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For those interested in seeing everything from the start, feel free to read my blabbing in all my posts. For those looking for highlights, see the below list. Enjoy!
Well, this thread might be more for me as a way to document the fun I have modifying the truck than it is for you guys. I've often thought back to my last truck and somewhat regret not having a build thread I could look back on. So here it is! I'm not planning on doing anything crazy, but at work I'm now known as the guy who pimps out his vehicles, and I certainly do have plans for my new truck. Like the title says though, this will likely be a little bit of a long road, as I'm trying to be better with my money , so I'm limiting myself to a small amount every paycheck, and once that adds up to enough to get a mod, I'll do it. My savings strangely has shrunk significantly since I got the truck, so I've got to resist the temptation to drop serious dough on the truck all the time!!
Here's "Yondu" on July 1st, the day I drove him off the lot. Got the color I wanted so bad!!
Last edited by 'MURICA; 01-08-2018 at 03:46 PM.
Reason: Keep it up to date - easy access to mod posts :)
First mod was only about a week after I got the truck - LED bulbs. My last truck I did a package that included everything. I couldn't find such a package for the newer trucks, so I just ordered all the bulbs one by one. It was tedious, but they all worked great!! I found that little things like this can make a big difference in the way the truck looks at night. It sets it off just enough from a regular truck and makes it look much more "premium".
I did cargo lights, reverse, license plates, fogs, and headlights at first.
For whatever reason the lights look somewhat yellow in this picture, but I assure you they're a gorgeous bright white.
In my last truck I had LEDs in the stock reflectors and they worked great. But this truck was a different story. The bulbs were great and light up the road like crazy, but they were so bright that even with the headlights aimed as low as they would go, there was a certain amount of glare that still got up into other drivers' business. I didn't want to be "that guy" that blinds everyone everywhere he goes just to look cool with his lights. So reluctantly after about a week I initiated a return to take the LED headlights back out and send them back.
However, this truck is such a PITA to get to the headlights, that I figured if I was going to go through all the work of taking the whole front end apart again to take the bulbs out, I might as well just put new headlights in right now, as I was planning on doing it later down the road anyways. I had already done a bunch of research on the different options available, and I had promised myself that I was going to stay away from the ANZOs since everyone and their dog has those, and I wanted something a little different. I liked the look of the Spyders, but, you know, they're Spyders, so heaven only knows how long those will work before dying. I love that the Winjets have LED turn signals, but I've heard they're a pain to adjust, and they look very similar to the Anzos but cost much more, so those were out. IMO the Spec-D lights look stupid, and the Recons, although pretty sweet are very busy and pretty expensive. No big deal I told myself, I'll just retrofit my own pair! Then I started to look at the costs of getting decent projectors and it all started adding up, and I didn't even know if it was going to look good when I was finished. Sigh.... There's about a billion good reviews on them, so they can't be too bad - Anzos it is.
Threw in the switchback Anzos with some 10000 lumen LEDs. I thought about going with HID since you get more distance, but I've had great experiences with LED so I stuck to my guns. I've gotta admit, I had my doubts when I first got the lights installed, cause you can barely tell that the LED strip lights up at all during the day, but wow, these things look great at night. I've had a ton of compliments.
Overall I've been happy with the Anzos. With the LEDs they light up the road great, and I don't blind anyone like I did with the reflectors. You can tell by the picture that sure enough, the beam doesn't reach way out there, but it's still much better than stock and WAY better than most of the cars that I see driving around at night.
Also, forgot to mention it, but with the LED bulbs I also threw on the good old Dee Zee tailgate assist. Hands down the best dirt cheap mod you can do on a truck!!
Also, about 4 days ago I got my OBDLink MX in the mail, and did my first Forscan mod - enabling global windows. Worked great! I love the online community for exactly these reasons! How else would I have been able to do something like that? Adding hill decent control is next. I had hoped to use it to program my stick-on keyless entry pad, but alas, I found out the hard way that the dealership really does have to do that... I still haven't put it on. I refuse to pay the $120 quoted my my dealership just to program that stupid little pad. It pisses me off that Ford made it so difficult this time around. Last gen was simple and straight forward...
And now this weekend I finally, after almost two months of having the truck, got around to wiring up a sub. When I sold my last truck I took the sub out, and even though my 2013 was a Supercab, the sub that was in it fits 100% perfectly under the seat of my new Supercrew. It's a 10" 800W Kicker Comp RT in a sealed box. Not as much bass as I would like (in my 2010 Taurus I had 2 12s, and broke the windshield one time because of all the bass. It was pretty awesome), but enough to add a little thump and bump to my music.
I got everything I needed off of Amazon. Wiring kit, line out converter, wire taps, etc. I went with 4 ga. wire so that I can upgrade down the road should I choose to do so. I thought about doing it the way lots of guys on here do it, just tapping into the fuse box for remote turn on, and getting the signal from a single side of the b-pillar wiring. But I'm kind of a perfectionist, so I wanted a stereo signal. I went with the Scoche LOC with a bass control ****, and decided to tap into the wiring behind the head unit instead of the b-pillars. I've never seen a tutorial or anything on doing it this way, so I was a little nervous about running into complications, but I've installed quite a few subs in my days and was pretty confident it would work well.
