Recovery Vehicle Build '22 Lariat Super Cab

[hadjiikong]

1 year ago I picked up a '22 Lariat Super Cab 502A 5.0 with the gorgeous Baja tan interior. This was to replace our 07 Tundra which was pushing 400k miles. These trucks get used as my work truck on various construction sites out in the sticks and used for recovering vehicles when up north hunting. Typically the roads being traveling are washed out, snow filled or heavily washed board.

We drove from the Twin Cities down to Nashville to find this truck because I was very specifically looking for a Lariat Super Cab 5.0 which '22 was the last year those were made. I need to 6.5' bed for hauling equipment and sadly a crew cab 6.5' will not fit in the garage. My wife is very bougie so needed to have as much luxuries as possible. We drove the Tundra down to Nashville averaging 14mpg (2in lift, 33in tires). Was very impressed with the almost 24mpg we got driving home in the F-150.

This truck will be getting a slew of parts and some of the modding has already started. Once the truck came home it was outfitted with Husky liners front and rear, Husky mud guards, Bushwacker trail armor rocker panels, rear wheel well guards, and a J&L oil separator which during the winter months was emptied every time I filled up for gas and it was typically full. The truck also came with a S&B intake which I do not hate so leaving it on and a Retrax IX Flush Mount Retractable Tonneau Cover which I despised day 1. Took up too much space inside of the bed and no matter how much adjusting I did you either got smooth opening and closing with leaks or no leaks and horrible opening and closing.

Once spring hit the interior was removed and sound deadened the entire floor of the truck and rear wall, reinstalled the carpet and covered it with 8mil plastic sheeting. I do this in everyone of my work trucks because as much as I love the carpet, mud and MN winters are a pain on it even with floor liners. This just makes cleaning so much easier. I know people say doesn't it sounds like a garbage bag on the inside? Honestly you never even hear it mainly because its so tightly packed down and the 8mil thickness does not have that crinkle sound to it. Lastly added 20% ceramic tint to the windows, 50% to the windshield with a 10% brow.

After a full year with it I replaced the chrome grill with an STX black one then got black mirror and door handle covers. The covers are just okay but wanted to get an idea for aesthetics before purchasing final copies. The tonneau cover had to go and was replaced with Truxedo Sentry Hard Roll-Up Bed Cover. This thing is night and day better. Takes up no space in the bed and seals perfectly every time. The down side is the tailgates do not seal perfectly I found out in a snow storm with our luggage in the back. I was very surprised when we got to the hotel and all our luggage was covered in snow from blow in. This is where I found Rok Block. Put the seal over the gab between the bed and tailgate then also the side strips. Can honestly say the truck is about 95% sealed up now. You see a little light in the bottom of each corner when you crawl in the bed and close everything up. Lastly added everything Builtright Industries sells for these trucks from cell phone mounts up front to everything in the bed of the truck. They completely changed cargo storage for me in the bed of the truck.

Future parts starting to build up to be installed
Tremor Aux switches
Z-flash for safety lights while on construction sites
Diode Dynamics fog lights, ditch lights, and reverse lights
Swarf hidden winch mount with badlands 12k winch
Raptor steering wheel
Blackhole tiles for the doors
Sounds Good Stereo block off plates
Sounds Good Stereo Kicker loaded subwoofer 1200wrms amplifier rack
2 10in subs with an old box that seems to fit perfectly
Icon front knuckle kit
Icon billet upper control arms w/ delta joint pro and headlamp sensor bracket kit
Fox 2.5 performance elite adjustable coilover w/ reservoir

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[hadjiikong]

Finally got some time to do a little bit of work on the truck. In the middle of insulating and putting HVAC in the shop to make it usable year round.

Found a Raptor steering wheel in the junk yard which was plug and play. I removed the buttons from my steering wheel and plugged them into this one, all functions fine, then to my surprise the paddle shifters also worked without having to do anything extra. When towing this is so much nicer be able to shift when I want without having to take my hands off the steering wheel.

