I am building the BEST looking 7.3 Powerstroke F350 the World has ever seen PT. 1 | DriveHub

today today is a big big day for a big big old truck today we are completely transforming the 7-3 Power Stroke that's right this is the last time that this thing is gonna look like this and perform like this forever six months ago I bought this 2001 Ford F-350 equipped with the legendary 7.3 liter power stroke turbo diesel with only 94 000 miles on it now the 7-3 here has quite literally been like my business partner it hasn't let me down and it's been fantastic and it's helped progress my YouTube channel quite a bit so in today's video we're giving the F-350 quite some loving and fitting it with a bunch of new parts we're going to be fixing a few things that really really needed to be fixed and well we're going to be upgrading those parts as well as doing a bunch of cosmetic changes to completely update the look of this truck but not in the ways that most guys do and I'm I'm just super excited but we have quite a bit of work to do so we're jumping right into it first things first the truck needs shocks what I didn't realize was this had an aftermarket dual shock front setup I believe the kit is from fab Tech looking kinda rough and I was always curious why I had two shocks up here upon some further research I found out that's a thing that a lot of truck guys do they either do it for show or they do it for a performance I'm not racing this thing in the desert and I don't have a plow on it and I don't intend to so uh I'm eliminating the dual shock setup up front supposedly it could also make the truck ride rougher if you don't you know have a plow or anything or you're not going you know off-roading with it and this thing as it is right now rides like a freaking bucking horse but that could be because not only are these front two shocks blown back here hello there but back here this one is also blown so three blown shocks definitely aren't helping the way this thing rides um and it's not it's not good to ride the blown shocks especially in something this freaking heavy tank like this so the truck is getting a nice upgrade first and foremost I did tons and tons of research and read countless Forums on this truck and all my studies pointed me to go with bilstein's shocks definitely not the cheapest by any means but I want this truck to ride good and for the shocks to last so I had no issue forking up the money to get these Bilstein 5100 series shocks now my truck is lifted I believe it's a six inch lift kit that's at least what the previous owner told me it was so I needed to order special Bilstein shocks I'll include part numbers and a link to those shocks the exact shocks that I use down in the description below now it's time to start pulling the 35s off and start removing the old shocks but unfortunately in this case it's just not not as easy as that all right so truck is in the air tires are off Here Comes our little issue when you look at this yeah it's you know it's not that complex what they put on here to run a dual shock setup but the problem comes when I go to switch to a single shock setup you'll notice behind there I don't know if you guys can see there's no Factory shock mount for a single shock shock mounts down there that's the factory piece I believe supposed to come up and mount in the middle here uh but there's this thing so I believe they removed the factory front shock mount the upper shock mount in order to put this pole shebang on here now lucky enough I was able to find someone who was parting out a 2001 7-3 uh F-350 and I bought these Factory upper shock mounts you can see the little Ford emblem on there with all the hardware because I needed it I only paid I think I paid 50 bucks for these had to take a short little drive to go get them so instead of just pulling the old shocks out and putting new ones in we got to pull the old shocks out pull the famtech Dual front shock mounts out put the new Factory shock Factory shock mount in and then put in the new shocks so that's why it's not that easy so I've been spraying all the hardware that goes in here for a few days now actually so that I hope it comes out easy enough but that's what we're going to do now we're going to pull the old shocks out and remove all that Fabtech dual shock gear that's in there despite days of pre-soaking the bolts with PB Blaster none of the mounting bolts for any of the Fabtech Hardware wanted to come out and I knew I was in for a long long day of work already so I decided to save some time and cut the mounts and old shocks out and then in the blink of an eye my day-long project turned into a much much longer one well the worst possible scenario just happened I was hitting this this uh bolt to slide it out and the lower mount broke the lower Mount that was in fine condition didn't need to be replaced as now snapped off so now I get to remove these u-bolts pull this thing out well that sucks so now I have to try to locate one of those things hope someone on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist has a truck that they're parting out but unfortunately most of them are going to be that you have to go pull the parts yourself so while I wait to see if any of these people answer me that have the trucks that they're parting out I'm gonna uh I'm gonna pull apart the other side and hope it go smoother gosh fortunately it did I cut the dual shock setup out scuffed up the new mounts and hit him with a quick coat of paint then installed them onto the frame eventually