Yet another Gen II review

[xxaarraa]

After the first 500 miles on my 2017 Gen II, I wanted to share some of my first impressions. Please note that I haven’t had a chance to take it off road, or tow with it yet, so these impressions are of the Raptor’s daily driver characteristics only. Of course, these are early impressions only and living with the truck day in and day out over thousands of miles may change my opinions in the future.

Let’s get the bad things out of the way, since this list is shorter than the positives (much shorter )

• Seat memory recall setting. It is completely asinine for you to have to be in park to recall a memory setting. Sorry to start this off with a rant, but this is the stupidest and dumbest thing I have ever seen in over 15 cars in my lifetime. Is it reasonable to expect driver to pull over and park just to adjust the seat to their memory? Geez Ford, bad miss there.
• Ride is bouncy and uncomposed, steering is sloppy, the whole thing is “floaty.” Calm down Gen II fans, hold the trigger on “you bought a full size pickup what do you expect” comments. Yes, the bouncy ride doesn’t bother me one bit. This is not and will never be a sports car, no matter how much power it makes, the same way as any 5700 lb truck will never be a sports car. The floaty ride is actually an asset, more on that below.
  
  You are likely to agree or disagree with me depending on what your point of reference is. I have always had a truck and a sports car, hence never saw the need to mix them both, and always judge handling with a high standard (I think 911s handle just OK to give you an idea).
  
• Brakes are spongy and numb. I don’t think it’s the piston setup or rotor size, I think there is enough clamp, just not any feel to the pedal and a lot of pedal travel. It’s like squeezing an exercise ball in your hand. It makes me wonder if just changing out the brake fluid may have a positive impact?

Now let’s get the “meh” or indifferent things out of the way. These don’t bother me.

• Stereo. My 802/sony setup is meh. Bass is not great even at full tilt. I am not an audiophile however, and so do not really care for a well sorted stereo system. As long as it behaves well and BT is seamless, I am OK and this truck does that.
• Stock wheels are a little puny. For how big the body is, they could have stuffed slightly bigger wheels/tires in there. I do get the tradeoffs with mileage and handling and so on.
• Exhaust noise is meh. Again, I judge it as a truck only, not a sports car. The exhaust is mostly inoffensive and quietly blends into the background at most times. Which is all I typically ask from a truck exhaust. So I am perfectly OK with it.
• Sync system is meh. Can’t say anything great about it, can’t say anything particularly bad about it either. Does its job. Better than the CUE system in my 2014 C7 which is laggy as all hell.
• Android Auto works seamlessly for me (with google Pixel), but I am having some quirky A2DP pairing issues with the phone when not in android auto. It plays phone calls via stereo, but not music. Doesn’t happen all the time, only some of the time. Weird.
• The footprint is very big. I have not had a full size truck before, especially such a wide one. So I am getting used to making very wide turns and generally watching where I go. Not too bad.
• Start stop is meh. I doubt how much efficiency it really adds, but I don’t mind it.
• The nav and center console seems to be pointed away from driver? I know it’s an optical illusion, or maybe because my C7 has an asymmetric dash where everything curves in towards the driver. But the Raptor’s center stack seems so far away and pointed away?

Now let’s get to the truly great things about this truck - I love it, and look forward to many years of adventures with it:

• Comfort. This thing is supremely comfortable. In fact, it’s the best GT car I have ever owned. Plenty of room, very negligible wind noise at high speeds, super smooth ride, ample power. This is going to be a mile eater.
• Radar guided cruise. I am completely sold on this. Makes road trips so stress free. Within a day of having this, I was convinced that radar cruise is one of those things you are likely to never truly appreciate till you’ve had it. It’s like any other luxury feature that seems frivolous from a distance, but once you get it, you can’t go without it.
• Room. There are cubbies everywhere, cup holders everywhere, huge space in the back (supercrew) for two 100 lb dogs and then some. This thing is utilitarian.
• Lane assist. Yes, I admit it. I like this feature. Again, on the highway, having a gentle nudge to keep such a large and floaty vehicle in the lane is a stress reducer. I don’t think the system is too intrusive and I can easily overpower the system if I want to switch lanes. I am sold.
• 360 cameras. By God, this is remarkable, especially the aerial view. My girlfriend and I were talking about how they pulled that off. Probably by merging the footage from all the other cameras? It is remarkably useful while making sharp turns or parallel parking. And I can only imagine how useful it will be when I go off roading in the future. I haven’t had a camera system before, but I want to say that Ford’s implementation of it is very very good.
• BLIS. Again, completely sold. I do find the system to be a little too conservative. But it’s very very nice to have the security blanket. I saw something in the settings about “Trailer BLIS” ? If it can actually sense blind spots while I am towing my 7x14 dual axle, that will be outstanding!
• 600 mile range. The 36 gallon fuel tank is an awesome feature. I can bomb down from Boston to DC in one tank of gas, drive around the weekend, fill up and come back home. Again, another feature that makes this a GREAT GT car.
• With some FORSCAN tweaks, the car can be personalized just to your taste which I like. Lincoln mirrors, outer halos as running lights and other small things – I love the ability to do that.
• Looks. I love what they have done to the exterior. Front end in particular is very imposing.
• LED bed lighting, tailgate step. Very nice touches, I am glad I got both.
• Power. There is so much power to spare at such low revs in nearly every conceivable use case that it’s nice to never have to worry about it. Mash the throttle and go. Feels like many AMGs I have had in that regard. Just the warm comfort of never having to worry about power no matter what gear you are in or what speed you are going.
• Fuel economy. Too early to tell, but after 500 miles of 80-20 city-highway, I am getting the same combined cycle MPG (15.6) as I did in my V6 Toyota which is half the power and half the comfort. I’ll take that all day every day. VERY happy with the fuel economy so far.

