Top 3 Mods for a High Mileage Gen 1 Raptor

All right folks welcome back to the house of chop. I’M Mr Zachary! Now look if you followed, along with the channel over the last few months, you might have seen this the dirt cheap, first gen scab Raptor, that we picked up back in November. Now. Look the whole point of me buying this truck was to have one a reliable daily and two something that could double for production Duty for all these road trip, episodes that we have coming up this year and, most importantly, something that I wouldn’t be so enticed to Modify now, look the first gen Raptor, it’s great.

Basically, all around you can’t beat it. I mean it’s impossible to find a better bang for your buck vehicle on the market. Today we picked this one up for 15 grand with like 189,000 Mi. They look cool from the factory, their absolute workhorses when you get them with the 62 6r8 combo comes stock with locking diffs and pretty decent suspension, and the interior is nice and cozy for those long road trips. But there are a few shortcomings that could be addressed to make this thing: the allaround perfect daily drivable vehicle, and that is what we’ll be addressing in this episode today now look before you guys, go and light me up in the comment.

Well, yes, I swore up and down that I was not going to modify this truck. I’M trying to keep this thing stock. I feel like. I won’t probably ruin this we’re going to keep it stocked. I 1,000 % do not believe that, but here’s the deal things need to be fixed and if we’re going to be in there fixing them, we might as well replace those old parts with much better Parts.

Am I right exactly so without further Ado? These are the top three modifications that you should do if you’re going to buy yourself a high mileage first gen, Raptor, okay, so the first and the most important mod we’re doing on this truck is tires now look tires are very important for a Number of reasons, most of which are very obvious, but for this truck, as you can see here, this is the spare but uh. These things are very old and very dry rodded about 10 years old, if we’re being exact. If you happen to score one of these trucks for a good deal, you’ll likely be in a similar situation, because, let’s face it, who’s going to spend a bunch of money, throw brand new tires on a truck or car before selling it to you at Rock Bottom Price now look, here’s the deal no vehicle on the planet is going to perform well on a roached out set of rubbers and, on top of that tires will make or break the look of a vehicle. So I recently picked up a set of 35x 12.1/2. 17 x,
comp Gladiator mud terrains and we stopped by a very familiar old place, to see some old friends we over at the Block in the DDE boys all right. So we are uh pulling up to see some old friends here. So we can throw these tires on the old Raptor and stop by see Damon and Dave hey buddy. What’S up hey, I hear you need a tire machine yeah, I’m uh, I’m looking a little dry rotted here.

I don’t know if you noticed bro yeah, it’s pretty bad, even make it here on those uh I put 10,000 miles on these things. I feel like yeah they’re at their limit, damn yeah dude. I thought I was bald way more traction than your tires. I know right, can I borrow Tim here for a second, you can borrow Tim. You can borrow the tire machine, okay, I’ll be out here sweeping my lot now.

Look good tires are important for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. When I picked up this truck, it had a set of 10-year-old all trins on it, which were clearly at the end of their tread life and existence. In general, now I decided to go with these X. Comp tires for a number of reasons: number one: the weight, the more reciprocating Mass you have at Each corner, the harder it is on parts and fuel mileage. These tires only weigh 71 lb.

A piece now compare that to a set of toy MTS At the exact same size, those weigh 8 2.67 lb a piece so we’re saving 10 lb, a corner which is going to equate to better fuel mileage and less wear and tear on the parts. Secondly, these tires have a super aggressive, tread pattern that really looks at home on this truck brings the whole thing together. Now, if you want to get into the tech specs on it, they feature a 10 ply construction on the face and three ply sidewall, which basically means they can take. Some gnarly hits in the sharp rocks when we’re out in the desert also they’re, very quiet when driving at highway speeds, which most mud trins are not also take.
This into consideration tires make or break the look of a truck, so they need to look as aggressive as they are functional, oh yeah, so much better. We got some Meats on this thing, truck’s still dirty as all hell. Now it looks like a damn truck all right step, one complete all right so now that we got that fresh set of XC comps on the truck, we can get to mod number two suspension now from the factory. The first gen Raptor comes with pretty decent suspension up front. You get a 2 and 1/2 in coilover with about 11 in of shock travel, and now back you get a 2.

in shock with a piggyback Reservoir that allows you about 13 in of wheel travel, and while this isn’t Crazy by today’s standard of off-road shocks, it Makes for a great Street truck that sees a small bit of off-road Duty? Now you might be asking yourself: why are we changing something if it already works? Well, here’s the problem, the stock shocks typically only last about 50,000 Mi before needing a rebuild, and this truck has 190k on it. And while it’s already had the fronts, rebuilt quote: unquote, this thing rides pretty bad and it Dives under breaking as if it wants to do a front. Flip plus the shock bodies are super rusted out from its initial years of life in Illinois.

