Raptor Offroad Reliability - & a Weak Aluminum Bed 

TheWhalen you should man. Install video do goon on RU-vid and grow great overtime

Titantramp4u thanks man 🙏🙏 I’ve been helping out a few guys get more experience with their trucks and how to lead. Hope to enable more guys to be lead trucks and do runs on their own.

Ed Meyer so true. I really don’t jump that much. At least not intentionally. Little bunny hops on the trails all the time.

@@KeepItDirtyOffRoad based on the video clips that you posted in this video, if youre hitting any jump at those kind of speeds you need to have a full cage with frame tie ins and a reinforced bed cage. All the frame and bed issues you have are from your abuse of the vehicle. The raptor is not meant to be hitting hard whoops at 40+. this is race truck territory

Ryan Boyce nah man. The bed problems are from the rack sitting on the really weak bed. The aluminum has very little strength and I’m not the only one having problems with it. Only way to resolve it is direct tie my rack directly into the frame. The frame stuff won’t be helped by cage. A bed cage will help reduce impact to the frame yes, but there are always surprises offroad that just can’t be avoided at speed. I scout trails all the time and surprises just happen.

Matt Lake check out my chase racks videos. Went from rail to full on chase rack mounted to the bed. The aluminum bed cannot handle any eight offroad and mine cracked badly

Fully aware. Was going to upgrade my truck with it but the work involved is ridiculous. The steering rack has to be removed just to replace the oil pan.

Overall the truck is very reliable when you consider I beat mine up almost every weekend. A crash is a crash though. My lawn dart caused a lot of damage but the body shop was blown away but how little damage I suffered and how she was stroll drivable. Any other truck would have been toast.

We used a piece of aluminum we had. It was meant to be a sacrificial piece of metal that will take a hit.

Tony Spano thanks man

Thanks man. She’ll be back soon.

Do you spend a lot of time in traffic? I’ve noticed a trend with folks that have problems. They either have really short commutes where the engine can’t properly heat up, or they sit in traffic everyday. The truck sitting and not getting a chance to use it’s full potentials tends to cause the most problems. Had a buddy that went out about half the time I did, but we had similar mileage because of his commute and he had a ton more problems than I did abusing mine

It`s my daily and average around 10 kms a day. If this engine can`t handle that kind of “abuse" they should have used a different motor for the raptor.

Kotevee K most high performance engines don’t do well when they can’t properly heat up or just sit in traffic. Opening up that throttle sometimes goes a long way. As for my truck I tell people that when she sits is when a problem usually pops up. Most of the recent problems all happened after I got sick and had to get surgery. She barely got driven and when we did it was slow and she had problems. She prefer to be screaming down the trail getting her hair pulled.

Maybe it`s time to get that first jump.

Kotevee K get her out on the trails and open that throttle up a bit man and you’ll see she’ll be much happier.

MrZolanvar 🤣🤣 thats the message I was trying to convey. I was hard to that truck and she treated me well.

We didn't really notice it right after the lawn dart till way later when we broke the rack tabs. The stock aluminum bed has way too much flex in it. but honestly, the steel bed would not have faired any better. Ive seen others with Gen1 raptors having similar issues with the bed bending and falling apart.

Hope to see you on the trails man. Overall I think my truck has been very reliable for the abuse I put her thru.

I'm right at the limit of what is an acceptable angle of the front end so it's something I keept an eye on. The only thing that failed was the boot. Axels themselves were fine but when the boot fails they have to be replaced or re-packed because any dust can destroy the joins. Dealers prefer replace. I think the springs may have contributed, but I used 4wd in Baja mode a lot and put 35k-40k miles on the truck with those Geiser springs. If it was the angle, it would have failed much sooner. On the new truck, If the angle is close again, I'll probably look at options to add replacing the boots are regular internals to avoid it in the future. maybe at every 25-30k miles.

@@KeepItDirtyOffRoad Thank you for the reply! i'm currently struggling with my suspension setup. It is good enough all year around except when we take our yearly road trip with 400-500 pounds in the back and it sags allot. i was thinking Geisers and HD Deavers however i think this wouldn't be a good setup with an empty bed (empty bed all year). www.izzyfab.com/product-page/gen-2-raptor-tow-assist-kit this is the only decent solution i have found. However i'm worried about torsional forces (downwards pressure from an angle) and the price of course. Have you found a better solution? Thanks in advance!

bart k there are far better options than a 2nd shock like that. It will limit your ability to offroad the truck. I usually carry about 600-800 lbs of gear and saw some sagging, but not crazy. Your problem is the geisers don’t settle much. So you need to be 2-3 inches over stock for the truck to look right. So +4 Deavers or HD+4 minimum to handle the weight better. And at around $1400 it’s a more cost effective solution. But when fully empty, that back end May feel a little high. As long as you do geisers up front, it will look OK.

Erik Racz this is something I’ve struggled with on the Raptor. Unfortunately there are affordable options. They all start high at over $1000 and only offer minimal improvements. The cheap options I tried on the last truck and they offered no benefit. And the big brake kits are super expensive and none of them have a kit for the rear. Very limited options to improve braking withou investing a lot of money.

@@billadams4434 that kit is very similar to R1s kit. Initially they felt much better. But they did not perform well overtime with the abuse and constant breaking needed for high speed off-roading. Stopping perform and feel was still the same as stock. There was less fade for sure, but I saw much quicker brake pad wear with R1s HD pads. I’ve also read that drilled and slotted on an off-road truck can reduce breaking performance. That’s why most kits are just slotted. For now I’m sticking with the stock brakes and eventually I will be upgrading the lines and looking into a front big brake kit

SoCal Trail Trekkers we need to finally figure it out man.

I agree. As for now, we are setting up a run to Eagle Mountain Railroad Bridge if your down to join us, that would be bad ass!

Yeah, very much aware of the limitations of aluminum. My bed is falling apart because of it

I thought it was military grade aluminum?

Ed Meyer it is, but aluminum has inherent properties that can’t be avoided.

SMEACRaptor yeah I sucks but she’s all fixed now

@@KeepItDirtyOffRoad Awesome! Love your vids keep em coming! Learning a lot

SMEACRaptor thanks man