2017 Super Duty | Carli Pintop 2.5″ and Baja Designs Build
There is an old saying, probably from Confucious: ‘Buy cheap, buy twice.’ While, this philosophy isn’t applicable to everyone (including me), there is a lot of truth to it. For many of us, a truck is a lifetime purchase. I still remember the truck my dad bought as a kid, and eventually sold to me; the idea of a vehicle as something other than a disposable toy is refreshing. This particular customer just purchased his dream truck, and set out to optimize it for his daily work and family hauler duties. We knew just the right direction to steer him in as you’ll see below.
While the headlights on new trucks are certainly leaps and bounds ahead of what trucks even 10 years ago had, there is still always room for improvement. Adding auxiliary lighting is one of the first modifications that many customers ask about. Simply put, there is daily benefit in safety to having upgraded lighting, and you don’t need to trek out into the middle of nowhere to appreciate it. Better fog lights ensure safe travels through seasonal fog, brighter reverse lights make hooking up a trailer easy when you’re up for work before the sun is, and when you are trekking through a long dark country road in the dead of winter night, there is no replacement for some long distance candlepower in the form of a couple LED light bars. For this build, a full lighting package from Baja Designs was decided on. Simply put, they are, the industry benchmark when it comes to high quality LED lighting. LED lighting has seen many gimmicks and cheap offerings the last few years, but Baja Designs is one of the few companies with actual race proven heritage, and applies the lessons learned in that unforgiving environment to their consumer offerings. They have a wide range of vehicle specific mounting kits for most late model trucks and SUV’s, and their catalog of LED light designs is also extensive.
On this build, our customer had some unique requests to go along with the standard issue Fog Pocket kit, and flush mount reverse lights. A great benefit to the introduction of LED lights is just how many lumens can be packaged in a small area; gone are the days of half a dozen smiley faces lining your cab. Our big task would be to figure out how to put two 20” ONX6 bars in the small air gap in the front bumper; as modern trucks have gotten bigger, so has payload and power, which means more coolers and other systems fighting for precious real estate. A wide/driving amber pattern, and white driving/combo were chosen to ensure that all lighting conditions were covered by these 2 bars. When we were able to take a look where the customer wanted the lights to end up, we had to fabricate some custom brackets to mount the lights closer together.
For the suspension package on this Super Duty, the logical choice was again Carli Suspension. Their Pintop 2.5” Leveling kit for the Alumi Duty is an all-inclusive system designed to totally transform a boring daily driver work truck into a monster that can swallow dirt miles with aplomb, and compromise nothing on the street. We again spec’d this kit with their beautiful fully fabricated radius arms and full replacement progressive rear leaf pack. An adjustable front track bar keeps the axle centered and also tightens the steering feel of the truck significantly.
Rounding out the package is a set of Method Wheels MR305 NV’s in Bronze and Toyo Open Country R/T in 37” x 12.50” R20. The Toyo R/T represents a great compromise between an aggressive mud tire and benign street tire, and comes in sizes and load ratings which make it ideal for a full size truck which will be used to haul.
