Air Bagging a 2004 Ford F150 - Tuckin N Rollin 22s
| After
You'd have to live in a cave on the Afghan/Pakistan border not to know about the new Ford F-150. It's a great new truck, with a new shape that has all the aftermarket designers working overtime to enhance and personalize what we predict will continue to be one of the great success stories in the history of the American pickup.
Ride height sets the tone for your truck's style, so altering it is always a priority for top-tier sport truck enthusiasts. In this instance, Casey Scranton of CGS Motorsports teamed up with Jeff Davy and his crew at Devious Customs to develop a set of components to 'bag Ford's newest F-150 and roll it
on 22s.
| Before
The new F-150 presented a few challenges beyond the usual design and fabrication challenges present with any extreme custom suspension.
The first design obstacle to overcome was the short-arm/long-arm-style front suspension with its attendant, overly tall steering spindle. This restricts the width of the tire that'll fit in the Ford's front wheelwells and the drop in ride height, mostly because of where it locates the upper control arm. Of course, given enough time, money, and welding, even this could be overcome, but that's another story.
The second design obstacle had to do with forming and welding the rear frame notch, 'bag, and shock mounts to the compound curves (round) of the new Ford's hydroformed framerails. Hydroforming is a cost-efficient means of producing the frame, and its smooth, sculpted looks give an air of quality, but it makes fabricating much more difficult. In fact, during the build, we thought about giving Casey and Jeff style points based on degrees of difficulty on some of the brackets, but that thought occurred at 1:30 a.m. after a hard day of photography, and after reloading with a few hours of sleep, we realized you had to be there to appreciate the humor.
That said, Casey and Jeff's crew deserve kudos for whipping up a reasonably scienced-out custom suspension. It's not a suspension that'll set lap records or allow you to carve corners with your bullet bike pals, but it makes a grand entrance when you hit the switches and it settles down to street-cruise trim.
Here's how they did it.