Next swapped out the standard mirrors for tow mirrors with the new door switch panel to have power extension. After some Forscan changes everything works like a charm.

Now just going through and trying to determine what order to install all of the order parts on the truck.

First up going to get the electrical done starting with the SDHQ battery cable terminal upgrades, upfitter switches, then all the light upgrades, and top it off with an H8 battery. For items like the winch and air compressor they will be going onto Stinger relays so nothing has to be hardwired to the battery. Winch will be on a 500amp so hopefully that will be enough.

Next will be the winch. I have had great luck with the Harbor Freight bad lands in the past with the braided cable so will see how the synthetic one holds up. Pairing it with a Factor 55 recovery kit.

Next up will be the air compressor setup. Not 100% sure where I am going to install this yet. Will see what I have for space behind the rear seats to keep it out of the weather otherwise it will get mounted inside of the bed. Got a small tank that will install to the frame under the truck to hold pressure for filling tires. Will have a 2 lines ran. One will be in the bed of the truck and the other will be a hidden mount on the rear bumper you can plug into.

Last will be the suspension since I am still waiting on parts for that. Wheels and tires are on order and will hopefully have those in 3 weeks. Going to go without a bead lock setup this time around. I love the peace of mind but trying to ever get them balanced correctly is a nightmare.

 

[rawfuls]

Build looks awesome so far!
Couple questions if you’re up for it:

1. Hidden winch mount & stock bumper or do you have another in mind?
2. Any thoughts towards a second battery system? I’ll be doing 100Ah and DCDC w/ solar behind the rear seat and think this would be a great build to have a similar set up too. Especially for self-jumping
3. Why did you go with Fox 2.5 DSCs specifically? I’m weighing my options between the Fox 2.5s and Bilstein 8112s and I’m worried the Bilsteins will be too stiff (digressive), but worried about the rebuild interval & tuning on the Fox

 

[hadjiikong]

1. Hidden winch mount & stock bumper or do you have another in mind?
   1. Going with the stock bumper and relocating the license plate. Sadly in MN have to have the front plate.
2. Any thoughts towards a second battery system? I’ll be doing 100Ah and DCDC w/ solar behind the rear seat and think this would be a great build to have a similar set up too. Especially for self-jumping
   1. Having only an extended cab not sure where I would put it. I already have the battery bank and inverter for the onboard power. Typically I carry a portable charger as a just incase.
3. Why did you go with Fox 2.5 DSCs specifically? I’m weighing my options between the Fox 2.5s and Bilstein 8112s and I’m worried the Bilsteins will be too stiff (digressive), but worried about the rebuild interval & tuning on the Fox
   1. I was able to find a set of these rebuilt for a good amount less than brand new. I probably would have gone with the 8112s if I was buying brand new. I am not too worried about rebuilds because I can have the truck down for a week without being an issue.

 

[hadjiikong]

Got one nice day this weekend to get some work done. Focused on prepping the electrical for the other upgrades. Big thing was to swap the H6 battery for an H8 especially with the cold weather we get seemed like every morning last winter this truck was in low power mode. With the battery out I was able to start the install of the upfitter switch by putting in the relay box. This is where I ran into my first mods not being compatible issue. The mount for my catch can bolted right where I needed to mount the relay box holder. Luckily this was made out of solid aluminum so I was able to drill it out and tap it. This worked out great because now the catch can is mounted to something solid verses just the plastic lip.

For the relay wiring harness I wanted to add weather tight connecters 1) because I know salt water will make its way up to this area 2) allows me to swap things around a lot easier if needed. I added a ground to each pig tail just incase the accessory needs one I am already set. It was a little tedious but turned out great in the end.

Lastly I upgraded all my battery terminals with ones from SDHQ which also adds a remote negative distribution block. I like all the extra mounting locations on the positive side as well since I will be adding a winch and needed somewhere you connect too. I will say the one flaw with this kit is threaded on compression fitting for the positive wire. In the instructions it says to not over tighten as it will strip out. I made it 4 threads in and it stripped out. 5pm on a Sunday I was feeling pretty screwed on what I was going to do. Luckily I had extra lugs laying around and a hydraulic crimper. This worked a whole lot better. With the H8 battery though it was a struggle to get enough cable to reach the battery but it just barely fit. Hopefully this week can get the up fitter switches installed and wired in the truck.

