Made in china

[Truck Wolf]

That's depressing. I was gonna spring for a new set of black Raptor wheels (at $370 a pop!) but now I'll have to rethink it.

 

[Blukrom]

My neighbor is a mechanic and said he ran across a set of Raptor wheels and mentioned they were made in china. I said no way and blew him off... this is a disappointing confirmation.

On a side note. back in 1997 I bought a brand new Dodge Ram 2500 V-10. I was all proud that I bought this american made truck... A week after I bought it I was looking at the production sticker and guess what. The truck was Echo in Mexico.... :-(

 

[pirate air]

Uhhh..... wheels are not the only recycled wok on the Raptor lol

I know for testing Ford used Cepek wheels because they were better at handling the loads of the Raptor being jumped. Cepeks are American made.

Never ever ever seen this... Proof?

 

[Humvee21]

Never ever ever seen this... Proof?

I'll find it over the weekend. It was discussed on the H1 forum from Mr. Cepek himself.

 

[pirate air]

I'll find it over the weekend. It was discussed on the H1 forum from Mr. Cepek himself.

Hmm interesting.

 

[Humvee21]

Hmm interesting.

Pirate, I found the post and bookmarked it. Wait until I get to a computer and I'll post it up.

 

[pirate air]

Pirate, I found the post and bookmarked it. Wait until I get to a computer and I'll post it up.

cool thanks

 

[Humvee21]

Alright here it is...

Hello List:

As a point of interest and further to the Raptor issue, i thought I'd share with you some of what i did for the Raptor, mostly for testing purposes.

That was back in May/June of 2007, so more than 4 years ago now.

I was contacted to provide them my 17" H1 wheel with a special offset, with stainless steel hub centric rings pressed into the back of the center bore, and a specially machined rim profile where it gets close drop center area.

They told me they needed my wheels because they were having a problem getting the kind of info they needed on steering inputs and outputs, and that with my wheel, they could get exact information due to the fact that it didn't flex like the wheel they were planning on using for the production truck which at the time i think was a 20" wheel made in Germany.

If you go to the link that Gulf1 provided, then click on the Raptor Video links, you will see several different videos. Click on Webisode 12 and watch the amount of times the H1 wheel shows up in their testing. Mostly at the beginning with all the donuts in the dirt and then later in the clip with some desert area and jumping the truck.

I've posted some pics of the wheel as furnished to Ford/Roush but without the hubcentric rings installed. You can see the inset machined area where it was insterted however.

Enjoy!

Tom Cepek / G T Inc.

 

[Humvee21]

More pics...

 

[pirate air]

That was really early on. I always wondered what wheels those were on the first test truck. They looked American Racing or Mickey Thompson to me. At the time they used the Cepek wheels I doubt the production Raptor wheels were even in design, hell Ford wasn't 100% committed to producing the Raptor then. That test truck you see with those wheels the most was supposedly the first truck that Roush put the JD Fab suspension on, which was later (some what) copied by SVT for the production Raptor suspension. Possibly Ford didn't have a current F 150 production wheel strong enough at the time for the Raptor testing, but I don't think this means IF the existing Raptor wheel at the time wasn't strong enough to handle jumping loads. And anyone knows, If the current production Raptor wheels integrity was ever in question by SVT, Ford never would have shipped them out. That Cepek wheel also looks cast, I cant imagine its a whole bunch stronger than what we got stock.