LowIsTheOnlyWay

Hope everyone is doing well!
I'm a brand spankin' new member here and this happens to be my first post lol.

Anyways, I joined so I could share my F150 build with other members for either inspiration or ideas from others input. It's been a long time since I have had myself a truck as I have been playing around with cars for a while now.

However, I knew it was time to get a truck again, and said that if I was going truck, it was going low. I started actually searching the used market for a sport truck but nothing was catching my eye at all (my previous low-rider was a 98 Tacoma 2RZ) and the sport truck market is pretty barren these days if you ask me. As it is pretty much all 4x4 off-road in the current market. So I decided to make myself a custom one-off.

In comes the F150.. I'd rather have had a mid-sized (or mini), but again, the market is not huge on that and maybe if I was patient enough I should have waited for the upcoming Ranger, but I'm more of an instant gratification kind of guy hahaha. The platform is a STX 4x4 with the ever so stout 2.7L "Nano" in what I consider the best color Ford has made in a while "Lithium Gray..
or "Real Steel" depending on who you talk to.

I'll update the thread as it goes for all to see, but I will post what's been done thus far. I believe the final part of this build is going to take place next week or the week after. The list of mods are as follows:

AFE Pro 5R intake
AFE Hot & Cold charge-pipes
AFE BladeRunner Intercooler
Ford Performance Sport Cat-Back exhaust with black tips
BBK 65mm throttle body
Belltech 3-inch drop in front with 4-inch (actually 5") drop in rear
Hellwig front/rear sway bars
Firestone F3 wireless rear airbags
ANZO led headlights/taillights/3rd brake light
LED license plate conversion
LED fog light conversion
Raptor style front grille
Black Ford oval emblems
Custom F-150 fender badges
Custom EcoBoost door badges
Ford Raptor non-heated steering wheel
PowerStop Z23 drilled/slotted rotors & pads
Dub 22" rims wrapped in 305/45 series Falken tires
Full compliment of decals/graphics

The finishing touch: 5-Star tuning 93 Performance only tune.

Most of the work is going to be done by my local Ford service dept. but I've also opted to do some work myself to save on costs. There are also many small items that I am planning on doing that I've not mentioned either lol.

I at least have some photos of stock, and some of things that have been done to the truck. If you want to see anything else in particular just let me know and I'll be more than happy to share!!

Sorry for such a long-winded start to my first thread!! LOL. I hope y'all like what's going on so far, and would love to hear feedback and maybe this will inspire some as well as I've been on many threads and have not really seen the "Nano" being used much in builds. Lastly, if you have questions, ASK AWAY!

LowIsTheOnlyWay

One of the hardest mods I've been trying to figure out was the fender emblems. For all of us current STX owners the fender badge has "XL" for the trim... personally I detest this. The only black badge option that I could find was the black with red outline which would stick out like a sore thumb against my paint. Other option was to remove em, get the individual F-150 emblems that would be located on the tailgate and then fill in the post holes. Or sand down the "XL" and fill it with bondo then plasti-dip the whole badge black. I was just about to pull the trigger on the latter.

HOWEVER, so everyone knows who owns an STX and also hates this:

The new 2018 STX's have a proper badge that says "STX" on them now and was able to order them through my local service department!!!!

Bigcat1185

iTrader: (1)

Nice build. Good eye on the badge swap also. When you swapped your throttle body to the 65mm, did you hone out the intake manifold to match the size?

LowIsTheOnlyWay

Thanks bud!

I'm itching to get this finished since I've owned the truck since July 8th lol. Parts have been a slow trickle coming in. I'm glad that an '18 STX landed and went to check it out because no joke that badge was bugging the ever living hell out of me. I'm now up in the air if I want to keep the re-finished EcoBoost badge on the doors or just leave the doors blank and leave it to guess for people.

As for the throttle body the only thing I had to do was remove 4 bolts and disconnect the sensor. No other mods were needed to install & it is a noticeable difference for sure in throttle response. Add that with the intake,
charge pipes & intercooler the power delivery is much MUCH more crisp.

Can't wait to see where she ends up when the downpipe & exhaust go on with tune. I'll be taking her into town and putting her on a dyno when everything is finished.

LowIsTheOnlyWay

The idea I have with the fender badges though is since they are a 3 piece design I am going to see if I can create a "negative" effect with them.

Like the red/black ones that are out I want to take the back-plate and hit those in a matte black so it pops a little bit more than the textured plastic it currently is. Then take the F150 and paint to match & also paint to match the black bar that runs under the F150. Lastly, I want to matte black the STX. My hope is that the F150 will look like just an outline against the truck having the paint to match.

Which brings me to a very tedious task I want to do which is taking all of the textured plastics (fog lamp, front bumper squares, cowl, bed-caps, rear bumper cap, side view mirrors minus the skull caps, door handle wells, rear tailgate handle assembly minus handle) and get those to a smooth matte black finish. As the textured plastic bothers the heck out of me and isn't really the finish I want to have against the paint job. I'll paint to match the door handles, tailgate handle, & skull caps. Matte goes against it so so well vs the satin/glossy textured finish that just stands out too much. Or maybe I'm just really OCD lol

bubbabud

It's good to see the passion you put into your truck and you must have the where with all to pull it off, good for you.
But in the end you will have $100k in an XL with no warranty and little resale value.
If that is what floats your boat then I say go for it.

LowIsTheOnlyWay

100k!?!? Oh no no no lol. I'm sure you're just using that as sarcasm. If I was going to have that kind of money I'd have bought the Shelby version lol. Truth be told with everything that is going into the truck, and install, I'm all in under 50k on a 43k MSRP.

AricsFX

iTrader: (3)

Under 50k?!!!! Holy sweet Jesus I thought you could get these for like 25k

LowIsTheOnlyWay

That would be in a perfect world lol. 43k MSRP & 6,800 in rebate at the time of purchase. Not counting trade/fees/accessories, yadda yadda.

tareed94

Depends on area, and trucks are expensive as hell now. Lol