 

[hadjiikong]

Decided to tackle installing the upfitter switches with the Boosted Grey Goose harness yesterday afternoon. I got everything working but will say the instructions could use some improvements. To Boost Grey Goose's credit they emailed me right back when I had questions.

Some the hang ups I had were trying to figure out what all panels needed to be removed and how to remove them. The instructions tell you some of the panels but not all of them. Eventually figured it out from trial and error.

Adding the pin to the BCM connector confused me more than anything. I probably spent more time trying to figure that out than the rest of the install. The photo they provide of the pins is from the bottom side of the connector and the instructions did not state you had to pull the red clip out to be able to seat the pin. Once they emailed me back with what to do it went smoothly.

Routing up to the engine bay was only semi difficult in the sense trying to find the best path where the wires will not have any issues. All in all though I would recommend it.

 

[Davidwnuc]

Very cool.
thanks for sharing so much detail.

 

[Eighthtry]

Wow! Too bad you could not find a new one. You could have gone to the Ford assembly plant and do all that stuff as it went down the line.

Not sure why they killed SuperCab. I never carry anyone back there, but lots of stuff can fit.

 

[hadjiikong]

Been a very busy summer but slowly got some time to work on this again. Got the RCI HD bed mount installed and my Truxedo Sentry Hard Roll-Up Bed Cover still works so that is a huge win. Got the iKamper Skycamp 3.0 installed and currently working on finding solar panels to mount to the top side to keep the battery bank topped off. Also have the iKamper 270 degree awning to put on, 8 gallon water tank, and a fold out shower. Plan is to take a light trip beginning of October to Northern Minnesota to get it all tested out. Ordered some 4.11 gears which have been taking a loooooong time to arrive but once they do come the plan is to get all the suspension bits installed because I also have Tremor axles coming with it.

 

[rawfuls]

Ooh, super interested in your 4.11 gears.
What led you to picking 4.11 over 4.56 or 3.73?
Will you be keeping with an e-locker or going air?
Why the tremor axles?

 

[hadjiikong]

Ooh, super interested in your 4.11 gears.
What led you to picking 4.11 over 4.56 or 3.73?
Will you be keeping with an e-locker or going air?
Why the tremor axles?

I plan to run 35x11.50R17 tires which are 34.5". Doing some math my 32" current tire with 3.31 lands me at 2259 RPM doing 65 and is a bit of a dog. 34.5" on 4.11s should put me at 2600 RPM which is almost identical to the stock running RPM of 32" with the factory 3.73 gears. Going to 4.56 gears puts you at 2900 which tons of punch but not so great cruising MPG.

Going to keep the e-locker. Never had great luck with previous air setups.

Tremor axles bolt right in and are a big beefier than stock.

 

[rawfuls]

You raise a good point, looks like Raptors are upgrading from their 4.10s to the 4.56, but I will probably not go 37s.

I'm on an open 3.15, so I've been looking at my options.
I'd love to go with an elocker but an air setup might be easier since I don't have it to start with.

Tremor CV axle, or also the Tremor rear axle?

 

[hadjiikong]

Just the CV axle. Not sure the rears are different apart from maybe being the large 9in rear end.

 

[hadjiikong]

Got the awning installed and it is a beast!! Next weekend we are taking the truck out camping so pretty excited to try it all out. Hopefully can get some time this week to do other things to it. We are at the tail end of busy season at work so hopefully will get more garage time now.

 

[hadjiikong]

Got everything setup and ready to go for this next weekend. Last second was able to get the shower/changing room/bathroom mounted to the truck and plugged in the electronics to make sure we would have lights. Was even able to get the dog trained to go up and down the stairs which is a big win!

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