Suspension

Two Frames and a Five-Link Rear Suspension for the 2021 Ford F-150 Raptor

By Michael J. Moody 1 year ago
Ford F-150 Full Overview

Ford’s desert-race darling Raptor has offered two frames before, but that was to accommodate different cabs. Now offered in SuperCrew configuration only, the 2021 Ford F-150 Raptor gets a separate frame just to handle the beating it will take from the new Raptor 37 variant’s Big Foot 37-inch tires when bounding off rocks and across arroyos. Let’s examine the frames, the Live Valve Fox Shox, the “trombone exhaust,” and other technical highlights that promise to make this third-generation Raptor the baddest of them all.

Two New Frames

All 2021 Raptor frames differ greatly from those of their lesser F-150 brethren to accommodate the longer-travel independent front and all-new five-link, coil-spring, live-axle rear suspension setups. In front are taller, stronger shock towers and a unique rear lower control arm pivot. At the rear, there are the control-arm mounting brackets, upper spring perches, and reinforced shock mounting locations

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Ram Power Wagon vs Ford Raptor Suspension

By Michael J. Moody 1 year ago

We live in a golden era of instant gratification, where every appliance is another appliance, and single-purpose products are benign and unsellable to the masses. Need proof? Your cell phone is a calculator, social media broadcast station, and gaming console, and there’s a chance—however ridiculous—that it gets texts from your refrigerator alerting you when to buy milk. So, too, do we demand this multitool functionality from our trucks. All but gone are the days of single-cab, long-bed haulers. Today’s off-road trucks are expected to do everything, be everything, and are constantly weighed and measured against the yardstick of Ford’s paradigm-shifting SVT Raptor.

Enter our 2019 Ram Power Wagon: a 7,000-pound, plush interior’d workhorse with Rubicon-grade 4×4 hardware, a farm-handy Warn winch, and the capacity to carry 1,510 pounds of whatever in the bed. It tows heavily, out-articulates any new truck on the market, and tucks 37-inch tires with nary a

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