Stage 3 Motorsports 2011 F150 3.5L EcoBoost XLT Project Truck

What you see before you is the truck that first got Stage 3 Motorsports into the EcoBoost game and pushed us more towards F150s in general. Originally purchased as an all purpose shop truck for hauling parts and gear around, we fell madly in love with the twin turbo power of the 3.5L EcoBoost V6 and the fact it was putting all that power down through its rear wheels. This truck came to us as a bone stock, 2 wheel drive, Crew Cab, XLT packaged F150, which is nothing to write home about. That being said, we gave this truck some proper TLC to make it faster, better looking and forever loved by all of us here at the shop.

If there was one thing we learned with this truck it's that these 3.5L EcoBoost engines respond really well to tuning and bolt-on mods. We got down to business and set this truck up with a new cold air intake, throttle body, charge pipe and an aftermarket tune. Check out the section below for all the details!

aFe Stage 2 Intake & Edge Tuner

Step one of our build involved throwing on our 2011 F150 AFE Cold Air Intake & EDGE Tuner Package with a 91 octane Race tune from Edge. The combination of a new intake and tuning allowed our 2011 EcoBoost to put down 364 horsepower and 447 lb-ft of torque at its rear wheels. That means this truck generates over 500lb-ft of torque at the crankshaft. All of this with two very simple bolt-on upgrades.

BBK 73MM Throttle Body & aFe Charge Pipe

With the intake and tuning taken care of we moved on to our next set of engine upgrades. We were able to add a little more power to our F150 with the help of a 11-16 F150 BBK 73MM Throttle Body and a 11-14 F150 EcoBoost aFe Bladerunner Charge Pipe. These two bolt-on upgrades gave us an extra 14 horsepower and 6 lb-ft of torque bringing our totals to 435 horsepower and 520 lb-ft of torque at the crankshaft. Read more about it on our install guide.

This F150 is a 2WD truck so there's no sense in going crazy with a huge lift kit or 35" tires, but we still wanted to give this truck a more aggressive stance. To accomplish this we threw on a 2" leveling kit and a set of factory Platinum wheels to replace the boring 18" stock wheels it came with. You can read up on all the details in the section below!

Daystar 2" Leveling Kit

Adding a leveling kit was high priority on our list of upgrades. The front of these F150s sit much lower than the rear which is fine for fuel economy, but not really pleasing to look at. We went with the 09-18 F150 Daystar 2" Leveling Kit because they use a polyurethane spacer which gives stock-like ride quality while still raising the front by 2 inches.

Factory 20" Platinum F150 Wheels

We ditched the basic 18" XLT wheels on our F150 and picked up a lightly used set of factory 20" Platinum wheels with tires on them to spruce up the look of our truck. Sadly we don't sell the factory Platinum wheels here at Stage 3, but we do have a wide selection of aftermarket wheels for F150's if you're looking to change up the look of your truck. Shop F150 Wheels and Tires

With our F150 being optioned as an XLT the interior wasn't empty, but it definitely still needed a little help. We strapped in a new Husky gear box under the seat, new Kicker speakers and we also tossed a tonneau cover on the back to give us more covered storage space. Get all the details below!

Husky Liner Gear Box (SuperCrew Cab)

The bed of the 2011 to 2014 F150s offers pretty good cargo room and capacity for the size of the truck, but in-cab storage is practically non-existent, which left tools, straps, hardware, and whatever the heck else we needed to stay in the cab just floating around. Thankfully we picked up the excellent F150 Crew Cab Husky Liner Gear Box. This under seat storage box has a huge capacity and can even hold rifles and shotguns for your hunting trips. The Gear Box easily installs under the rear bench seats of SuperCab and SuperCrew trucks with just a few straps, no cutting or drilling required.

Kicker 6x8 Speaker Upgrade Kit

The base factory speakers in our F150 are pretty weak and a solution was needed to get a better audio range and overall sound improvement. The 04-14 F150 Kicker KSC68 6x8 Door Speaker Upgrade Kit fit the bill perfectly, and all four of these more powerful door speakers dropped right in place of stock with very little effort. The sound quality improvement is like night and day with awesome range, great sound, and excellent quality all without needing to drop in an amp or new head unit.

Truxedo Lo Pro QT Tonneau Cover (5.5 ft. Bed)

We chose the Truxedo Lo Pro QT Tonneau Cover because we wanted a roll up cover that would allow for full access to the bed. We only have a 5.5 FT bed, so we couldn't afford to loose any cargo area. This proved to be a good option for us, install was easy and it functions perfectly for our everyday needs.

Platinum Exterior Upgrades

We eventually rounded out the look of our truck by installing a Platinum Edition grille, paint matched bumpers, chrome tow hooks and chrome side mirrors. While none of these mods provided any sort of performance improvement, they did give our truck a sportier appearance and helped set it apart from every other XLT F150 roaming the streets.

Parts Used For This Build