I can’t wait to start pulling my 7x14 dual axle in a couple weeks (once I get past 1k break-in). I don't offroad till the fall, but do plenty of Class VI trails up here so looking forward to that as well (and the pin stripes). I am really looking forward to seeing how pro-trailer backup assist and Trailer BLIS and other things work.

What makes this a special car is how it can do the GT car, tow car and offroader all in one, turnkey from factory. Exactly what I wanted.

I will post up later once I have had more seat time.

 

[hamster]

Nice summary! Thanks.

 

[smurfslayer]

After the first 500 miles on my 2017 Gen II, I wanted to share some of my first impressions. Please note that I haven’t had a chance to take it off road, or tow with it yet, so these impressions are of the Raptor’s daily driver characteristics only. Of course, these are early impressions only and living with the truck day in and day out over thousands of miles may change my opinions in the future.

Let’s get the bad things out of the way, since this list is shorter than the positives (much shorter )

• 
  [*]Seat memory recall setting. It is completely asinine for you to have to be in park to recall a memory setting. Sorry to start this off with a rant, but this is the stupidest and dumbest thing I have ever seen in over 15 cars in my lifetime. Is it reasonable to expect driver to pull over and park just to adjust the seat to their memory? Geez Ford, bad miss there.
• Ride is bouncy and uncomposed, steering is sloppy, the kindest thing I can say about the ride is “it’s floaty.” Calm down Gen II fans, hold the trigger on “you bought a full size pickup what do you expect” comments. Yes, the bouncy ride doesn’t bother me one bit. But it is there to be stated. This is not and will never be a sports car, no matter how much power it makes. The bouncy and unpredictable ride (and sloppy electric steering) has confirmed my total disinterest in any performance mods or tune. I don’t really care about the 450 hp, the more meaningful number is 510 ft-lbs for me, and I see the power as a huge advantage for towing effortlessly and occasionally putting a squid in the left lane in his/her place. You are likely to agree or disagree with me depending on what your point of reference is. I have always had a truck and a sports car, hence never saw the need to mix them both, and always judge handling and power with a high standard (I think 911s handle just OK to give you an idea).
• Brakes are spongy and numb. I don’t think it’s the piston setup or rotor size, I think there is enough clamp, just not any feel to the pedal and a lot of pedal travel. It’s like squeezing an exercise ball in your hand. It makes me wonder if just changing out the brake fluid may have a positive impact?

...<merciful snippage>

What makes this a special car is how it can do the GT car, tow car and offroader all in one, turnkey from factory. Exactly what I wanted.

I will post up later once I have had more seat time.

I agree on the brakes, but I think there’s probably better pad compounds that will help. It’s easy to get this wrong, I had a late 80’s 4x4 new, a buddy bought one just like it, and we both found out that the front pads were good for only about 7500 --highway-- miles, significantly less if you did any in town driving. his were to the wear bars at 3,000 miles, mine about 6k. Aftermarkets fixed it but man what a PITA.

I disagree on your memory recall for the seat.

Is it reasonable to expect driver to pull over and park just to adjust the seat to their memory? /QUOTE]

No, it’s reasonable for Ford, me, and every other driver sharing the road with you that you actually do this while you’re stationary and not put the rest of us at risk of being mowed down by a 5700 pound truck. There are a lot of ways this action could go sideways while you’re moving. What if you and your wife and daughter share the truck and you’re a foot taller. One of the wimmen-folk pushes the wrong preset button while moving and now - NO PEDALS !
Who would be blamed for the resulting collision? Surely the driver, but if medical bills are significant [ or insignificant with an ambulance chaser lawyer ] Ford will be hooked for this.

Seat, pedal, steering and position adjustment while moving is a recipe for a collision. I’m with Ford on this one.

