DAMN Riders - No rules, Just ride!

My F150 came with the standard 23 gallon tank. Coming from my Excursion and its 44g tank I had a bit of range anxiety with this thing, especially when towing.

Found an oem 36g tank with pump and skid plate for a mere $100 on Craigslist. Since today was beautiful I skipped out of work a little early and swapped it. About 2 hours of work just fucking off. Still need to plug in the laptop and change some settings so the fuel calculations will be right but I'll do that later.

Decided to lower the F150 a bit.

Before



After. The rear ended up lower than I was planning so I had to order a new shackle to get some height back. As is I can just lift it back level with the air bag but I'd like it to be closer to ride height without using the bags.



The front was done with 2" drop spindles and the rear got an axle flip kit (moves axle from under the leaf springs to over)



I had helper bags on prior but the original was too tall. The currently installed bag is an 8" off an old project but I have a 7" on the way as there is only about 1/4" clearance with the 8".



Fun fact when working on this truck with the aluminum body, can't just stick the magnetic light wherever I please

Ah, nice. I thought about lowering my truck. I don't know if you did it for style or what but these things are so dang tall now. It was easy to load and unload the 87 chevy pickup I had but I need a stool for the 17 ram (which is the lowest available model from them). Yes, I'm short but they are over the top tall now...

Little bit of both really. In the before pic the rear had already been lowered 2" and it was still a bear to get in the bed.

Before before pic

two words -- leg stretchers

My 2017 FX4 has what I call the old man step on the tail gate. I use it often. I load bikes as big as my BMW 1200GS in the back in the 5.5' bed using Bad Boyz II 10' long ramps that makes the load pretty manageable. Anything smaller than my GS I just ride up into the Condor wheel chock.

As my legs are pretty long for my height I would look even weirder than I do already if I used leg stretchers. Hmm, good idea.

I was eyeballing the fancy tailgates that GM has now with the built in steps... They don't seem to be too popular an option though. I bought a tailgate ladder before we moved and just came across it last week. I need to get that thing installed. I should do that now instead of sitting on the couch all day.

I have this ramp which makes loading the dirty bikes much easier and dont have to worry about the stand falling over or missing it entirely when unloading. The issue I was having is the bed sides were so tall I couldn't reach anything that was in the bed.

A nice van would have a much lower load height

gots_a_sol wrote: Thu Dec 16, 2021 8:28 pm My F150 came with the standard 23 gallon tank. Coming from my Excursion and its 44g tank I had a bit of range anxiety with this thing, especially when towing.

Found an oem 36g tank with pump and skid plate for a mere $100 on Craigslist. Since today was beautiful I skipped out of work a little early and swapped it. About 2 hours of work just fucking off. Still need to plug in the laptop and change some settings so the fuel calculations will be right but I'll do that later.

Looking back at this...why do OEMs not just put the biggest tank that will fit in all their vehicles?

Jeeps have a trick, where they actually put a longer overflow tube or filler neck? Something, anyway the tank would stop filling at say 12 gallons vs 15. Drop tank, pull out tube and snip it off to get the "optional" 15 tank.