New Member. Looking at trucks. Ease My Insanity.

[Arc Ranger]

Well Im going to sign the papers afterwork today. Going to be the longest day ever. Will post up some pics afterwards.

I hope I like the hot pepper (never actually seen in person) but I like all shades of red and orange, except the race red, thats a boring color.

Congrats! I personally think you made a great choice. This is the first truck I've ever owned and I absolutely love it. 13k miles so far and no issues *knocks on wood*. Its got plenty of power and utility and also gets good gas mileage for a truck. It suits my needs in every way shape and form and does it all in style. I hope you enjoy your new Ranger as much as I enjoy mine!

Sponsored

 

[FoD]

How to instantly regret any purchase:

Step 1: Buy item.
Step 2: Go to forum for said item.
Step 3: Click on Issues section.

I guess I'm doing it wrong...my step 3 was to go right to the mods

 

[Dr. Zaius]

We all should've learned by now to follow steps 2 & 3 first. lol...

But if everyone followed steps 2 and 3 first, not a single manufacturer would ever sell another vehicle...

 

[geophb]

Picked it up friday. Everything when smooth, sign here, sign here and done.
Hot Pepper is amazing, far better than rapid red or race red. Hands down.

Fits in garage perfectly.
Already got in there with my forscan and: disabled autolocks, turned on one stage locks, disabled door ajar dinging, startup dinging, key in ignition ding, belt minders, turned on fogs with the high beams, disabled fake engine noise.
Setup the ford pass, kinda neat but probably wont use it much.

Tires were aired up to about 43psi, dropped to 35 but haven't test rode it yet.
Had a clunking in the rear, and I could make it do it by jumping on the bumper. So crawled under there and tightened the shock bolts. Got about half turn on 2, noise gone. Easy.

I have the mushy pedal like everyone else, still stops decent but the pedal could be better. Defn not like the 6 piston brembos on my hellcat .
The rotor look like there some residue on the braking surface, so I plan to bed them. That should help.

So far I like it.

 

[ch47dmechanic]

Its crazy angled forward (the top tipped towards engine). If I can remember the f150s were not like this. It just seemed like a crazy angle.

Guess it just doesn't feel that way to me. ?‍

 

[FoD]

Picked it up friday. Everything when smooth, sign here, sign here and done.
Hot Pepper is amazing, far better than rapid red or race red. Hands down.

...

So far I like it.

You know, some nomad white hood and side bar graphics, spray-in bedliner and you'd be set for a bit...

and, oh yeah a couple of tailgate dampers and that new dash damper cam holder thingy

Congrats on a nice looker

 

[Pinepig]

That's a good looking truck Geo, I like the color matched arches and bumpers.

 

[Zaph]

Hahah. You went about 5 minutes. before you started modding the thing.

So... You can disable fake engine noise in Forscan now? I haven't been keeping up to date with the Forscan crowd, can you post more info on that? It's been bugging some of us audio oriented people for a while, and I know a while back they haven't figured out how to do it yet. To date I've been afraid to mess with forscan but if engine noise can finally be disabled, maybe now is the time to dive in. I talk about it here, and in my old sub build that I never updated here.

 

[JaysOnTheEDGE]

Congratulations and nice looking truck, the red is sharp looking

 

[JimG_AZ]

Now don't even get me started with all the issues I had with my '16 Tacoma! Out of all my trucks, snowmobiles and motorcycles that was the worst vehicle/experience I've ever had and I'm not exaggerating one bit. I'll never buy another Toyota product ever based on their customer service.

Out of curiosity, what was the issue with Toyota Customer Support? Was Toyota Corporate unwilling to do anything?

I have owned a bunch of Toyota’s and thankfully have never had the need to deal with Toyota Customer Support. I have dealt with Mazda, Ford and Chrysler customer support and all were a waste of time.

Mazda – on a 2000 B3000 PU (basically a rebadged Ford Ranger). The Ford 3.0L v6 kept on stalling due to the Phoenix summer fuel. After a number of calls to Mazda, they finally agreed to have the regional service advisor look at the truck. His comment was sorry, but the Ford v6 is an old design and just doesn’t run well with our summer blend fuel. It is working as designed! Since it is not leaving you stranded, there is nothing we can do.