You can have these things rebuilt for, like 200 bucks, a shock, but then you run into the problem of having your vehicle down for the time it takes to send them out and have them rebuilt, or you can do it yourself for around two or 3 hundred Bucks in parts and whatever length of time it takes you to do the job, but at the end of the day, you’ve just spent a bunch of money and time to basically get yourself back to square one with stock parts that were engineered over 10 years ago. And to me it seems that if you need to replace something, you should replace it with modern technology that works a hell of a lot better. So that’s why we’re driving to Tucson Arizona right now to head over to ads race shocks, cuz we’re going to swap out the stalkers for ads’ direct replacement, 3.0 race shocks now look ads is arguably the best kept secret in off-road racing. They’Ve been in the game.

Now, for 35 years and consistently have been at the Forefront of suspension technology since their Inception back in 2021, ads was acquired by Holly, thus creating Holly off-road, and some folks May jump to the conclusion that quality in Stateside manufacturing has taken a backseat to fatter profit Margins, after all, we’ve seen what happens to some Enthusiast companies that get acquired by larger private Equity groups. I think we all know what we’re talking about here, but I can personally attest after seeing it with my own eyes that this is 100 %, not the case, and I commend the people at Holly who have made sure that this brand stays true to its core Values all manufacturing, production and assembly of ads components are done right here in Tucson, Arizona and all the materials used in the production of these components are also sourced from us. Foundaries. These guys really do stick by their slogan of made in the USA and proud of it, and I support that through and through. So the suspension parts we’ll be installing here today are adss 3.
adjustable Reservoir race, coilovers up front and their direct fit 3
0 32 bypass reservoir shocks out back ads has done a ton of work to develop a high quality shock that you can fit into the stock mounting locations without having to do any cutting welding or need other accessories like different control, arms or anything or different suspension Points so these shocks are, in fact, true direct replacement parts and will dramatically increase the truck’s ability to soak up bumps in the dirt and offer a Cadillac like ride quality on the street. These things are awesome and the tech behind them is even cooler on the coilovers up front. Obviously we have an increase of size from 2.5 in to a 3in body, but there’s way more than that that goes into it. Now we get a 2-in increase in overall travel, which comes in at 13 in total, but during development ads noticed that raptors have a tendency to dive hard in the front and smoke the skid plate.

Oh, oh, oh so they adjusted the travel range to limit compression travel and allow for more droop travel. Now the larger diameter body paired with the 8in remote Reservoir allows for far Superior fluid control and greater fluid cooling because, as a shock Cycles through its range of travel, the fluid builds heat and can start to cavitate in layman’s terms. It basically means that the hotter, the fluid the less effective your shocks are going to be now out back. The 3.0 triple bypass shock is actually tuned out of the box to work perfectly with the stock leaf springs, but with two compression bypasses and one rebound bypass.

You have a wide range of tuning ability to fit almost any setup or weight change. You can imagine now both shocks feature an electronic zinc plated steel shock body. That’S finished in a clear Sak coat for corrosion resistance. They also feature a hard Chrome plated steel shaft. With a 100 Rockwell rating hard anodized Pistons with high temp viton seals, the reservoirs are made of Aerospace grade T6 aluminum and they also have threaded Billet top and bottom caps.

They can withstand far more abuse than let’s say a Preston unit now in the rear shocks. Those are actually welded on bottom caps. So again, a lot of abuse can be taken with these. Now all ads shocks are filled with schaer’s highgrade temp, stable synthetic fluid and they’re charged with high press, nitrogen and every shock is fully rebuildable. Now, while we got the wheels off and this thing on the lift and we’re already taking the suspension off, if I figured, we should probably address the brakes because they’re still stock units and while they don’t look too bad, they can always be better.
So we opted to go with these cross- drilled and slotted direct replacement bear breake, rotors and some of their bear claw pads. Now I have a be break setup on my K5 and that’s literally the only thing stopping that thing at this point and we didn’t stop there at the brakes because well there’s one thing that really has been irritating me about this truck and that’s the electronic Governor. That’S on it, so we decided to address that with this Diablo sport tuner. This is going to allow for quite a wide range of tuning control over the stock ECU. But more importantly, it allows a very simple oneclick solution to turning off said, speed limiter, which will allow us to get through these road trips and just a little bit quicker.