I'll completely grind down the old shock mount setup as well as paint this whole wheel well area but for the time being and knowing how much work I still had to do to get the truck moving again I decided that'd be for another video while waiting for Hardware to arrive my dad and I began grinding wheel studs down in preparation for the next little mod Billet aluminum Bora wheel spacers that's on flush now perfect I am pooped it has been a long day but here's where we're at so far I have not been able to locate yet uh bottom shock mount for this side I've got a few messages out on Facebook Marketplace there's supposedly someone that I was messaging 45 minutes away that's pulling one off tonight and I'm gonna go get it tonight but for some reason I don't think he's actually going to fingers crossed that he is two hours later [Music] well it's the evening we're heading down to just outside Boston now uh got the shock mount that I need to just think none of this would be happening if I didn't hit that bolt and Shear the shock mount I still don't understand how that sheared the shock mount but regardless it happened and uh now I'm paying dearly for it with two hours of my time and 50 of my hard-earned all nails all right we're homing packaged secured I just have to figure out how to get this rusted shock off I didn't need that part welcome to day two and riddle again riddle me this five minutes ago it was pouring rain and in the pouring rain I'm still soaked in the rain I set up this little dinky thing to protect the little Corners that I'm working on from the wet so I could keep working and now sure enough [Music] it's the sun's out here I am testing and showing my perseverance by coming out here in the pouring rain and setting up my little tent here so I can continue to work through the rain work through the storm weather the storm and the rain stops right after I finish getting this pinky little thing set up anyways late last night I got home with the new lower shock mount unfortunately he left the old shock attached so now I have the pleasure of trying to remove that bolt which I know is not going to come off and then we also had to run to the store this morning we took the lovely little GTI to other side there's the old shock mount I needed that for size reference but went to Home Depot and got ourselves a bag of bolts so we have all new hardware here now for the bottom I believe it's the bottom that we needed the bottom of the shocks because the ones that I bought the top shock mounts actually came with the uh Hardware we needed I believe so what we're going to do now is get the passenger side buttoned up because that side's already mostly done we're gonna put the new shock in and then we'll fight with the new shock mount that I got lower for the driver's side and work on getting that side sorted but on that side of course the driver's side we still have to put back on the u-bolts put on the new Mount and uh reattach the believe that would be the steering stabilizer shock and then we can put the new shock in and go from there turns out that bolt was quite the tough cookie even for Mr Sawzall and his friend L grinding wheel but eventually I reigned Victorious and began the installation of the lower shock mount and the u-bolts holding it then prep to start installing the new shock where I discovered the bolts I just gotten somehow didn't fit so another trip to the parts store was in store for me but I finally had the first shock in only a mere 30 something hours after we started the passenger side played much nicer than the driver's side an installation of the second shock was a breeze things were going well until it started to downpour again of course regardless we weathered the storm and with the rear tires off we could start pulling out the rear shocks and started installing the new bilsteins which proved rather difficult until my genius decided to make more room for my lanky figure and awkwardly shaped head by removing the spare tire with that all out of the way the rear shocks went in really easy with all four shiny new shocks installed in each Corner we could begin prepping to install our custom wheel spacers from Bora to fit our new 2017 King Ranch Wheels and how we got those King Ranch Wheels is an interesting story [Music] [Music] all right so yesterday we made a ton of progress on the F-350 with such a crappy day outside with the weather that I just needed to make some headways so that the truck wasn't sitting like this incapacitated for much longer but here's where we're at right now first things first the shocks are sorted out in the front here now if you guys remember when I put them in you could tell this bottom boot was all scrunchy was all messed up and it looked like crap and at the time I actually thought that I might have gotten sent the wrong shocks because in reality there's only there's only about that much of shock travel but the bump stop back here is less than that so that's the important thing you want your Bump Stop to hit of course before your shock bottoms out that's how you blow a shock and just to double check that to make sure before I tighten that all up my neighbor Steve who's a mechanic came by and I had him check it over to make sure that was okay so the shocks are all bolted in on the front torque down ready to go so the rears they're perfect length they match up perfectly and they're all torqued down as well so only three days later after initially starting the chalk project that portion is complete and that was supposed