First step was running my power wires. Ran it through a grommet on the driver's side, around the back of the engine. Looks pretty good IMO.
Then I took the dash apart. Ford made the headlights a pain to get to on this model, and I CAN'T PROGRAM THAT STUPID KEYLESS ENTRY PAD MYSELF, but thankfully this dash is by far one of the easiest to take apart that I've ever dealt with. Then I popped all the trim under the steering wheel off so I could run my RCAs and signal wire there instead of up by the pedals where there are moving components.
The stereo harness (for my Sync 3 6 speaker non-Sony system) is on the lower portion of the dash - the portion with the CD slot. Undo the bolts there and unplug everything to have easy access to the wiring. The left-most plug (the biggest one) has all the wiring you'll need. I was hesitant about tapping into the wires on a brand new truck, but didn't want to pay for some sort of pigtail harness, so I just used the same style wire taps that I used to get switchback signal to the Anzo headlights.
I connected the Scosche LOC directly to the factory wiring. I connected both left and right sides, and decided to try out the built-in remote turn on that comes with it. In order for this to work you also have to splice into the factory power and ground wires. I used this YouTube video to know which wires were which:
Here's what everything looked like once it was all hooked up:
I left the LOC right behind the factory stereo, ran my control **** to under the steering wheel to the right of the OBD-II connector, and then popped up all the trim on the driver's side to run my power, RCA, and remote wire to behind the rear seat, where I had decided I wanted the amp. I know technically it's best to run power and signal on opposite sides of the vehicle so as to avoid interference/noise, but I've done it both ways and have never noticed a difference.
I connected the amp's ground to another ground wire that was behind the insulation behind the rear seat.
Then I threw a piece of wood behind the carpet/insulation to mount the amp to.
I got that all screwed in, hooked everything up, and lo and behold, beautiful bass came flowing forth out of the sub! That's always a relief... I got the gain and filter adjusted, and then closed all the doors, turned off the truck, and locked myself inside to make sure that the remote turn on was doing its job. I got a little nervous, but after about a minute the amp shut right off. Then I took it all for a test drive, as I was nervous about the auto-start stop. My logic said that the way I set everything up should not cause any issues, but I wanted to be sure. Thankfully everything works perfectly. The sub keeps thumping when the truck shuts off and doesn't skip a beat when it starts back up again. When I turn the truck off, the sub keeps going until I open a door - just the way I like it.
All in all it was a fairly straight-forward install, and I'm VERY happy with the way it turned out.
I have a flared port on the way. I'm going to try something I've never tried before - take a small sealed box and try to port it. My calculations show that I should be able to port this thing without destroying the sound. With a small flared port I should even be able to tune the box to a specific frequency - I'm hoping I can tune it to around 28-30 Hz. I miss the very low frequencies of my 2 12s. I know I'll never get the same thing with a single 10, but I can try, right? If it sounds terrible I'll seal the box back up again.
Port will be here today or Monday. Updates to follow.
So the flared port for the sub came the other day. I was about to put it in when I realized that the only reason I don't have a bigger box (which will sound much better ported) is because I didn't want to spend the money on material, but when I though about it I realized that it would only cost like $40 for wood and stuff for the box. So at 7pm I zipped to the hardware store, and I finished the box at about 11:30 at night.
This is before sanding or touching up at all. You can see the flared port in the top, at max length to get the box tuned to about 28-30 Hz. It's 1.1 cubic feet, so still not perfect for ported, but when I listened to the sub in the morning, WOAH, it sounded great! It hit nice and hard and slammed the lows.
Unfortunately 'twas not meant to last, cause soon I smelled burning subwoofer. I turned the gain down on the amp, but that didn't really help. So I have since pulled the sub out and rewired it from 1 ohm to 4 ohms (it's a dual 2ohm voice coil sub). That fixed the problem, although unfortunately I can't get it nearly as loud any more. HOWEVER it still sounds better than it did in the sealed box. Even though the box is ported the bass is still crisp and clean, and it reaches the lows very well for a single 10. Overall I'm happy with the sound, although I think when I take the sub out again to carpet the box I'll wire it to 1 ohm again, double check all the wiring, and start with the gain very low on the amp and work my way up to see what happens.
Gottcha. I didn't see a link in your sig for a thread so I wasn't sure if you had one. But that's cool. I'd like to do wheel liners and factory flares myself as well. Tint is a must do down the road too.
08-26-2017, 01:58 PM
'MURICA's "slow burn" 2017 STX SCrew build
, so I'm limiting myself to a small amount every paycheck, and once that adds up to enough to get a mod, I'll do it. My savings strangely has shrunk significantly since I got the truck, so I've got to resist the temptation to drop serious dough on the truck all the time!!