We also get a lot of information on the trucks vitals like knock control, different temperature sensors. We actually get to see how much pressure is going into the converter and things like that, and we can adjust those things if need be. I think, for now we’re going to leave it pretty much stock, just without that pesky speed limiter all right. Well, we just finished up here at ads. We got the shocks on, we got the brakes on come look at these things.

First of all, this looks proper okay. This is, this is a good looking setup. Obviously, we got the 3.0 with the bypass fully adjustable. We got the be brake rotors on and be brake pads.

This thing will stop now, which is good now back more goodlooking, stuff, boom, 3.0 external bypass race shock and fits right in with the stock mounting locations, of course, be brake replacement, rotors and dads. This is good right now we’re going to throw the reels back on we’re going to go, take it get it align. Then we’re going to go to the desert. We’Re going to tune this thing in make sure it’s riding real nice and smooth, because you know what we’re going to go.
Do some dumb stuff out of King of the Hammers. More than likely I mean I know myself, you know me, let’s get to it, we got more to. Do oh hello, hi! These are res dogs, bro, we’re on the res, a. We came out just after installing our new ads suspension and uh we’ve got this kind gentleman wanted to send it in his new TRX that uh they just put some suspension on too and he’s actually got their new internal bypass, rear shocks.

Oh yeah, buddy, let’s go! It’S got to skip play for a reason. Nice nicely done, another 10 15 mph. The problem is, they said, there’s that little divot right and you just didn’t. You didn’t clean it so 5 m hour faster, that’s 20, because then you’d land right here in the dip.

You know I mean that’s right where it wants to be, you know, I’d say judging by the jumpy just did it works pretty damn good. We have to drive 8 hours after this. So like we’re not going to jump it today, cuz we need to get home. Cuz we need to go to C the Hammers. You know let somebody else do all right.

So new tires new suspension new brakes. This truck is driving pretty perfect right now and I have to say it is a hell of a lot better than it was driving. All the way out to Arizona but there’s one other thing that has kind of been irking me about this and I feel like it really needs to be addressed. If this is going to be kind of like the perfect daily driver or the perfect vehicle to use. For Productions and all the other stuff that we’re doing it’s this so while this truck is awesome and very utilitarian, it’s an sccap right.
You don’t want a bunch of rolling around the trunk but fills up pretty fast. So we need to fix that all right now. It is time for modification number three and that’s storage, okay, so this is our solution for very poor storage in that super cab Raptor, as you guys saw whenever we’re on the road. With this thing, it is completely stacked with gear in the back whether it’s our bags, our camera gear, everything right that makes it kind of a pain in the ass. It makes it hard to get to stuff right, so we needed a system that would be one weather sealed two.

It would get all of that gear out of the back so that, in the event that we need another person back there, we can do it and three something that looked clean, clean that also allowed us to use the bed of the truck as well. This solves all of those needs now. This is a drawer system from the company decked. I know I bought it last week. It’S already here this thing Freights from Ohio, and it actually got here 2 days quicker than it was supposed to.

So that’s good. I like that, because we are legitimately two days out from leaving for king of the hamers so kudos to the Boys At decked. Now I’ve actually seen these systems in use. My buddy, Christopher pvi has them in all of his trucks and they’re nice, and they can take a lot of abuse and a lot of weight. This is the system specifically for the first gen Raptor with the short bed and, as you can see, here comes with a lot of cool stuff.

It’S not just the drawers. It actually comes with its own storage, bins that are weather sealed they have done a lot of upgrades over the last year or so to refine this system and make it more sturdy, more durable, more weather, sealed and take a lot more abuse. Let’S open this thing up: let’s get it in the truck. It’S all coming together really easily, and my favorite part is that they use SAE bolts, that’s right, American cuz! It’S made in America.

We don’t use the metric system unless we’re talking about a 9mm or like GS anyway, so uh, I decided to actually read the instructions instead of just going off pictures like a, meanderthal and uh in Step. Number three there’s one very important step and that’s do not install into the truck bed. Yet we were supposed to do this onto the ground. Ah  and there you have it just like that. We have storage, and these are nice check this out.

