'95 F-150 track ready street beast

[Sbeck09]

Well I'm a bit behind....oops.

It's been an extremely busy close to the year. I hope you all had a nice holiday. Mine was too quiet due to not traveling to see my family like I would typically do. The bright side is I spent time on the truck.

After Goodguys in November the truck decided it didn't like alternators. After only 1000 miles the first one started only producing 11.7v peak. So I called and had a new one shipped to me under the warranty. Got it installed the 2 weeks before SCCA in December. Immediately it's showing 11.8v peak...****. So I tested it every way I could think of and inspected all my wiring before settling on it being defective. Took both dead units to Autozone where they ran them on their special test machine and matched my readings. Well good, at least we know I'm doing everything right on my end. This put me at a disadvantage not having a charging system for an event I was committed to. So I went for a hail mary the night before the event and found some random Duralast in stock about 20 min away. It only put out 105 amps, but if I didn't idle much and kept all non-essential items off it should make it. NOPE! Right away it was not keeping up so I checked the test slip in the box. Imagine my surprise when I see it only tested at a max of 72 amps. WHAT?! So I said screw it...let's run anyway. Autocross is a total of 3-5 minutes of run time and I can make it work. Wrong again. Setting up for my 3rd run and the truck just died. So we packed up and headed home.

Disappointing to say the least. The one bright side to this is that none of the work I've done has failed. I suspect there has been some kind of quality control failure with whoever manufactures these CS130 GM alternators along with the expected supply chain delays we all expect right now. I'm still waiting on the 3rd replacement under warranty and the vendor has been extremely good with communication while we both wait on that inventory to arrive. So I've focused on other areas.



Something that has bugged me to death is not having my aluminum door panels done. This is my own fault, but we won't focus on that. I gave a template to my friend with a massive laser machine about 3 weeks ago and he finally had a free moment to throw my little project on there.



I'm working on some 3D printed covers for around the door handle and to trim around the window crank nicer. It already looks 100x better.

Next up, DOWNFORCE!



Only 1 wing goes on the truck. The other is for my BMW V8 track car build that I haven't shared since it's not very Pro Touring....I don't think.



I placed my order with 9 Lives Racing and had to wait, but man was it worth it. These were less than half the cost of an equivalent carbon wing and still offer the same benefits.

I had no idea how long it would take me to hand make the aluminum mounts, but omg it was a TON of work. It probably doesn't help that I'm super picky about everything matching perfectly, but I got it done and am very happy with the results.



I totally get that some of you will absolutely hate this look and many more of you still won't really "like" it. Remember that the goal is always about function first. The rear view there looks pretty dang cool to me though.



The mounts are modular since some series (optima) don't allow such a tall mount. With 4 nuts/bolts removed I can swap to different uprights in 5-10 min total. The lower section actually goes through the bed to mount directly to the truck's frame so I have zero concerns about this being strong enough. Side to side rigidity does leave a little to be desired, but the bed cover is going to really help there.

Yup, finally doing the bed cover. I'm making it lightweight and easily removed in sections. Stay tuned for that update in a couple days. A few of you might learn about a new material you'll want to try then.

Oh and as a teaser of what else...I'm keeping things "balanced"