to be the most that's not even like an upgrade that was merely just replacing the broken ones and giving it a little bit of an upgrade but now comes the upgrades in the dark of the early morning I began my 150 mile quest to buy some 20 inch wheels off a 2017 F-350 King Ranch uh yes Roger Williams University a few of my friends went there in college so I of course went and visited them and myself great times not even 7 A.M and the package is secured I can't really see because I'm trying to drive but look at these things man oh man these things are gonna look so cool on the F350 but you shut it's not a person in the sea it's a rim it's a wheel would you relax anyways I am hyper excited to get these on the F-350 I don't know when they're gonna go on in just a short six months after bringing home those new Wheels I was finally taking them to the tire shop to get wrapped in new rubber now if you really wanted you could theoretically and from what I read on forums you could just throw on those wheels and run them like that but then your truck will look like one of those ones that they use on the railroad with the tires weighing in because the problem is on what is it 2 000 I don't know if it's 2003 2004 or 2005 uh they made the axles wider and they kept that width all the way till I believe now so therefore these wheels have a different offset and these trucks have narrower axles so if you put those on the tires just they sit really really far in and from what I've read it looks really funny and depending what size tire you run uh you could rub on your leaf springs so in order to make your truck look normal and to be able to run those newer hubcaps you're going to want to use a spacer now a wheel spacer is really not one of those parts that you want to cheap out on by any means especially on a heavy duty truck that tows things wheel spacers are just one of those things you don't don't cheap out on them unless of course you want to send kia souls to the Moon so after a plethora of research and reading through forums the spacers that I went with are Borah or bulletproof off-road adapters that name should tell you something right off the bat they're built in the good old USFA with Haas CNC machines which I know nothing about CNC machines but that sounds like pretty good stuff they're built with us Alcoa 606 t16 Billet aluminum and these spacers have a lifetime warranty I don't think there's another spacer that has a warranty never mind a lifetime one now Hub Centric is a very very important word regarding wheel spacers especially again on a massive truck like this Hub Centric spacers bolt to the hub just like they say the spacer comes like this these are the original studs with the truck when you get the spacer you get new lug nuts you put those on and you torque these down to the same torque value that your wheel would be so now this spacer is torqued to the truck with the exact same torque value as your wheel meaning these are in incredibly strong and they're not going anywhere now the new studs coming off of your spacer which are now your wheel studs can come in a thread pattern that you specify so in my case a few weeks after actually getting my King Ranch Wheels I wanted to add a little more King Ranch flare to my power stroke and I got King Ranch hubcaps for the same year that the wheels are because my wheels didn't come with hubcaps so on Facebook Marketplace for I think it was 50 bucks I found four King Ranch hubcaps they've got that nice little subtle King Ranch emblem on there and uh just added a little as a little King Ranch flare again uh to the truck but in order to utilize those hubcaps which have these special Clips in here you need to use the lug nuts off of that your truck which is like a 2017 uh to 2019 I believe so I'll link these Down Below on Amazon but I got all new lug nuts so that meant when ordering my wheel spacers I had to specify that I wanted these studs to be the thread pitch off a 2017 truck which is the year that those wheels are so I ordered all new lug nuts which have this special uh clip thing so that I can put those hubcaps I can clip them onto these studs and bore it installed these 2017 or whatever threaded lug nuts so they go on like that well I can't remember if I mentioned this already or not but uh it's a two inch spacer that I'm running and that's what most people run when they're running these newer style wheels a two inch spacer I'll show you guys the fitment when I put the wheels and tires on but a two inch spacer is supposed to bring it just out to about OEM on a 2000 and whatever when they went to the wider axles the two inch spacer is supposed to bring it out to that width so it looks correct it's not supposed to kick the tires out I didn't want that I'm already running a pretty decent sized spacer as it is I don't want to kick the tires out even more which Hub Centric wheel spacers are actually what's on my Corvette which while it may not be Towing it still gets its fair share of abuse that could break down a wheel spacer so I will include a link to these bore wheel spacers down in the description below for you guys to check out these are the spacers I'm going to be running on the back of my vet and shout out to Lenny and the guys at Borah for being so good to work with and for supporting the F-350 build so all four of the spacers are torqued down to their spec which is 160 or 165 foot-pounds for this truck and you guys will have seen from the time lapse I did grind down these Factory studs just a tiny tiny bit in