There’s just something about a blacked out, sinister looking pickup truck. SCT hit the nail on the head with this 2019 Ford Ranger display vehicle for SEMA 2019. We chatted with SCT calibrations engineer Bretty Lundquist, and he gave us all the details on this beautiful Ranger.
FNXT: So tell me about the idea behind this build.
Lundquist: Initially we really wanted to jack it up, do an off-road type of thing. That’s kind of my thing with trucks, but we thought that everyone was going to do that, so we decided to make kind of a track street machine. So the first thing we did was approach our friends at Control Freak Suspension and had them build us a three-link coilover suspension in the rear and a custom front upper control arm and coilover front suspension. So we actually lowered it about six inches in the rear and about five and a half inches in the front. It gives it a really nice stance.
FNXT: Given that this is an SCT truck, there has to be something brewing with the tune!
Lundquist: Here at SCT, our thing is tuning. So with 93 octane, we basically developed preloaded tunes. We go from 87 to 91 to 93, and with the highest octane, it actually picks up about 60 wheel horsepower and 90 lb-ft of torque. In the quarter-mile testing we did with our four-wheel-drive unit, it actually dropped almost two solid seconds off the quarter-mile time — just plug and play, no extra modifications. That’s literally right off the lot, put 93 in the tank, put the tune in it, and it’s two seconds faster in the quarter-mile. It was about 6 or 7 mph too, so you’re really ahead of the guy that’s stock. And that was at full stock weight, we took nothing out of it.
Now we have a couple of upgrades as well that we got from our friends at AFE. We have an intake on it, a TurboSmart blow-off valve, and Levels Performance front-mount intercooler. So I anticipate picking up about another 20-30 horsepower when I get back to Florida, and get to mess with it some more.
We used the BDX on this unit, but the X4 is going to be updated soon to support this vehicle as well. The BDX is available now, so you could go to our website and buy one, or go to one of our dealers and buy one. They’re about $400, and again, that will come with the 87, 91, and 93 tunes already on it. Or if you get even crazier than I did and you want to go and get custom tunes, it will hold up to 20 custom tunes. Of course it’s also going to data-log if you get a check engine light or anything weird, and you can read and clear codes. It’ll adjust tire pressure monitor sensors, axle ratio, things like that, so if you do start getting even wilder than we did, you have a lot of support on that one device.
And appearance-wise?
Aside from all of that, we did a wide-body kit on this truck. And I say wide-body loosely — it’s really fender flares and some stuff from Air Design. Air Design basically helped us out with all the parts that made it more aggressive, helped us fill out the fenders with the wider tires, and things like that. We put the spoiler on the back, the hood scoop, all the fender flares, got rid of the chrome accents on the side and went with the gills, so it really just made it more sporty and appealing.
We have lighting from Diode Dynamics, so anything that wasn’t LED — this is a Lariat, so it actually had a lot of LED lighting — but anything that wasn’t LED has been upgraded by Diode Dynamics.
Our marketing team did the vinyl graphics. I had a little input, but for the most part, when it came to graphics, I said I just want something kind of simple if you can, and they came up with this and I said let’s go for it.
Tell me more about testing. How did that go?
We had a four-wheel-drive unit right when they came out, so we went in March and did all the quarter-mile testing. We didn’t know we were building this truck for SEMA until after that fact. And it wasn’t actually a cool day. It was very hot, so I anticipate a little better results in the winter time. I’d like to take this back to the track now that it has the suspension to help us really get the power to the ground.
What about tires?
“When we tested with the four-wheel drive, we were on whatever the OEM street tires were. Whatever Ford put on them is what we ran, so they weren’t the best tires, but it was four-wheel drive, so we could launch it. I didn’t really pick these current tires to be sticky rubber. I wanted something that could be daily driven and also last a decent amount of time, so these are Nittos that we’re running right now. I also picked them a lot for the aesthetic look — the sidewall design just fit the mold of the vehicle, so we love these Nitto 420S models.
It must be awesome seeing your vision come to fruition here at SEMA!
I’m really proud of this build. It definitely was a lot of work, a lot of stress, but now all of that pays off, being here and seeing people like it.
