2019 Raptor "preview"

[rtmozingo]

I've read most of the articles, but we'll have to agree to disagree on importance. You can't really compare a dirt bike with a truck that is daily driven for the majority of owners. Being able to select modes is a huge benefit IMO. You may get 80% or heck lets even say close to 100% of the peak performance, but you aren't getting 80% of the potential benefits for a daily driven vehicle.

Again, the shocks are reactive using the computer, the only thing the integration does is allow for pretuning. So the body roll, etc is not essential to integration. If the shock computers for the bike unit can react fine as a standalone unit, there's no requirement for the shocks to plug into the truck. You'd lose the ability to stiffen/loosen the general feel of the shocks via mode selection (just like with the RZR Dynamix) and you'd not have the pedal positions to help the shocks anticipate what to do. But an accelerometer in each corner could take care of that.

The mountain bike units are very hard to retrofit and expensive / difficult to get unless you buy it OEM on a bike.

That's for space considerations, mostly. Again, it has nothing to do with how the shocks react to terrain.

 

[ToucanLife]

That's for space considerations, mostly. Again, it has nothing to do with how the shocks react to terrain.

Not sure what you mean by that - but the main reason is high cost and low demand in aftermarket for bikes at that cost (profesional MTB racer here) it's also hard to mount the required telemetry acquisition sensors (maybe thats what you meant then, I'm pro Live)

 

[mamula]

For those curious, I too have seen some of the videos from the FPRS. The new truck took a pretty substantial jump and upon landing, only compressed the back shocks halfway. I'm pretty certain my truck would have at least hit 80-90% of travel doing the same jump.

Concur. the shocks is better for off road that's it. outside that u are better off with 2018

 

[mamula]

Now they have released the real video:

Like i predicted and proved from the assault 2019 video i watched,
1. body roll still exist
2. nose diving brake effect still exist.

I cant wait for people to say but it was designed to work like that.
Check older threads people claimed both problems mentioned above will be eliminated by the shocks.

 

[ToucanLife]

Concur. the shocks is better for off road that's it. outside that u are better off with 2018

You bought a raptor for something other than off-road? Go home.

 

[mamula]

You bought a raptor for something other than off-road? Go home.

Come on man. Don't be like CNN, Show the non offroaders some love too. I like how the truck looks that's why I will get it!

 

[mezger]

Sounds like the new suspension is performing as I thought it would. Better on road (though they appear to have gone for more body control), better off road. If they didn't offer it as mentioned in the video, Ford and Fox should offer the 'lincoln' button, sounds like the hardware is more than capable. I'll need to drive one myself; WRT the onroad ride, given the telemetry of their system, they should have been able to simultaneously dial in a more compliant ride and better body control.

Overall, I still think the shocks are going to be a very good thing for a stock truck for most drivers. (Ignoring unknown reliability)

Counterpoint: the review does hit on some of my complaints WRT the Gen2, and likely many modern vehicles: this is an enthusiast vehicle, I'm an experienced enthusiast; I bought this vehicle to enjoy driving this vehicle, I did not buy it to have the vehicle do the driving for me (trail control mode, AEB, non-defeatable nannies, not all combinations of drive, throttle, TCS, transmission, etc. modes are available). The many, but not always well documented, options are leading to an annoying learning curve with this vehicle (i.e. supposedly defeated traction control behaving differently by mode, throttle very different by mode, etc.)

My concern is that given my experience with what the Gen2.1 technology, the Gen2.2 will add a lot of not well documented mode dependent shocks behavior.

What I'm getting at is, with all of my cars, I develop a muscle memory to the car's behavior; adding in a metric ton of different behavior profiles makes the learning curve a lot longer, and many of the nanny influenced behaviors don't jive well with someone who's accustomed to adjusting curve radius with throttle, brakes, steering, bumps, tarmac conditions, etc.

At a minimum, it would be nice to have some near and actual engineering level documentation of the various modes and combinations of modes.

 

[rtmozingo]

Sounds like the new suspension is performing as I thought it would. Better on road (though they appear to have gone for more body control), better off road. If they didn't offer it as mentioned in the video, Ford and Fox should offer the 'lincoln' button, sounds like the hardware is more than capable. I'll need to drive one myself; WRT the onroad ride, given the telemetry of their system, they should have been able to simultaneously dial in a more compliant ride and better body control.

Overall, I still think the shocks are going to be a very good thing for a stock truck for most drivers. (Ignoring unknown reliability)

At a minimum, it would be nice to have some near and actual engineering level documentation of the various modes and combinations of modes.

I'm not too concerned about reliability; if it fails, it just locks you somewhere into the 0-100 range. If it fails at the midpoint, the shock functions exactly like a normal gen 2 dumb shock would. I do agree with the firmness on the road - I like the soft roll my 17 has.

I've written about how each driving mode affects the truck. For the most part, the Raptor Supplement and Reference Card do a good job detailing how this all works. I'll work with a few of my friends that are getting 19s to update the guide with 19-specific info, but we already know all the factual information there is to know at this point. There's a normal mode (for normal mode), sport mode (which firms things up for less roll, more sporty drive), and then off-road, which seems to apply equally to all offroad modes. Driver specific response is the same regardless of drive mode.

 

[jabroni619]

You bought a raptor for something other than off-road? Go home.

He doesn't have a raptor, He's been trying to find a 2018 for FX4 pricing and hasn't been able to yet. He knows the 2019 will be out of reach price wise so he's already been practicing the art of "if I can't have it, convince myself I don't want it"

 

[mezger]

@rtmozingo saw your post, very informative, thanks.

To cite a couple examples, I've found that in 'expert mode' sport on pavement, the truck will fall on its face (pull out power for >1 s) if I unload the suspension some while at WOT, meanwhile same situation except Baja mode and it'll pull out a tiny bit of power for <1s. Or for example, in Sport mode the 'play with me' transmission mapping of holding high RPM @ part throttle seems to come alive much more easily if throttle is applied while exiting a slow sweeper than it is if applied going straight. These are the kind of details I'm looking for. WRT the mentioned 70%, IMO a much better solution is the 'kickdown switch' at the very last bit of throttle pedal travel I've seen on some euro cars. I'm imagining the shocks having this kind of non-intuitive behavior