Ok, back to offroad reviews. I took her out again today in daylight and got some good info on clearance, flex, and use off the different modes. I have played with all of the modes now and for most situations my favorite is mud/sand with the steering turned back to sport versus comfort. In this mode the ABS is detuned for better stopping in the dirt, the transmission holds are much less aggressive than baja mode and you can use the locker at all speeds. In normal, sport, and weather it only works below 20mph with 4x4 and the ABS is too aggressive causing stopping distances to be longer than they should in the dirt. I actually appreciate that Ford has the default to 4x4 for the locker as 2wd with this truck equals instant wheel spin with moderate to heavy throttle input without much forward motion. With 4x4 you get aggressive acceleration. To quote my fellow KTM riding friend, "this thing is dirt bike fast!" Now if spinning the tires off the truck is your thing, it will do it in 2wd or 4x4 in pretty much any of the modes, including weather mode on packed snow (no surprise). As the tranny is learning it has mellowed some in baja mode and might be more reasonable for longer durations.
I took the sway bar off and the ride is now very close to my old LT Tundra, very impressive considering it is down a bit in the travel department. To see how it is on the street I ran it up the ski hill road and it has some body roll but nothing excessive, by my standards, again very similar to the Tundra which didn't even have the option of running a sway bar on the Chaos arms. I also saved about 20 lb off the front. It is massive! If I want something to carve canyon roads, their are much better vehicles than this. The embedded rock run smoothed out a bunch with each wheel being able to soak up the hits independently. Here is a pic on a portion of that terrain, the video from the phone was awful, I need a Gopro mounted to the truck, not something in my hand.
Then it was time for a flex test. Found out that the u bolts contact the frame when the rear axle is fully articulated
Anything bigger than a 35 isn't going to fit without a lot of cutting for those of us who use the full wheel travel and articulation. No mall crawl crap here.
There is almost zero frame flex from the truly massive frame with lots of through welded cross members even when tripoding the truck. The frame is fully boxed front to back and almost 10" tall under the cab. Awesome! The Tundra and Tacoma frames are truly puny when compared to this. It is only 1/8" thick, so I hope they have good coatings for the salt and corrosion. Also worth noting is the front upper control arms are in double shear with independent bolts, far superior to the single shear 8"ish long single bolt on the Yotas. The rear leaf spring mounts are huge, well gusseted and should hold up very well to abuse. Again the Yotas are much smaller and flimsier. Here are some pics and I stood in one of them to give a sense of scale. I am just under 6' tall.
Now to something that I don't like. The exhaust out the back. Twice today I packed one up with mud, once for these shots and a second time on the other side when I had to back off a hill I have done many times in my Taco (not covered in ice like today) when I was testing the limited slip and the locker in rock crawl mode. I made it half way up, which was impressive given the conditions but when backing down I ended up farther to the side than desired and plugged the exhaust with mud and rocks. The hill got too slick to go back up so had to just roll with it. Took about 5 min each time with a 12" stick to clean out 90 percent of the mud. I was almost ready to get the sawsall out! Each time the complete tip was packed solid for the entire length. The good news is that the muffler appears to have a common plenum that allowed the truck to keep running with one side plugged. If you had to back down something that hit both of them, you could be in trouble. Here is a pic of the first time.
The exhaust has a nice coupler at the top of the axle arch that I hope will serve as a good place to remove these and buy or build a set of side pipes or just put a couple short turn downs on that will not have this problem.
I should also mention that before I even went out today I noticed the battery tray had a crack in it. No clue if this has been there from day one or my few hours of testing did it. In either case, it isn't acceptable. I will see if the dealer can add one to the growing parts list they owe me or I will fabricate something that won't fail. This is also a good time to mention that I am actually glad for the stop/start because the battery is AGM and huge, so using it for winching won't be a problem and I won't have to worry about offroad shock and vibration causing a plate to fail/short out the battery. I usually have to replace the battery right away with an Optima Yellow top. I will be putting the jumper on the button as I don't live where I would sit in traffic for a long time and I find the stop/start annoying.
If anyone else has experience offroading their truck, I would love to hear about it. I will reserve truck mods for a different thread, yes I started already with some bed mods for my offroad gear. Coms, Wiring, and more will come in the next few weeks.
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