new driveshafts, machining the knuckles so you can flip the tie rods over to mount from the top, etc.

In some states it is illegal to raise a truck more than 2 inches by increasing tire size, and another 2 inches by suspension or body lifts. Your center of gravity gets shifted making the truck more prone to roll overs, the bumpers no longer keep cars from going under the truck in an accident, etc.

I am not a fan of jacking trucks up, especially Fords that have a long history of front end parts failing/wearing out long before they should. You might get me to buy into dropping the rear end and shimming the axle to get the proper pinion angle, but that's about as far as I go.

 

Not sure if any one caught this, but the part on the F150 that scrapes was the transmission skid plate, which is designed to take that abuse. Did you notice none of the other trucks had tran skid plates?

 

wow, good info, thanks a lot. is there any danger to the suspension from just a leveling kit?

 

for the same reason I want everything else...because I can!

no but seriously I could see getting out in the woods down some service road and having to get over small logs or something, i don't think that's unrealistic. I guess it's not a big deal, but if I did get in a situation where i had to drive over a small obstacle, I would hate to think that my truck wouldn't be able to handle it...