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tbone

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Everything posted by tbone

  1. I have had ADD aftermarket bumpers on all but one of my Raptors, which are very good quality. Although I have not opted for a winch option they do have that option available for their bumpers.
  2. I can’t help you with the test drive because I don’t live close to you, but I can give you some perspective. I have driven trucks all my life, either 1/2 or 3/4 tons. Since 2011 I have had multiple Raptors, however I ordered an 22 F250 to change things up. It came in and my wife hated riding in it. I had intended to put a lift on it anyway, with the intention of softening the ride but the shop told me that even with a Carli lift it’s not going to compare to a Raptor, which I appreciated their honesty. Two weeks after getting the F250 I ordered another Raptor. I have a 7,000lb GVWR trailer I tow with the Raptor and it squats the rear end, but it handles the load sufficiently for how often I use it. Just order the Raptor, you won’t be disappointed. I have not driven or ridden in a truck that rides or drives better than it, and it doesn’t hurt that they look great.
  3. I think it’s a pretty cool option, which isn’t cheap, but I agree the warranty is very weak for that kind of money.
  4. Yes, if you liked opinions routinely presented as fact.
  5. Once again, pay more get less. At least they are making it available for those that want it, if that’s any consolation.
  6. It’s also not good that the build and price is still not showing a black wheel option on the ST. The fact that there remains one wheel option since the announcement of the new model worries me this may be the only option. Major oversight IMO, if that is the case, especially since those wheels look like base model wheels. There’s still a disclaimer on the images so we will see.
  7. It’s hard to feel optimistic about the 2025 Expedition and perhaps the Navigator. The fact that this is referred to as a refresh in this article is disturbing, however not terribly surprising considering it’s pretty evident that there’s a lot of carryover sheet-metal, in particular on the sides of the vehicle. I want to give it the benefit of the doubt, but a heavily revised interior would not be sufficient to get me to buy a new Expy, when it originally debuted in 2018. It would have to be joined by substantial exterior changes. I did want to point out the stellar reporting by Ford authority, “we expect a full reveal in the coming weeks or months.” Very specific information there.
  8. Yes, I agree Active is better than base or S, but I think it’s a bad name, because to me it suggests it’s some kind of off-road variant when it is not. It doesn’t lend itself to the basic vehicle. I’ve also never been a fan of ST Line. I think it dilutes the ST variant, when they could have used Sport to represent the similar look.
  9. It would be a travesty of this plant wasn’t flexible enough to build a variety of products.
  10. It will likely be dependent on who wins the next election whether this temporary or longer term.
  11. You have mentioned the quality of the Explorers a few times. For some perspective, we have had a 2020 and a 2022 ST with 45k and 36k miles, respectively. We still have the 22. Both of these have been pretty solid, with the exception of the recalls. CAP certainly has issues, but not all of the product coming out of there is poor quality. We have some Explorers at my work that have been pretty abused and our fleet guy hasn’t had many complaints about them either.
  12. This is why it’s paramount to have a strong relationship with your suppliers, so they don’t do stuff like that. I think it boils down to Ford paying a sub an amount to make a reasonable profit while having trust that they will bill a quality product. It’s a partnership, and shouldn’t be adversarial, kind of like how their relationship with UAW SHOULD be. Trying to extract every penny out of their supplier Doesn’t lend itself to to a good relationship. You can argue business is business, but that’s not exactly true when building relationships. Hopefully we will see some improvement on the supplier relationship index over the next couple years.
  13. imagine if you were Boeing. In my opinion, they have subcontracted out way too many things, and they appear to be currently feeling the impact of that. Imagine if Ford could save money on warranty costs enough that they can stop trying to save money through decontenting.
  14. The dealer picked up our 2023 Escape for a recall on screen replacement. Other than that, though, the build was quality has been very good.
  15. I recall this with the mediums and at the time applauded it. In respect to my post I was referring to their bread and butter 1/2 tons, which doesn’t appear to impact their sales. I’m all for made in the USA but as a third party observer, I thought the union demands weren’t reasonable, as such any long term repercussions will be self inflicted, IMO.
  16. The fact that some of the GM truck twins are being built in Mexico doesn’t seem to be impacting their sales too much, so I don’t see a reason why it affect Ford too much.
  17. Yes, no kidding. And to be clear I was referencing the Bronco Raptor not the truck, although the truck did go up as well by about $4k for the 23 model over my 22. The build and price for the 24 wasn’t up yet so I couldn’t see what the change was going to be. Needless to say, it’s getting pretty painful.
  18. I'm not being contentious, but if Amazon can ship 7,000,000,000+ packages a year across a multitude of shipping methods, and know where they’re at, Ford should be able to figure this out too, with 2 million vehicles. It does feel like a lack of effort on their part to develop an effective system. I have ordered the vast majority of our vehicles, and they’re tracking has always been crap. It sure seems like using the internal modem would be the most effective method of tracking them as previously mentioned.
  19. I really don’t disagree with anything that you have said here, however, unless I missed it, I don’t think I saw any quotes of him specifically ripping hourly workers within the union, and it was more about the unions approach to the negotiations. At this point, I wouldn’t care if he openly criticized Fain though. Ford and UAW are a partnership whether people like it or not, and how would you feel if your partner publicly treated you that way and did things to damage you? Every day a strike continues the cost is mounting, so how long as a reasonable time to let a strike continue? Until the company is buried? Until the union is broken? at some point a corporation of that size has to come to some kind of agreement or close the doors. This is beside the fact that the individual union employee on strike is losing income every day it goes on. I personally would like to see more visible accountability at the CEO level, but a massive corporation doesn’t change in a day and leadership deserve some time to turn things around. You can talk about how much they’re paid and that they’ll be OK if they get fired, but they are human, and most people don’t like to fail and have their name associated with that. The the issues you have mentioned above are real, and somebody does should be held accountable for them, but I venture to say that there are quite a number of people throughout the structure of this manufacturer that have a hand in those failures from top to bottom. Let’s get rid of them, from the managers that aren’t managing effectively, to the line worker that is routinely doing poor quality work.
  20. Obviously, there are different grades of stainless steel. Most of the stainless steels that I’ve been around never seem to be completely “stainless” or 100% rust free. I’m guessing these were not the highest quality stainless steel. it seems to me that these trucks would require a lot of exterior maintenance to maintain a clean looking vehicle.
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