There's nothing better than great weather and the great outdoors, especially when you have some seriously built project trucks to screw around with. There's also nothing worse than not being invited on your coworkers' grand adventure, and then hearing how great it was. I'm not bitter. Not even little... Anyway, a few of the guys here at Stage 3 loaded up our 2012 F150 EcoBoost FX4 Project Truck and our 2007 F150 4WD 5.4L XLT Project Truck and headed up north to Prescott National Forest outside of Prescott, Arizona, for a little off-roading, photo shooting, and some testing out of some the new gear on both the trucks and on the Stage 3 Website. Luckily, they came back with good images and some insight into some of our newest performance parts and hardware.
The latest performance gear to end up on our 2012 F150 EcoBoost FX4 include an F150Lifts BOSS 0-3" Coilover Kit, Pro Comp Add-a-Leafs, a ADD Stealth Vented & Paneled Front Off-Road Bumper, and a Rigid Industries 40" E-Series LED Combo Light Bar all on top of its 6" Zone Lift Kit. Our 2007 F150 was fresh off of getting its own F150Lifts Coilover Kit installed (everyone beg and pester Alex to actually put these into production), Pro Comp Add-a-Leafs, and a bunch of Rigid off-road Dually LED lights and a 28" E-Series LED Light Bar added onto its Smittybilt front bull bar, all of which go along and add onto its Zone 6" Lift Kit. With both trucks running on around 8" of lift, they look pretty tough, especially with all their other modifications.
One of the the products we brought up to test was not, in fact, the ATV in the bed of the 2007 F150, but its TruXedo TonneauTrax tonneau cover system. The TonneauTrax tonneau cover has a rail that can accept up to four movable and customizable tie-down points. Bill lugged his ATV along for the trip and tied it down using the TonneauTrax's tie-downs and some ratchet straps. The cleats on the TonneauTrax are spring-loaded and lock themselves into notches along the rail which keeps them in place and prevents them from rattling, which was a big concern for us.
With the ATV strapped down to the TonneauTrax's tie downs, John decided to see if he could make it fall out of his truck with some clever driving. He failed, which was probably a good thing for Bill's ATV.
The guys' main purpose for heading up to Prescott was to actually get good images of the Rightline Gear Truck Bed Tent in action. This easy set-up, easy tear-down tent utilizes your F150's bed as its floor, which is actually a pretty brilliant way to keep you off the ground and dry. I had my initial doubts about the bed tent's viability, especially on our 2012 FX4's 5.5ft bed. However, the tent utilizes the tailgate, which gives plenty of room for two people to lay down. Our truck's BedRug Bed Mat made it that much cozier.
With business out of the way, the boys went off to be boys, and played around with some of Rigid's E-Series covers while wheeling around in the woods.
