Recommended First Upgrades for Your New F-150

what's up everybody noah from stage 3 motorsports here and i'm joined by bill and if you're wondering why we are recording inside of a vehicle then you need to check out our review on this 2021 f-150 that's what we're doing right now we've been road tripping this thing from texas all the way back to phoenix arizona so there'll be a whole video going over that but this is a separate video where we actually wanted to talk about mods more specifically because as you know stage three is not a company known for leaving trucks stock and we wanted to cover some upgrades that are ones that we'd really think are probably the most important to knock out first or might be the most practical for those of you guys who are considering picking up a new truck and then lightly modifying it from there so with that being said uh bill i'll let you kind of kick it off yeah so i already know that you want to put wheels and tires on it of course you know so we're going to go to my first mod which would be a leveling kit and we're going to have to do that before we do your first mod i think a leveling kit's important this thing is nose down it's got this big chin spoiler on it and you can see in our other video we've already hit that we've done some light off-roading you know we need some clearance there's three different types of leveling kits there's the spacer leveling kit the little kind of hundred dollar thing that's gonna level it out allow you to put wheels and tires and you're gonna keep this soft spongy ride quality that we have on the stock ones also keep in mind that if you're doing a lot of off-roading you're probably going to blow the that strut out and all the money you spent on the spacer and the labor to put it in will be gone because you'll have to upgrade to a coilover so keep that in mind then you would go to like a 2-0 coilover which would be like a fox or maybe like a bilstein upgrade for a 5100 those are going to be really good on road characteristics and off-road they're going to be pretty good you're going to be able to go a decent speed you don't want to do anything extreme with those but going on a hunting trip going off-road a couple times a year those will be great certainly more dependable than a spacer definitely a step up absolutely and something that could last the entire life of your truck if you're not a guy that goes off-road a lot and we've been pretty impressed with you know bilstein 5100s we've hit those pretty hard at times uh fox 20s some of those and then you know if you are looking to spend a lot of time off-road or you're going to go to high-speed off-road you're going to want to go to like a 2-5 so like a fox or an icon there's the falcon system which is a 2.25 these are all going to ride a little bit stiffer than factory for some people too stiff over factory but these are going to be very dependable off-road you're never going to switch them out just a really really solid option of course they're a lot more money but back to then what would you do after we after we get the truck leveled out and give it some clearance so once you decide what fits best for you there the thing that i would probably want to tackle most is wheels and tires especially on this truck because it has a factory 20-inch wheel and it's a pretty bland tire it's just a hand cook all season like very road friendly tire something like this is not going to be super ideal if you really want to wheel your truck for me i always try to get as far from 20s as i can and usually on an f-150 a 17 is kind of that sweet spot size 18s can be really good too but i definitely think a 17 inch wheel with a 33 inch tire or even a 32.5 somewhere in that range is going to get you a lot of good cushion on the sides where you still have some sidewall and you can air down and you're not getting a really stiff ride from having a huge wheel on it but you also get the benefit of being able to put a tire that's a bit more aggressive and can get you more traction off-road and will really make the difference in the soft stuff i mean we did push this truck a little bit and got it through some mud that i did not think it would make it through but that was with the benefit of it not having rained that day too and i think if you get into some really thick mud or especially soft sand as well you could end up in a pretty bad place without the right kind of tire mechanical traction like that just goes a long way my next kind of necessary mod is tonneau cover one i think they look better but i mean we just we've got our bags in the back from this road trip and we stopped to go in and just grab like even fast food and we're worried you know should we leave this out certainly at the hotel we're taking everything out even just a soft roll-up cover for a couple hundred dollars adds a lot of peace of mind and security to the vehicle they've proven some gas mileage upgrades on them um you know like i said i think they look better there's all kinds of different options you can certainly go kind of crazy with what you want to buy there but just even a soft basic cover i think helps out a lot yeah those are usually the most affordable too and you and i have talked quite a bit about on other trucks having the hard roll-up covers that have to roll into a box that sits like sort of like a toolbox at the front of the bed up against the cab and on a truck like this with a super crew cab and a short bed those boxes just eat up so much space whereas with a soft roll-up tonneau it just kind of makes a little like a little rolled taco right at the end where it's not eating up bed space it's not getting in the way it's not hard to get it out of the way to use your bed so you don't lose any pickup truck functionality with that and on my comment on security they can be cut so i know someone's going to mention that you can cut right through those true but you can't see what's inside of it and with the tailgate locked you can't just open the thing up so just running in somewhere and having some bags in the back i think it makes more sense it also keeps weather out you know a little bit of dust protection and water protection obviously our suitcases that are back there with our clothes now are hard suitcases so they've been able to handle the rain that we've driven through but if all you have is a soft duffel bag or things that can't be exposed then all of a sudden that makes it a lot trickier because you're not going to leave it in the truck bed i don't know if we've seen them since we went through rain and then dust yeah i can about imagine what they look like now yeah and then uh you want to talk about your floor mat issue yeah yeah so pretty quickly as in within 15 miles of driving this truck and then going into the dirt we've obliterated the carpet floor mats in here and especially on my side and wearing boots and everything dragging mud and dirt and grass and weeds and stuff sticking to the bottom in and out of this it's terrible and on a brand new truck like this it feels especially bad if you've got an old base model xl with rubber floors then i get why you don't care but in something like this it's definitely worth putting the time and the money into getting in some sort of rubber fit floor mat for it like a weathertech or a husky liner we always go back to these with pretty much all of our builds because we know we're going to use them off-road and we're going to get them dirty on the inside but they really do help because of the lip that they have to them you catch a lot of dirt and rocks and mud and any moisture that's there so it's not just spilling off the mat onto the carpet anyways and then when you need to pull them out you can either just vacuum the thing and lift it out of there or you can kind of roll it and pull the whole thing out as one unit and dump it and it's just so much nicer and you don't risk ruining this carpet underneath that you're never gonna be able to replace yeah i think a lot of people think that like the companies give them to us and we put them in the vehicle because we sell them we buy them for every vehicle that we have and we buy our personal vehicles and everything we buy them for the front and the rear and the rear one usually gets destroyed too because the video guys are always getting in and out and they're getting out in the mud and we get to enjoy in here and drive through the mud but yeah the back one is always just destroyed so i think that pretty much covers it for a couple of our day one mod so to speak or like things you should consider with a new truck like this hopefully that gives you guys some insight if you're looking into upgrades for your vehicle and certainly if you have an upgrade that you think that we missed that you think is super important put that down in the comments let us know we'd love to hear your input on that and as always thank you guys for watching and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Stage 3 Motorsports

Views: 121,195

Keywords: 2021 Ford F150, 2021 F150 top upgrades, best upgrades for my new 2021 F150, Wheels for 2021 F150, leveling kits for 2021 Ford F150, F150 leveling kits 2021, F150 tonneau cover options, tonneau covers for 2021 F150, F150 first upgrades

Id: KIjxkyG6kTw

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021