I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but there is an option for this truck that actually replicates the wheel clearance of a 37 truck at full compression. The wheel wells are identical on both trucks. The difference in clearance comes from the bump stop height. It's actually possible to increase the bump stop height without decreasing travel as it turns out. There's a whole thread on that here for anyone that hasn't seen it/is curious what I'm talking about
https://www.fordraptorforum.com/threads/new-suspension-components.104616/.
Now I get the feeling that a lot of people just go "oh that's not necessary these things won't rub at all". If you're driving around on the street that's fine and all. The bump stop won't compress enough to access full travel anyway. Ford didn't use different bump stops and shocks between the 35 and 37 trucks for no reason, though. If clearance was all fine, they could have used the same shock and same bump stops and saved money/increased their margins. In my opinion, the difference in shock tune and front shock shaft size is driven by the fact that they have less travel as opposed to be a real upgrade. In product development, that sort of thing usually corresponds to a change driven by necessity as opposed to intentionally added value. If you decrease travel and want similar bottom out, you have to stiffen the shocks. That in turn imparts more stress on the shock shaft. 37 trucks and the R also have about 0.25" more preload on the springs than 35 trucks so rebound is a little different. Shock tune is a whole other conversation, though.
Anyway, back to wheel clearance talk. What I see overlooked all too frequently is the fact that there is a ton of elasticity built into the system. The entire cab and front quarter panels/wheel wells sit on rubber body mounts. These have at least 0.5" of range of motion on compression. That means if you hit something really hard, the entire body of the truck excluding the bed will move downward 0.5". So, if you jack the wheel up to check clearance, there's at least 0.5" less clearance that what you will see. If you watch slow motion videos of trucks jumping and see it look like the front bumper is bouncing around a lot, that's actually the whole body bouncing. The bumper is fixed to the frame. I'm actually surprised that you don't see more people with aftermarket bumpers blowing that piece of trim right above it off the truck since a lot of those bumpers have very little clearance to it. I guess that might just be because the truck isn't often pushed to its limit. There was some guy on youtube who did a video about bending tie rods that had it fly off and chalked it up to lack of quality, but I think it was really his bumper that did it so no fault to Ford.
The other thing I see overlooked on multiple fronts beside that is what kind of impact or wheel displacement in the rear is of most concern. Jumps with even landings where both wheels can touch down at the same time do not test the clearance of the rear. You can bottom so hard you break many things without having wheel rub in that scenario. Where wheel clearance is lowest is at full articulation. For reference I've attached a picture someone posted on facebook a little bit ago. It's a 35 truck with 37s on. At near full articulation but entirely stationary, there is practically zero clearance. If you're crawling that's fine, but the bump stop is not entirely compressed. If were to land heavy on one side first or just be moving fast while hitting full articulation, you'll close that up. Interestingly, there was someone on here in a thread about 39s or 38s that had put 38s on their 37PP and had rubbing issues here and that's only a 1" bigger tire.
www.fordraptorforum.com