How did you anticipate the ride would be? ADV or ‘dirt’bikes have the same issue. Big, bouncy suspension that feels out of its element until it’s doing what it was actually designed to do, as opposed to what you’re making it do. Can you push it farther/faster ? Yes, and you surely won’t have as much control the more you push it when the truck is not in its element.

I rode Mad Sunday at the 2010 Isle of Man TT [ there’s no speed limit over the mountain course] Wife and I were doing ~90mph heading into the aptly named Windy Corner when we got passed by a solo, German plate, BMW R1200GS. He was weaving when he passed us with extreme prejudice, but he made it stick and lived. That rider passed plenty of sport bike riders before the corner entry and more on the exit. We never saw him again, but there was no moto-carnage left on the mountain so safe to say he survived.

The Raptor is not a sports car. yes, you can go fast, but you need to be cognizant of the generous suspension travel and how the truck behaves when pushed.

 

[xxaarraa]

No, it’s reasonable for Ford, me, and every other driver sharing the road with you that you actually do this while you’re stationary and not put the rest of us at risk of being mowed down by a 5700 pound truck. There are a lot of ways this action could go sideways while you’re moving....

Really Smurf? Mercedes S-class, which is always the paragon of what the future of automobiles will be, lets you adjust memory settings on the move. EVERY other car lets you adjust on the move, including Autobahn burners. You really think a Ford pickup knows better than MB when it comes to ergonomics?

If what you are saying was a concern, they will lock you out of moving the seat altogether. You can still move the seat and steering column front and back on the move, just locking out memory settings is silly. Besides, if you hit the memory and seats starts to slide too far, just hit the seat adjust again. It's not an alarming safety situation as you are thinking.

How did you anticipate the ride would be? ...The Raptor is not a sports car.

I think you are just repeating what I said, so we agree completely. I am 100% OK with the ride and for my intended use of the truck, to be clear.

With so much energy on FRF about modding and tuning for more power (which I find amusing), I wanted to mention the ride will never accommodate more power, if you have an informed view of what handling is to begin with.

 

[df4801]

" EVERY other car lets you adjust on the move, including Autobahn burners."

completely false, unless you don't count Lexus and Jaguar. Neither of mine let you do that.


"For how big the body is, they could have stuffed slightly bigger wheels/tires in there"

What do you suggest? 37" stock tires??? LOL Do you even know why the wheels are 17"? You could always put 22" wheels with spinners on if you just want to cruise the malls.

Glad you have lane assist and BLIS. Sounds like options you should have.

 

[smurfslayer]

Really Smurf? Mercedes S-class, which is always the paragon of what the future of automobiles will be, lets you adjust memory settings on the move. EVERY other car lets you adjust on the move, including Autobahn burners. You really think a Ford pickup knows better than MB when it comes to ergonomics?

In this case, yes, I do. I also think stretching to adjust the center mirror while driving is enough of a distraction to lead to a collision - was in a local police report as a cause. Other things can to, like fiddling with the seat belt, messing with the radio, yelling at your spouse or offspring, and any other manner of st*pid sh*t.

Autobahn burning doesn’t equate to smart. For all the pride they take in the ‘bahn and their vaunted, difficult to obtain license, I saw just as much latte sipping, cell-yakking and left lane hogging on the a-bahn in Germany as I do here in the USA, and the offenders were in German plated cars.

 

[ChevyChad]

I agree with smurfslayer (and Ford)- the memory settings should absolutely NOT be available unless in park for the same reasons smurfslayer mentioned.

I also do not find the suspension anywhere near bouncy/ uncomposed / sloppy / floaty at all. It is actually pretty tight and very predictable I would say- especially for a truck. It does absorb bumps and crappy roads very nicely as well. My last gen 1 raptor would come unsettled in a few particular areas where I live, but this one soaks them right up and doesnt skip a beat. I would say that the gen 2 is a very safe ride and one could easily add power if they so desired and remain very stable and planted in pretty much any condition.

 

[dewalt]

For long trips I like to mix up how I sit. So I take a minute and adjust all the buttons to a new position. Real safe being distracted for a minute. To save me Ford better lock that out to. Some things get so safe they become dangerous.

 

[smurfslayer]

I had a friend who was an “enthusiastic” driver. One day we’re kicking along in his chevy cavalier 4 speed manual, he bangs second gear hard and his seat back latch fails, driver’s seat goes to full recline.

So yes, minor adjustments to seating positions are fine.

 

[xxaarraa]

I had a friend who was an “enthusiastic” driver. One day we’re kicking along in his chevy cavalier 4 speed manual, he bangs second gear hard and his seat back latch fails, driver’s seat goes to full recline.

So yes, minor adjustments to seating positions are fine.

smurf, you strike me as a hardcore domestic car guy, that true? Other than rental bimmers you talked about in another thread, have you owned any European cars? Trying to understand where your coming from