reality in the back it doesn't look like I even had to but you need this spacer to sit flush against the Hub see how good that sits on there and then you need your wheel to sit flush on here so you can't be having these studs stick out which would cause the wheel to not sit flush on here and that's how you would lose a wheel and then everyone's like oh it's a spacer no you got to make sure you do your prep work so I ground down all the studs a tiny tiny bit in the front uh someone on a forum I believe said an eighth of an inch I just ground down at tiny bit and in my application too I did use a little bit of Emery cloth to you're not gonna be able to see it now but I used a little bit of Emery cloth to make sure there was no debris or crap or built up rust that would cause the spacer to not sit flush down against the Hub but I double checked everything and these are all good to go meaning that we're finally ready to bolt up the wheels and tires yes ignore the back where I put one on last night because I was really excited but it's not all tightened down yet so let's get the rest on and see how this thing freaking looks [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you oh 160 165 foot-pounds on let's see math has never been my strong suit but that would be 300 lug nuts I'm just kidding I'm sure some of you think I'm serious all the lug nuts are tightened just in time for the rain to begin go figure again this whole entire week but it's time for the finishing touch for the wheels anyways I am dripping sweat here it goes beautiful King Ranch things really go on there oh my God guys look at this thing oh my God of course of course it's another day because of course right after putting on the new wheels and tires and getting the final hubcap on smacked on there it started to rain again so I was just getting ready to show you guys what the truck looked like but then again it wasn't finished because today we still have one last upgrade modification to do that I'm actually pretty excited about so now that we have those nice fresh new tall all-terrains ready to spew dirt and debris all over my beautiful paint and whatever I'm hauling behind the truck so to keep that from happening we're gonna throw some mud flaps on this thing but not just any regular old mud flaps these are custom made duraflap mud flaps also like the bore wheel spacers made right here in the good old us of a they're made of a 3 8 inch polyethylene rubber blend I did a good job pronouncing that one didn't I it just took me one time and they're just plain strong everyone on the power stroke forums recommended these things they're built not to tear break rust rip fade peel and the best part not well second best part to the fact that they're made in the US they're drill less so I don't have to be drilling holes in this thing because I really don't want to do that and not only do these things kind of help protect the truck and whatever I'm towing it away I think they look just plain cool and half the reason I got them was for the look so I went with the 304 mirror finish stainless steel polished weights to add to the new shiny theme I've got going on here the nice thing about buying products from an American-made company is they make instructions that you can actually understand so thankfully the duraflab mud flaps came with nice and easy to read instructions that made this installation a breeze shout out to Myron and the whole duraflap team for being so great to work with and for hooking me up with these mud flaps of course I'll put a link to the flaps I used down in the description below now look at this Dad stainless steel wow [Music] foreign so here's the thing and you guys are really gonna hate me for it we're driving the truck now it's done it's complete but unfortunately I can't show you guys yet because the way that I did this video well I started installing parts for the part two of this video before I got after shots of all the stuff I did in this video so I can't show you guys the truck right now because it has some of the parts that I was gonna install in part two on it and I can't spoil that so I don't mean to snake you guys like this I really didn't plan it like this I was just so excited to get all the parts on and they were all you know at my house ready to be put on and just the editing took too long I put on the parts too quick and uh so here we are but I promise I promise part two of this build will be live in two days two days and it'll be up and you guys will be able to watch that video and see what the truck finally looks like and let me tell you it looks incredible it is my dream truck now not to blow wind up my own skirt but uh I could not have done a better job with the the parts that I picked and the color scheme just everything this thing looks phenomenal so stay tuned two days that video will be live unless you're watching this in two years from now then uh I'll include a link for the new video the part two video so sorry it ended up like this but I will see you guys in that video please don't hate me too much happy Motoring

Channel: DriveHub

Views: 394,850

Keywords: 7.3 powerstroke, 7.3 powerstroke build, 7.3 powerstroke upgrades, 2001 f350 build, 2001 ford f350 build, 2001 f350 7.3 powerstroke, 2001 ford f350 7.3 diesel, ford f350 turbo diesel, ford f350 7.3 powerstroke, ford f350 7.3 powerstroke build, powerstroke build, f350 build, powerstroke, f350, ford, drivehub, drive hub, drivehub f350

Id: LspiRM8z4Us

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023