iamsuperdan

I'm actually driving a 2020 F150 XLT with the 3.3L right now. Sold my other truck, and using this while waiting for my order to arrive. It's not a bad engine at all. Fuel economy is great, it has decent power. I wouldn't try towing with it, but for 90% of truck owners out there, it will easily take care of their needs. Regular maintenance is really no different than the other gas engines. We definitely see more EcoBoosts in for service here. A few reasons for that. One, it's the most common engine by a wide margin. Two, it is vastly more complex than the V6 ort the 5.0L. Three, people see the commercials and the hype, and then push the engine beyond it's realistic capabilities. Personally, I like the EcoBoost, which is why I went that route.

Wish I had that when I built mine!

I love Race Red! We just got our first 2022 F150 in Atlas Blue. Awesome colour.

Currently, just about all of the 2022 models are being built without the auto start/stop feature. Chip shortage. And it saves you $60 CDN!

As Fleet Sales Manager for a Ford dealer, I have some insight into this. Essentially, a fleet spec vehicle is easier to build than a higher spec truck. An F150 XL or fleet-spec XLT is faster to build than a Platinum or Limited. IT has a lot fewer parts, so by cracking out a bunch of fleet trucks, it speeds up the assembly line. ANd in turn, helps Ford with their numbers. Number 1 selling truck for 50 years or whatever! The other thing to consider is how many chips a base truck uses compared to a Limited. At my dealership, we currently have NO trucks in stock for sale. Zero. We have not had an available Transit or Super Duty available for 2022 model year. All of the issues over the past two years or so have resulted in extremely high demand, while the factories can only build so many trucks. And it really ticks off the retail department when they received 12 trucks in March, all pre-sold, while my fleet department received 93 trucks in March. All pre-sold. If you are shopping for an F150, your best bet is to sit down with a dealer you like, spec out a factory order, and wait. Finding the right truck on ground will take a while. A factory order should arrive for you this summer. We have F150s ordered in January that will be here by the end of May. Including my new truck!

I think this would explain a lot of the designs we've seen over the years! lolz

Those appear to be the kit wheels, but tires are not. Those are the kit tires underneath the truck in the last pic there. I'm guessing the tires used will be from Fireball or Scenes Unlimited.

Completely. In this case, let's put all the microprocessor eggs in essentially one basket. Maybe two baskets, but they're owned by the same farmer. Great idea. *sigh*

Yeah, but I added a pic. ?

I miss it. It was an awesome vehicle. Did a bunch of stuff to it, put 100k on it over the next couple of years and it was bulletproof. Sold it and bought a new 08 JK Sahara. Tehcnically a better Jeep, but I kind of preferred the TJ.

You would need a donor kit for some of the parts, but here's an option. 15 euro for the images files. Probably 250ml of resin, so maybe $15. Plus a little something, something for whoever can print it for you. Plus shipping.

I've had exactly one vehicle that was troublesome. 1990 Jeep YJ Islander. 4.2L inline-6, 5-speed manual. Bought it in early 2005 with only 165,000km on it. One owner vehicle, and he gave me all of the service records for it. A little rusty, but very well maintained. Figured this would make a good vehicle to bomb around in for a while. Well, that didn't go quite as planned. About a week into owning it, the brake lights and rear turn signals stopped working. Very strange, as it passed the required insurance inspection the day after I bought it. So fixed that. Then put a decent head unit in it, cleaned it up so looked a little better. About a month into owning it, it had to get towed for the first time. Just stopped running. Felt like it ran out of gas and would not restart. Carb issues. Dealer said they fixed it. Two weeks later, tow number 2. Different dealer could not diagnose any issues. Ran fine for a couple of months, then it was constant non-start or stalling issues. Every time, felt the same, like it was out of gas. Took it to a third dealer, and they said it was definitely the carb, but that they couldn't fix it. Apparently, Chrysler's Gold Star program or whatever it was called had a separate certification for carburetors, and none of their techs were certified, so they were not allowed to fix it. I was not amused. Had a chat with the service manager and dealer principal. How could a Jeep dealer not be able to fix a Jeep? By this time, it was September, winter was coming, I was frustrated and fed up with this, and needed something reliable to drive. Turns out, Jeep was having their employee pricing sale, and had a new 2005 TJ Sport, in my preferred colours and spec. Spoke with the dealer principal again and the sales manager. They gave me a trade on the old YJ that was more than I paid for it in the first place and covered almost all fo the repairs I had spent on it over the previous few months. Plus employee pricing on the new Jeep. So the story ended well.

I think it looks great! Colour choices are perfect for this car. One questions though, what's up with the decal on the dash? Did it come from Fujimi with the spelling mistake? ?

Meh, this has been going on with all the manufacturers, on all their models over the past year or so. A few weeks ago, the F150 factory was on pause for a week or so. Toyota's RAV4 factory was down for two or three weeks. Jeep's Grand Cherokee/Grand Wagoneer factory took a couple of weeks off. Last summer, GM, Ford, and Stellantis stopped with SUVs for a while. All the brands are doing it, sending chips where they can, trying to get as much built as they can, without letting any one product line get too far behind. I currently have 14 F150s and 2 Ford Super Duties on microprocessor hold right now. All were produced in January, sent to storage, and all have an estimated ship date in May. So we'll see.

A lot of this is just styling tastes at the time. I mean, we could take the brush and do some broad stroke painting here... Can...open. Worms...everywhere... ?

Cleaned some things up. If you feel the need to snipe at others, just keep it to yourselves.

Opel GT C3 Corvette.

Did my taxes and filed them. Pretty good refund coming back this year for both of us.

Looks great! Has kind of an Eddie Bauer Bronco vibe to it.

The wording is why this is awesome though. You know, the fact that 10mm sockets disappear all the time. Ask any mechanic about the missing 10mm socket. They'll know.

I would, but we can't upload Word docs here. I just go into Word and add like a dozen images of the same plate, all in different sizes. I print a page, and eyeball the "correct" plate. THen I make a note and save the file. Now when I make a new plate, I can just cut/paste into the file, shrink the image to match my "correct" plate. Then print.

Excellent project!

100%. Just like with real cars & trucks at shows. I can see a build and have the utmost respect for the talent and skills of the builder, but completely dislike the subject matter.

Yup. I use the ends from new strings, and save my old strings. Sometimes, the string will even have the wound part, which does a fairly accurate representation of the springs found on antennas on older cars.

When I'm making plates, I usually just paste my saved image into a word doc. Resize as necessary and print onto semi-gloss photo paper. Took a bit of trial and error to get the sizing right, but now that I've done that, I haver a template saved. I use https://www.acme.com/licensemaker/ I find the fonts used are more accurate than some of the other plate makers out there.