Roll out super smooth, they do roll a lot better with weight in them, but I mean these are buttery. We got tons of storage space. We can remove these if we need to put them up front, we can put all the stuff that we need in here. We actually got additional storage, we could stash, you know beer cans and stuff on the side they lock in place, which is nice. They actually sell some lock kits, which we’re going to get that way.

We can actually properly lock these, but all in all system looks good, nice and sturdy. I mean feels good feels robust. We still got deck space up top. You know it might wind up actually getting a tono cover as well tools. Now, if you come over here, there’s no way to get in there and open up these drawers from the top, so we’re safe.

There, that’s good and of course, we’ve got the Sid storage too, ah, which is nice, put some ice in there. Maybe some Frosty beverages who knows anyway, this is good. This thing is now perfect for what we want to do with it. We’Ve got great suspension. We got good brakes fresh tires.
We have storage now, so we don’t have to fill the back of the truck up with all of our gear and stuff. This is going to be nice, so you guys may be wondering. Was it worth it to do all of this stuff and put really expensive Parts on a truck that inevitably cost 15 grand right? Well, here’s my opinion on it. As of this recording, we have put something like 1,500 miles on the truck driving back from Arizona up to big barar and back and then all around hell’s creation, Los Angeles all this week.

It’S way too much driving to be honest, but this truck rides so much better than it used to the tires are incredible: they’re super quiet they handle well and they didn’t require an absolute metric ton of weights to balance out, which was incredible. You should have seen the amount of Weights that were on the old bfgs. I mean it was like a grid like this. On the damn inside of the wheel, now number two, the suspension. The suspension rides incredibly smooth on the highway.

It’S way more predictable with handling on the road and it handles tremendously better. Just in general now, when we went off-road with it, we went a little aggressive right out of the gate just to see, and you know what this thing soaked up everything we threw at it now mind you, we didn’t jump it or anything, but you can tell This thing is so much more planted, it soaks up bumps and it stays stable in really really weird off camber, just JS in like G outs and stuff rides perfect. I cannot believe how much better it actually is the brakes. It stops incredibly smooth. It stops very quick and it’s very precise – that’s always good, but we knew that was going to happen.

I’Ve run bare brakes on like the last three builds. I’Ve done so, you know that’s a given now the bed system by deck that drawer system is awesome, we’re actually about to head out to King of the Hammers right now and I’ve got the entire thing loaded up. It is made packing of breeze. It’S kept. It very organized – and the best part, is that the back of my truck is not completely filled with gear cases and bags and everything else that we want to put in there that’s protected from the weather.

This is huge and plus the system looks really good. The drawers pull out super smooth super happy with it we’re about to put all this stuff to the test at King of the Hammers, because, inevitably we’re going to do some dumb stuff. And you know what it’s probably going to get jumped a little bit. And you know what we’re going to see if that bed system wants to stay mounted down we’re going to see if anything breaks and we’re going to see if anything really does get Dusty or if it’s as weather resistant, as they say now. As for that Diablo sport tuner, that thing is actually pretty cool.

I was not expecting it to be as functional as it really is for one it was really nice to get rid of that speed limiter. That thing was irritating as it was, but we actually did decide to throw in the 93 tune and just I don’t know see what it does and it was incredibly more powerful, especially when it comes to like highway speed and having overtaking power. You can really see the benefit of this thing, North of 60 MPH and a lot faster. It really did give the truck the power it needed to overtake at those uh much higher highway speeds now down low. We didn’t do any like drag testing or anything with, but you know what we can do that when we’re out of the desert, because I’m pretty sure, there’s a dry lake bed, so you can stay tuned for that.

One! Look! If you’re in the market for one of these trucks, there’s obviously a bunch of other little stuff that you should do, but I don’t think we needed to cover that right, I mean obviously you’re going to do fluid changes. You should do ball joints. Probably hubs check all the seals on stuff.

This is pretty basic skin okay, but if you’re trying to get a high mileage Raptor and make a perfect daily out of it, something that’s utilitarian and fixes some of the issues that it already has. This is a really good good way to go, so I appreciate every single one of you following along watching this build and watching all the other stuff. So if you haven’t already makeig sure to subscribe and uh, you know what comment below. If you want to see us do more with this truck, if you want us to go completely off the deep end, let me know I mean I can be convinced. I was going to keep it stock, but you know what we’re we’re too far gone as it is appreciate you guys watching we’ll see you on the next one.