Chrysler – on a 2003 Ram 2500. The HVAC blend door servo broke. This was a design defect on the 2002-2004 Rams. It wasn’t if you were going to have this problem, it was when. Mine broke at @ 60k miles. Since I had read post after post from Ram owners with this problem, I decided to take my chances and call Chrysler CS due to this being a design defect. All Chrysler CS told me was that I should have purchased the extended warranty. They were in total denial that this was an issue at all. Kind of strange since the Dodge service advisor was able to quote the repair cost down to the penny without having to look anything up.

Ford – on a 2006 Mustang GT for the airbag recall (2017-2019). The recall notice comes in the mail. Take car to Ford of North Scottsdale and this is where the fun begins. I believe this process was repeated at least 3 to 4 times. They order the airbag. I get notified to bring car back in. Sorry sir, we do not have that part in stock. We will have to order one for you. Then the process repeats. I think after the 3rd time, I explode and I’m told the airbag did actually come in and they were directed to install it in a different car. Meanwhile, recall notices keep on coming in and my son is driving the car. So time to bring Ford customer service in! The CS rep was absolutely useless. They were not interested in assisting with this issue at all. They wanted me to take the car to my a local Ford dealer and arrange to have the airbag ordered. Okay…but I have already done that at least 3 or 4 times, the part comes in and it gets installed in a different car. I ask if she can assist in securing an airbag for this car, since my dealer seems to be having trouble doing this. No, we cannot do that. You have to order the part through a dealer. Then I asked if they could assist me in setting up an appointment with a regional service advisor regarding this safety issue. They refused to arrange the meeting and last refused to approve a loaner car until the airbag finally came in.

I would have been interesting to see how long the airbag debacle would have gone on for. Unfortunately, the main bearing on the 4.6L v8 went at @ 150k miles and I sold the car on CraigsList to a guy who was willing to spend the time to rebuild the motor.

 

[geophb]

Hahah. You went about 5 minutes. before you started modding the thing.

So... You can disable fake engine noise in Forscan now? I haven't been keeping up to date with the Forscan crowd, can you post more info on that? It's been bugging some of us audio oriented people for a while, and I know a while back they haven't figured out how to do it yet. To date I've been afraid to mess with forscan but if engine noise can finally be disabled, maybe now is the time to dive in. I talk about it here, and in my old sub build that I never updated here.

Forscan changes isn't really modding . (well atleast in my eyes)

But to answer your question, I just followed the f150 speadsheet that was posted by someone. You can find it by googling too.
The fake noise doesn't sound like its there anymore, I didn't drive much before the change in all honesty though. But that "fakey weird throatyness" sound is defn is not there anymore, which I instantly noticed on the test drive. I think it sounds better now.
I plan to do a subwoofer at some point and people were saying that its crazy loud through the sub because of the frequency and the amplification.

Forscan is a literal weapon when it comes to fords btw.

 

[Deleted member 1634]

Already got in there with my forscan and: disabled autolocks, turned on one stage locks, disabled door ajar dinging, startup dinging, key in ignition ding, belt minders, turned on fogs with the high beams, disabled fake engine noise.

I've been trying to find more than one thing to change to justify a Forscan dongle purchase. So far I had changing DRLs to be all (front, rear, and sides) parking lights. But the 'fogs with highs' and 'disabling the fake engine sound' are good ideas I can get behind too. So maybe I'll go for it.

 

[geophb]

I've been trying to find more than one thing to change to justify a Forscan dongle purchase. So far I had changing DRLs to be all (front, rear, and sides) parking lights. But the 'fogs with highs' and 'disabling the fake engine sound' are good ideas I can get behind too. So maybe I'll go for it.

The diagnostic capabilities alone is worth it IMO. As-built mods are like an added bonus.

 

[geophb]

So... You can disable fake engine noise in Forscan now?

A little update, looks like I spoke too soon.
You got me second guessing my changes and wondering if it was all placebo because the change in engine noise was not extremely noticeable to me.
So I took the truck out for a spin to bed the brakes (much better now) and to do some testing with the fake engine noise. I went back and forth writing from factory to the changes in that f150 spreadsheet and I was pulling my hair out because I couldn't tell a difference in the noise. So I said screw it and pulled fuse #33 under the dash to disable the audio unit, and noise was gone (along with the radio/audio, was just for testing purposes). So it looks like that change doesn't work for the ranger, ive since put it back to factory because it wasn't changing anything.
So I guess thats going back on my to do list.

 

[Zaph]

Doh! Ok, we're back to waiting for the Forscan team to figure out how to disable it. It's obviously possible. There was a Ford engineer in one of these threads, showing a Ford specific non-distributable software tool that could disable it with a checkbox, but he obviously could not hand that software out.

Sponsored